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 significantly harder to sell now, especially at the prices they usually command.
I was generally very pleased with my Bark River knives. They were well made, expertly designed, and I never had an issue with the steel. I sold my Bravo when the Survive Knives GSO came out, because the GSO had a better sheath, but the Bravo was a masterpiece. Obviously, I would be careful, but this might be a good time to get a Bark River. Surely some models were not impacted by the problems and those designs are probably damn fine knives. But, of course, caveat emptor. This brings up a good point, given that I went from a Bark River as my main fixed blade to a Survive Knives as my main fixed blade. What’s going on? Why are fixed blade makers having such a difficult time?
I wish he had kept to the economics and left the politics out of it. The Iranian theocracy has been a Sword of Damocles over the whole world’s head since I was 3. I have friends missing legs because of Iranian IEDs. $4.50 for gas is a short term issue. And the tariffs have proven to be surprisingly non-inflationary compared to the warnings.
But it is a decent macro look at the headwinds facing the industry.
Read the whole thing at EverydayCommentary.com
https://www.everydaycommentary.com/www.everydaycommentary.com/2026/3/25/the-end-of-an-era-and-why-fixed-blade-manufacturing-is-hard
Read the full article here