Northwoods Drop

[kootenay joe]

There is an ebay seller with 5 new Madison Barlows listed. There are other sellers with 3 listed. These sellers have had multiple examples the day after previous Northwoods releases.
I am sure KSF is honest. These sellers must have some 'system' worked out.
kj
Edit to add: I just sent this message to KSF:
"Dear KSF,
Regarding the recent Northwoods Madison Barlow. I tried to get to the Northwoods page beginning one second after the opening time but could not 'land' there until about 20 minutes later when all knives, including 'stragglers' had been sold. Posts in AAPK show that this time it is not just my slower high speed internet connection, because many others had the same experience.
Today on ebay there is a seller with 5 Madison Barlows listed for sale and there are other sellers with 3 posted so far. These same sellers have had multiple examples after every Northwoods release in the last 2-3 years.
Do you think getting an IT consultation might lead to KSF site being able to handle the large volume of customers so that all of us would have a chance ? Perhaps you need a better internet service plan or re-design of part of the website ?
And have these ebay sellers found a secret way to score multiple examples every time ? I think something needs 'fixing' to make it fair to all.
I know you care about this. I have no doubt about the sincerity of KSF and your desire to treat every customer fairly.
I think having an IT specialist review your 'system' could lead to improvements."

I will post the reply.
If you think having an IT consultation could not improve things please say so. I know about nothing with regards to the IT world.
kj

[Sharpnshinyknives]

There is an ebay seller with 5 new Madison Barlows listed. There are other sellers with 3 listed. These sellers have had multiple examples the day after previous Northwoods releases.
I am sure KSF is honest. These sellers must have some 'system' worked out.
kj
Edit to add: I just sent this message to KSF:
"Dear KSF,
Regarding the recent Northwoods Madison Barlow. I tried to get to the Northwoods page beginning one second after the opening time but could not 'land' there until about 20 minutes later when all knives, including 'stragglers' had been sold. Posts in AAPK show that this time it is not just my slower high speed internet connection, because many others had the same experience.
Today on ebay there is a seller with 5 Madison Barlows listed for sale and there are other sellers with 3 posted so far. These same sellers have had multiple examples after every Northwoods release in the last 2-3 years.
Do you think getting an IT consultation might lead to KSF site being able to handle the large volume of customers so that all of us would have a chance ? Perhaps you need a better internet service plan or re-design of part of the website ?
And have these ebay sellers found a secret way to score multiple examples every time ? I think something needs 'fixing' to make it fair to all.
I know you care about this. I have no doubt about the sincerity of KSF and your desire to treat every customer fairly.
I think having an IT specialist review your 'system' could lead to improvements."

I will post the reply.
If you think having an IT consultation could not improve things please say so. I know about nothing with regards to the IT world.
kj

Roland, I know it would help. The company I work for use to be on satellite so we could place stock orders at the speed of light minus a lag for routing there and back. Literally I could buy or sell any stock in the world in less than 3 seconds. Then in the late 90’s our satelite “went dark”. Hughes electronics never did figure out why. After a massive repointing of over 10,000 dishes we switched to a T-1 line. To my surprise it was even faster than before. When that wasn’t enough bandwidth we switched to a different broadband, don’t ask me what it’s called cause I don’t know. But it handles everything as fast but has way more capacity.
Even on the highest most volatile days in the markets we never have a problem like what KSF had this last time. Capacity on our system doesn’t shut people out. I know it’s apples to oranges a small company like KSF compared to a large Wall Street firm but it goes to the point that the capacity of their server, or their system is not up to the challenge and growing businesses need to keep up.
SSk

[Drukai]

I'm not sure about the "Stragglers" but when I visited KnivesShipFree up in the UP last summer.. Derrick told me he likes to keep some of the Northwoods held back to sell in the brick and mortar store. Maybe Jay decided to liquidate all the stock they had for walk in customers? If any of ya'll live close in Tennessee you should go check out their store. I'm hoping to make it down this summer, lots of nice knives to coonfinger

Paul

[RalphAlsip]

IT mumbo/jumbo alert: This post that might not be interesting to some folks.

I think having an IT specialist review your 'system' could lead to improvements."

The problem they have is with the capacity of their servers. For approximately 355 days per year their servers can accommodate the load they receive. And that normal load is, let's say, 60 shoppers per hour hitting http://www.knivesshipfree.com to look at pictures of knives and maybe 30 of those 60 per hour decide to buy something they saw.

The reason I say 355 days is because I am assuming that 10 times per year they offer a release of a Northwoods pattern. They promote the release of the knives and provide a specific day and time that the knives will be available. This causes, let's say, 6,000 shoppers to hit the web site simultaneously at 4:00 PM Eastern time on January 17, 2019. So at that one moment, their servers are asked to accommodate 100 times a typical hourly volume and 6,000 times a typical minute's volume. Furthermore, almost everyone wants to buy knives and the shopping cart and purchasing process requires much more processing power than "browsing". Obviously they get crushed on these days.

So what to do? They could invest in enough infrastructure to support what is needed on Northwoods drop days, but then for 355 days per year they are paying for a very large amount of unused capacity. Would it be worth it for them to fix it? Hard to say. They still sell their knives on these days. The only downside I see for KSF of not addressing the issue is some short term customer abrasion with people being upset (me included) that they couldn't buy knives they wanted. If they were to invest in more infrastructure, then the price of knives would likely increase which would also result in customer abrasion because people might not be able to buy knives they want only this time it would be about affordability vs. availability.

You have probably heard commercials on TV and elsewhere about "cloud computing" & IBM "on-time" demand. These offerings, theoretically, were meant for circumstances exactly like what KSF experiences which is being able to scale to peak demands when needed and not be prohibitively expensive during low / normal demand.

I doubt that KSF hosts & supports their own servers - they probably use a business focused Internet Service Provider (ISP). Their ISP should have a data center that is able to utilize the latest cloud computing and scalability concepts. This is not a new problem and the KSF customer experience during the Northwoods releases could be made better if someone made it a priority.

[kootenay joe]

Jerry, i appreciate your explanation. It helps me to understand the situation.
I already received a reply from KSF, very prompt but rather a generic response:

"Jan 24, 3:56 PM EST

Hello Roland,

Thanks for getting in touch with us.

Due to the traffic on the website, our hosting service was overwhelmed causing some delay when loading product pages.

We appreciate the feedback, and I can assure you steps are being taken to make sure this does not happen in the future.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you, and please be sure to contact me if you have any questions in the future."

I was hoping for a more specific response and a mention about the continually successful ebay sellers. But, really, KSF is a small family based business centered around knives. Expecting them to be on top of all the new IT knowledge is a bit much.
kj

[kootenay joe]

Can anyone tell me what the original prices were for this Madison Barlow, Micarta, Appaloosa, jigged bone, giraffe, etc. if there were others ?
There are quite a few on ebay and if i bid i do not want to go more than about 30% above original price.
kj

[Sharpnshinyknives]

Can anyone tell me what the original prices were for this Madison Barlow, Micarta, Appaloosa, jigged bone, giraffe, etc. if there were others ?
There are quite a few on ebay and if i bid i do not want to go more than about 30% above original price.
kj

Roland, I am not sure of the others but the Appaloosa bone was 139.95.
That’s the only one I am sure about.
Mark

[m0nk]

Roland,
I think your email to KSF was very well-written. I'm glad you're giving them some constructive feedback since many of the comments they get on Facebook after NW releases are just angry rants that help nothing.

Would it be worth it for them to fix it? Hard to say. They still sell their knives on these days. ...

You have probably heard commercials on TV and elsewhere about "cloud computing" & IBM "on-time" demand. These offerings, theoretically, were meant for circumstances exactly like what KSF experiences which is being able to scale to peak demands when needed and not be prohibitively expensive during low / normal demand.

I doubt that KSF hosts & supports their own servers - they probably use a business focused Internet Service Provider (ISP). Their ISP should have a data center that is able to utilize the latest cloud computing and scalability concepts. This is not a new problem and the KSF customer experience during the Northwoods releases could be made better if someone made it a priority.

This all got my curiosity up, so I looked up the KSF site on Netcraft, and according to their "what's that site running?" tool, KSF's site is being hosted by Google. So they already have all the high-speed cloud infrastructure available to them, therefore it must be a matter of pouring more money into the problem. As Jerry mentioned, KSF is selling all their knifes, so their only incentive to improve things is a better customer experience, for legit collectors. I have no idea what Google's customer service is like, but I'd imagine Jerry is right about them being able to scale the available bandwidth up on NW release days. It's a matter of whether Google will do that under the service agreement they have with KSF, and again, whether KSF is willing to pay more if that option is even available.

- Lee

[kootenay joe]

Thanks to all for explaining the internet 'situation' KSF is in on the days of very high customer activity. It seems that KSF could improve the situation by getting a more flexible service contract with Google. I hope they consider this additional expense and by the next Northwoods release their site has more 'space' so all of us can at least have chance to participate.
kj