Inside Kershaw: The Japanese Company That Refused to Let America's Best Knife Die

There is a factory at 18600 Southwest Teton Avenue in Tualatin, Oregon, that ships over one million knives every single year — and the only reason those knives are still made by American hands is a company headquartered in Japan. In 1974, Pete Kershaw walked away from Gerber Legendary Blades to build something the industry said couldn't survive: a knife good enough for serious work, at a price working men could actually pay. By 1985, he had sold the company to Kai Group of Japan. And instead of stripping it bare, Kai did the one thing no one expected. They invested. They kept the factory. They kept the workers. And when a Marine from Hawaii named Ken Onion walked in with an idea called SpeedSafe, they said yes to that too. This is the story of how a Japanese family protected American knife jobs through three decades of cheap imports, private equity raids, and mass factory closures — while Oregon brands owned by Americans fell one by one. Schrade: gone. Gerber: hollowed out. Imperial: shuttered. Kershaw: still running, still stamping Made in USA on over a million blades a year. This is Inside Kershaw. #documentary #industrialhistory #americanhistory #americanmanufacturing #thefinalshift #kershaw #kershawknives #buckknife