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The History and Creation of
Pro•Sword
Question to Al, the President of Last Legend: Why did Last Legend create
Pro•Sword?
Answer: Now this will take awhile to explain the course of events, so
bear with me. It all began with one of our trips to China in early 2005.
While attending an exposition where hundreds of China’s manufacturers
were there to explain what they could do with their various products, we
suddenly became aware of the large increase in factories producing
knives and swords. One of the booths we stopped at had katanas that
cosmetically looked very familiar. Two of the swords had copies of our
Ameryu and Kumoryu tsubas on them, tsubas that we had designed just
three months prior. In talking with the gentleman at the booth he
explained to us that there were factories in China that only make sword
and knife furniture, others that make cases, and still others that make
saya blanks. It was at that point the light bulb came on, and we decided
to take a page from Henry Ford, if his production methods worked for
Model A’s, it just might work for katanas.
We knew we would have to start from scratch, because our current
foundries at the time were up to their eyeballs with the Last Legend
backorders. We quickly discovered what we thought was going to be the
easiest part of this formula turned out to be the hardest, and that was
to find new foundries capable of meeting our standards of quality and
uniformity. Talk is cheap, and after interviewing over nineteen
foundries, plus some extensive research on them, we found that most of
the foundries which we had interviewed actually had very little
experience (one to two years) in the production of fine blades, and were
really unable to produce the quality we had to have (regardless of what
they said). Through luck, and a lot of interviewing, we finally found
two foundries, and only two, that could meet the challenge and the
demands for quality that our customers have come to expect.
So now we had the new katana foundries, and designing the new blades was
easy. Next, with the help of the foundries, we began interviewing the
various parts suppliers.
So now to make a long story a little bit shorter, the new katana
foundries are responsible for forging the blades (using our new designs
and steels), assembly, and quality control of the finished product.
Furniture is supplied to the foundries from another supplier, as are the
saya blanks, presentation cases, and even the maintenance kits. By
getting each of these items from factories that specialize in their
production, it greatly reduced the unit cost. On the downside, the only
thing that we can claim as ours are the blade designs and the quality,
but on the upside, it has cut production costs by 40%, and retail costs
by over 50%!! To spotlight these new cost-efficient production
techniques, and the fact that these savings are passed on to our
customers, we wanted to create a whole new division--Pro•Sword. |
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