After stumbling across a blog post about how big brand kitchen products and appliances are mostly just hollow shells with little to no integrity, I found that same blogger/journalist has a robust list of brands that haven’t gone the way of capital sell-outs that goes way beyond kitchen utensils.
It’s worth taking a look at the list as well as the articles. The articles are conversational, but with lots of links to the source material.
Lol. I love that Cutco is on this list, despite them having such a bad reputation.
I sold those knives as my sole source of income for about a year. That was about 25 years ago.
I also happen to be a welding and metal fabricator and went to a two year trade program for it, have collected pocket knives most all my life, and as a hobby I sharpen knives and straight razors. Also, I’ve worked several other sales jobs besides Cutco.
All the hate they get is mostly from people who sold them or know someone who sold them, and it’s pretty deserved. Their main tactic is to bring in naive kids with no sales experience and get them out selling to friends and family, and letting them then fizzle out before they make enough sales to earn big commissions on their sales. Very few people can get past that barrier. Setting up appointments and scheduling and selling to what turns into total strangers in their own homes all together is just a set of skills that needs to be trained into and also naturally gifted at. Then, traveling around and doing all the appointments and keeping it all organized and dealing with cancellations all kind of sucks. Even if you make enough money like I managed to, the job wasn’t worth it. I went into advertising sales after I quit there.
The knives themselves (which is why I mentioned all that non sales crap above) are great looking knives that hold up for ages (I’m still using my 25 year old knives, they get tossed in the dishwasher, and they still look great) without much fuss, but they are overpriced for how they’re made. They’re high nickel stainless steel full tang stamped knives with a high quality plastic handle. They will continue to look shiny and new, they’re dishwasher safe, and they have a fantastic and easily useable warranty, but the steel is cheap for the cost of a set. It’s great for people who want pretty and easy to care for, at the expense of a good set of knives you’ll have to wash by hand and wipe dry.
The steak knives will last forever, the straight blade knives like the chef knife and butcher knife will last forever if you know how to sharpen them, and the bread knife will last forever. The other few knives that use their serrated looking edges will last several years, but you’ll eventually want to send those back to get them sharpened (free) unless you have the right knowhow to do it yourself.
Their warranty is so bullshit free that you can find some janky trashed ones at a garage sale (I’ve never found a danged set at a garage sale before) and just send them in and they’ll sharpen or replace them all. Like 70 year old company and their warranty has no paperwork or ownership attached. The knives themselves are warrantied.
For the curious, in 25 years ago money, I could sell the homemaker basic set for around $850 and I’d pocket over $400. Commissions got up to like 55% as you kept selling, your commission would permanently increase more and more to that cap and it could actually climb fairly quick. Just most people wouldn’t make more than like 10 sales before quitting.
Ok knives. Last ages. Look great. Best warranty. Very high price .
Dunno why I wrote all this. Guess I was a bit bored and it brought up old memories.
Maybe it was different 25 years ago, but from my experience with them 15 years ago, they were just a standard MLM pyramid scheme, where commissions were based on total sales of anyone you recruited + your own base 5% commission. So it meant it made more sense to recruit people than to sell the knives yourself. You also had to buy your own demo sets.
There was the part where you would get a kickback in sales from anyone you recruited to sale, but as often discovered, most people don’t sale for very long before quitting. You could try going that recruiting route, but I was up to about 50% commission when I left there and I had no interest in trying to get other people to join. It was a pretty standard pyramid scheme, but you could still make money without participating in that.
There wasn’t any other way to increase commissions much when I was there. The cap for solo sales was 15%.
On the other hand, selling home security systems door to door, which I also did, did have a performance based pay, which was 10% initial and would go up to 50% plus bonuses to top sellers. And it only went up via sales, not recruitment.
Maybe Cutco found the MLM tactic to be more profitable since you had to buy your own demo sets.
As someone who inherited a set, so came by them for free, I think they are indeed quite nice and all look like new. The handles take some getting used to but yeah, they’re fine. They’re good knives if you just get them second hand.
Lol. For sure. Or if you work for them you can get a bunch for pretty cheap :-p
I got a few of their non standard things I still love, like their peeler and their fishing knife.
The pizza cutter is genuinely awesome! So easy to clean and has no problems with tough crusts. I’d pay $30-40 to buy another one easily if anything happened to mine. Cutco is charging $70 on their website though which just seems delusional.
How much per knife? I don’t need an entire set, I need 1 knife. Maybe 2. A small one and a big one and I use that for everything.
Does sound like a pyramid scheme through.
Like a chef’s knife and a pairing knife? Way too much money to be worth it. Probably like $300 or more.
I could recommend someone with money to burn wanting a nice display set of knives as they host dinner parties getting a set of these in the block. They look “pretty” and work well. I would never tell anyone to just buy one or two of their kitchen knives. If you aren’t going to match, you can find other knives with better balance that are a lot cheaper. You can go check, though. I’m pretty sure Cutco has a website you can order from now.
Think I will stick with my current knives then. Around £20 or so for the small ones, maybe twice as much for the big one.
Do need to sharpen them at some point. Probably could do with a decent sharpening stone too. Have thought of just smoothing a stone tile/brick and using that as one.
if you want to learn how to sharpen by hand on stones, buy a “sharpal 162N double sided diamond stone” and then get a leather strop on a wooden block and put some chromium oxide on the strop.
If you want easy without learning how to sharpen by hand, get the “Work Sharp MK2” electric knife sharpener.
Most everything else besides those setups are way more expensive, a rip off, or take too long to use.
So far I have sharpened a few times using the base of a mug. Its not a great surface to use but I have a few shitty novelty mugs no one is going to use so it works.
Got some clay in the garden, almost tempting to form it into a tile and use that as a sharpening stone. But stone probably lasts longer.
I also recently discovered this website through a different site. One criticism I noticed and have seen possibly verified is that many (all?) of the articles are at least AI edited, and possibly whole-cloth written. Also, the author works for Palantir.
I haven’t had enough time to go through any of the articles and follow up on the sources to see if they’re still factually accurate or not, has anyone else verified any of the articles or their recommendations?
Zojirushi is legitimately great. Heritage steel also makes good quality pans at reasonable prices.
The list is too big to know everything, but I did find Thursday boots an odd inclusion because there was talk of them cutting corners on their materials.
I can easily believe the website was generated based off high ranking buyitforlife posts because it’s just too big and too unknown to be maintained legitimately.
Okay, so suppose you read an article about a Palantir employee who used AI to make a list of brands that people consider high quality. What would be the next line you would expect the article to say?
My guess is this is going to be a hit list for private equity. Brand reputation is a form of capital to be extracted.
But the site approved Cutco? The pyramid scam of cheaply made knives?
They’re up front about them being shit about that, if long glossed over
Read my other reply in this comment section. I kind of wrote a whole lot about this, but from a purchasers point of view: they have the best warranty if anything for fixing or replacing, while being a 70 year old company, and their knives are all dishwasher safe and last for decades with no issues. They are overpriced and use cheaper stamped steel but they are tempered pretty well.
In fact, here’s a picture I’m just taking of my 25 year old chefs knife that always gets tossed in the dishwasher. I cook a lot, but also know how to sharpen and use a honing steel.
that’s the funny thing, they’re legitimately fine knives. i worked at a restaurant that had been using cutco knives for years before i got there, and they held up better than certain “commercial quality” knives we got from our supplier.
they’re by no means “good”, but they’re perfectly serviceable and will last a LONG time. i used their ungodly 9” serrated carving fella as my goto veggie prep knife for literally 7 years. it was super predictable and i could butcher a pound of veg faster than anyone else on staff hahahah
Pretty sure a butter knife sharpened on a brick would be serviceable
i mean, yeah? if you shape and profile it by hand, even shitty steel can be turned into a very useful tool. the question quickly becomes “is hours of my labor worth less than $20?” hahahah
20 is one thing, sounds like those knives are a lot more though. Getting the impression £20 or so is a pretty good price point for a knife.
if you look hard enough you can find em used for $20, generally with a fine edge lol. $20 for a new knife is almost always gonna get you something less than ideal, unless you’re really picky with brands or can buy at dealer prices.
like i’d trust anything from morakniv to hold up wonderfully, and the risberg is only $19, or you could get a basic 511 or 546 for like $14. they’re one of the best values in fixed blade bushcraft style knives i reckon.
but outside of them, i don’t know that i’d trust much at that price point.
Oh we talking about outdoor knives? Then yeah morakniv is good for the budget end and you don’t really need to spend more unless you are just showing off
i use mine for cooking hahah
How do you sharpen serrated knife?
if you’re fine with slowly destroying the serrations, the same way you sharpen any knife!
actually though serrations are generally only cut from one side, so you can very carefully sure up and hone the flat side. the opposite you would do with something like a flat ground tanto.
if you wanna be REALLY careful you can use a round sharpener that matches the size of the serrations and hit each one individually. this will also redefine their points if they’ve been dulled by less careful sharpening.
although since it’s also a cutco knife you can just send it to them for free sharpening, you just have to pay for postage.
Things may have changed since, but our CutCo knives are still great 30+ years later.
Specifically the “Butter Knife” is a game changer. I still use it daily for all sorts of things. And I’ve looked for comparable knives as gifts. Nobody else makes anything like it. I specifically bought 2 through their website for friends.
Ah. Do you mean “the sandwich maker”? Lol
That’s the one!
Still lives in my drawer to be used the past 25 years. If only it somehow also had a fork to get a pickle out of a jar without messing up its ability to do everything else.
Kinda looks like they just ‘approve’ any brand that is family-owned.
