The almost endless variety in brand names of knives is confusing at best, and deceptive at worst.

Some major brand name knives like Spyderco, Gerber, Camillus, Ka-Bar, and many others have cheaper brands that they make or have contracted to other makers in order to be able to sell at cheap prices.

For the most part, these knives vary from good to very bad in quality. For example, Gerber sells and markets Winchester brand knives. Most of the Winchester brand knives are made in China and are of fair quality. The odd thing is they also from time to time make very high quality knives with the Winchester name.

Why do they do this? I don't know, it makes very little sense. A knife company aquired a good name by making good quality products and selling them at affordable prices. People buy these and get good service from them and tell others about them and the reputation grows.

But today several knife companies with good names are selling real junk with their name on it. Thus they will ultimately ruin their customer base and end up selling nothing but junk because no one will pay a decent price for their products.

A case in point is Browning and Buck, both of which built up their name by selling very good quality knives at decent prices. People have over the years come to depend on those names for good merchandise. But now both companies are selling 30-50%  China made knives which are not as good as the customer expects from these brand names.

They are in fact setting themselves up for failure in a big way. Just a couple of years from now if these two companies continue this trend their products will not sell for decent prices they will only be able to sell $5.00 knives because their name will have been ruined by people who bought expecting very good products but got poor products.

Those same people will tell everyone they know how bad the product was and how they should never buy that brand.

The same process happened to Frost knives. When Parker-Frost split they both had access to good Japan suppliers who made good quality products at a good price. Parker knives kept buying good products and his business grew. It failed ultimately because they tried to do too much too quickly. They bought several brand names in an effort to save the companies and ultimately they killed themselves.

Frost on the other hand went a different route. They started selling real junk at super low prices. They grew also but more slowly over a longer period of time. Their brand name is now synonymous with cheap China made junk knives.

They can sell thousands of these knives at .80 cents to $2.00 but they can't sell good quality knives because everyone knows Frost means junk.

And while they are still in business they don't make good knives nor do they bring new ideas into the knife market.

Which brand is best? In my opinion a good brand is one that makes good to fantastic quality knives and sell them at affordable prices. They also bring new ideas, new steels, new designs, new direction, and they give good service to customers.

Some names which come to mind are;

Case

Queen

Kershaw

Benchmade

Boker

Ka-Bar

Anza

Moki

Mcusta

Beretta

Kissing Crane

Camillus

Cold Steel

A.G. Russell (they have the very best warranty of any knife company)

Fallkniven

Sakai

Kai

Seto

Seki-Cut

Herbertz

Huertus

Maserin

Victorinox

and many others

So choose your knife based on the steel used to make it, the fit and finish of the product, and the warranty given from the maker.

And also recognize you do often get what you pay for, if you buy a higher priced knife you will get a better quality knife.

But there are bargains out there so be on the look out, I bought a Moki knife right after Christmas 2005 for $34 and turned around and sold it for $124 one month later.