Home / Knife Business / WE Knife Co. Calls Out 708 Karambit Clones

WE Knife Co. Calls Out 708 Karambit Clones

May 7, 2019

WE Knife Co. has taken steps to halt the sale of a clone of their 708 Karambit model, which has been carried and sold by multiple other companies.

The two primary offenders were Böker, who sold the knife as the Taifun under their Magnum line, and Adola, a wholesaler located in the Netherlands. According to WE, both companies get the clone from the same source. “[It] is offered by a supplier in China to several companies in Europe and the USA as an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] product,” WE VP of Marketing Henk Hakvoort explains. “Those companies can brand it as their ‘own,’ like Adola and Böker Magnum did.”

Of course, OEM contracts are nothing new in the knife world and often have positive results. WE itself has fulfilled plenty of OEM contracts and continues to do so. The problem as WE sees it is that the model in question copies their original design. “We are proud of our in house-designed karambit,” Hakvoort asserts. “We just do not like other companies cloning our designs and making a profit of it.”

Materially, the clones differ from the WE original. The 708 itself is marketed as a premium knife and dressed for the occasion with a titanium frame, titanium hardware, and an S35VN blade. The clone model is a budget knife made primarily from stainless steel, with a blade steel from the 440 family.

Both Böker and Adola have removed the offending model from their catalog, but Hakvoort says there is more to do. “The Chinese supplier is not the manufacturer. So this makes it more complicated to get this problem solved.” He goes on to explain that the difficulties behind the company is trying to figure out how to identify the manufacturer. “We are working on it.”

KnifeNews reached out to Adola and both the US and European divisions of Böker for comment. “Regarding the Taifun Karambit Böker USA does not carry that model here and we have never sold any of them here in the U.S.,” a Böker USA representative told us.

Knife in Featured image: WE Knife Co. 708

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