The End of an Era and Why Fixed Blade Manufacturing is Hard

On March 20, 2026 Bark River closed its doors. Here is my article from Gear Junkie covering their closure. It was an ignominious end to the brand. Here is a Reddit post with the Facebook post from Mike Stewart detailing what happened. The TLDR is that Bark River bought Chinese knife blanks, modified their shape, removed the country of origin markings, and labeled them as 154CM steel. This caused a huge firestorm, as you can imagine, online. Frankly that firestorm is something I don’t want to get into. The entire situation stinks. It stinks for Bark River employees, who, given the location of the Bark River facility, likely have little in the way of job prospects, especially with the downturn in the economy. It stinks for folks that bought knives, thinking they were one thing and realizing they were something else. But it really stinks for retailers. In particular I feel bad for DLT Trading and Knives Ship Free both of whom seem to have an abundance of Bark River stock that will be…