Yasugi steel price increase 250%

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Sooo (as I am clutching my Aogami Super)... I don't need to start hoarding Aogami Super knives right now?

Sexy Cbs GIF by Paramount+
 
I just had another conversation with Junichi Ide of Yosimitu Kajiya.

"The steel is made from Yasugi steel, which is made by a big company called 'Hitachi Metals', but the president of that company has changed and they were initially reluctant to produce steel for blacksmiths. The wholesalers' union, which distributes steel to blacksmiths, negotiated with the company to continue production, but they offered an unprecedented price increase... and the wholesalers' union had no choice but to accept it.
My efforts alone have made it impossible to keep the prices down. I'm really sorry🙏
."
 
I just had another conversation with Junichi Ide of Yosimitu Kajiya.

"The steel is made from Yasugi steel, which is made by a big company called 'Hitachi Metals', but the president of that company has changed and they were initially reluctant to produce steel for blacksmiths. The wholesalers' union, which distributes steel to blacksmiths, negotiated with the company to continue production, but they offered an unprecedented price increase... and the wholesalers' union had no choice but to accept it.
My efforts alone have made it impossible to keep the prices down. I'm really sorry🙏
."

A while back Spyderco dropped their long running Seki City ZDP-189 models and replaced them with K390. Sal Glesser said the decision was not motivated by steel superiority but that they were informed by Hitachi that ZDP-189 may no longer be available in knife maker quantities.
 
So if $10 worth of raw steel sees an increase of 250%, that's an increase of just $25
 
Would be cool to see if there was a switch then to US/european steels then. If hitachi carbon is gonna be very expensive anyway why not do something more fun, like Manaka using Vanadis4e sometimes.

Regardless, don't see this affecting much in the $300+ range, but if this is true, gonna really hurt the sub $150 value propositions for many probably
 
Would be cool to see if there was a switch then to US/european steels then. If hitachi carbon is gonna be very expensive anyway why not do something more fun, like Manaka using Vanadis4e sometimes.

Regardless, don't see this affecting much in the $300+ range, but if this is true, gonna really hurt the sub $150 value propositions for many probably
Import fees and shipping costs are probably going to really hurt that idea. Unless they price the steel cheap enough.
 
Would be cool to see if there was a switch then to US/european steels then. If hitachi carbon is gonna be very expensive anyway why not do something more fun, like Manaka using Vanadis4e sometimes.

Regardless, don't see this affecting much in the $300+ range, but if this is true, gonna really hurt the sub $150 value propositions for many probably
He uses V4E? Interesting
 
So if $10 worth of raw steel sees an increase of 250%, that's an increase of just $25
If the increase is by 250% then wouldn't the new price be $10+$25? Unless the intent was the increased price is 250% of the current. I know it's a $10 difference, but with the number of middlemen in Japan I feel like the price increase will multiply. All prices will rise to keep margins the same.
 
If the increase is by 250% then wouldn't the new price be $10+$25? Unless the intent was the increased price is 250% of the current. I know it's a $10 difference, but with the number of middlemen in Japan I feel like the price increase will multiply. All prices will rise to keep margins the same.
Yes that's how I interpret it
 
The whole Japanese knife industry is way too small to make a steel mill like the yasugi one commercially viable and it’s been that way for years if not decades. A lot of the different steel grades will be phased out and the remaining ones will be subject to the 250 percent price increase.
As was correctly pointed out the price of the raw materials isn’t that much of an issue, it’s the exclusive use of multipliers to set retail prices that’s prevalent in the industry. It’s all manageable if they choose to add the steel cost after the multipliers have been applied. Profit margins would decrease slightly but the actual sums would remain stable.

Anyway, the whole shared labor system is absolutely doomed and everybody in the industry knows and can see it all unraveling in real time. The whole knife thing was never scaleable to begin with, the productivity is just not there.
Also lol at manaka. There’s a reason all those makers are unknown on the domestic market.
 
Would be cool to see if there was a switch then to US/european steels then. If hitachi carbon is gonna be very expensive anyway why not do something more fun, like Manaka using Vanadis4e sometimes.

Regardless, don't see this affecting much in the $300+ range, but if this is true, gonna really hurt the sub $150 value propositions for many probably

Nippon is already trying to buy U.S. Steel. If and when that happens, they will own all the patents and there will no longer be any "US" steel. (EDIT: For those patents owned by U.S. Steel that is.) They will also have massive control over production. What stays, what goes, how much of each, and where it will be produced. JX Nippon is big player in all types of metals and has production ties to China. If they get the patents they can produce the metal wherever they want and export it (and subsequent products) to wherever they want.

The whole Japanese knife industry is way too small to make a steel mill like the yasugi one commercially viable and it’s been that way for years if not decades. A lot of the different steel grades will be phased out and the remaining ones will be subject to the 250 percent price increase.
As was correctly pointed out the price of the raw materials isn’t that much of an issue, it’s the exclusive use of multipliers to set retail prices that’s prevalent in the industry. It’s all manageable if they choose to add the steel cost after the multipliers have been applied. Profit margins would decrease slightly but the actual sums would remain stable.

Anyway, the whole shared labor system is absolutely doomed and everybody in the industry knows and can see it all unraveling in real time. The whole knife thing was never scaleable to begin with, the productivity is just not there.
Also lol at manaka. There’s a reason all those makers are unknown on the domestic market.

I think your first point is the most important: volume. I work in manufacturing and know many others who do as well in other industries. Massive price increases on specific products is almost always temporary. It means the manufacturer could allocate their resources to other products with better volume and margin potential and the only way they will be willing to maintain the production of the specific product is a huge increase. This is almost always done as the first steps of product discontinuation.

You can't look at this from the consumer side as a per knife cost increase. You have to look at from the knife manufacturers perspective and that includes small-shop smiths. As @bsfsu pointed out, they have to buy in some bulk quantity and that can mean a massive capitol expense. There's a good possibility some cannot accept it and will close. This decreases overall demand which is often the first goal of the initial price increase. From there it is often just a rinse and repeat cycle until the demand has shrunk sufficiently for the original manufacturer of the source material to justify dropping it altogether and switching to other lines.

That doesn't necessarily make it all doom and gloom. Other similar but still affordable replacements might be offered or already exist that the affected industry pivots to. But, it may just as well mean an eventual major disruption to the consumer offerings.

In this particular case, I don't think it is at all hard to fathom the loss of a lot of the Japanese smiths and across the board price hikes for those that remain as they shift to other steels. I could see more consolidations like TKV as smiths come together to form more houses or brands in an effort to stay competitive. OEM production knives could easily become more prevalent as could Chinese produced knives, both OEM and maybe from smaller shops.

I don't know if it will be, but I could quite easily see this as the beginning of a major shift in this hobby across all price spectrums.
 
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