A Student Asked Me About Pricing

This is the question of the century, because there is no one single right answer. It depends on so many variables. What skill level are they at? Are they consistent? Are they completely new? Do they have a track record? Who are they selling to? Why are they selling? These are not questions to dig at any one single person, but general questions to establish the playing field.

The market itself also has massive weight in how much a knife can sell. Kitchen knife users are pretty informed, and also pretty picky. It’s hard to compete with Japanese Knives or a Zwilling Kramer because they offer good performance for the money. However, they aren’t the end-all-be-all, because there absolutely exists a craft of making knives that outperform the Zwilling, or have more preferable fit and finish and design than Japanese knives. It’s quite the learning journey to even get to that point, because making kitchen knives are HARD.

Now it’s a question of how much? Let’s keep this to a standard chef’s knife, and let’s assume the maker has now met all the requirements for design, performance, and fit and finish.

Anywhere from $300-600.

Nobody should ever sell a hand made knife made with honest effort under $100. Between $100 and $300 is the work of someone who is early in the learning stage. $300-$600 is when they’ve got the fundamentals and they’re getting established. $600 to $1000 is when they have found traction. $1000+ is when they’ve built reputation and trust, and above that is when they offer something truly good and unique for people who care.

These loose ranges are just based off my observations; there are always exceptions and I could be VERY much wrong, but I’ve seen these trends throughout the years and they haven’t really changed much from when I started versus the makers who are starting today. There can be makers who are relatively earlier in knife making, but can take great photos, market themselves very well, and build a good jump start to getting traction. There are makers who make FANTASTIC work, but don’t do any of those things and then struggle to sell their work. A bit of both is the golden ticket.

Courage and patience also.