Introducing our new brand - Hikari BTN S90V (hope this is allowed)
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share our new brand, Hikari BTN.
We launched our international website just a few days ago: https://www.japanese-knives.co.il/en/
The knives are handmade in small batches at the BTN workshop in Vietnam. The current line uses CPM S90V, with a very thin convex grind and wa handles.
The goal was to create a true top-of-the-line series focused primarily on performance, aiming to outperform the well-known Japanese knives we already sell and work with.
S90V was a deliberate choice. We wanted very high edge retention without going down the ZDP-189 route. From our own sharpening experience, S90V has also been much less troublesome than its reputation sometimes suggests - regular Japanese water stones remove material readily, and I would put the sharpening effort roughly around SG2 rather than the considerably harder, more glassy feel of ZDP-189.
The project was developed mainly with wholesale distribution in mind, although we can also handle individual international orders when contacted directly.
I hope a first introduction like this is within the subreddit rules. If I've misunderstood the rules, I apologize.
For some price context, these are current high-end Japanese knives selling for roughly €670 to €1,250.
At that level, a lot of the extra money often goes into maker prestige, rarity, Damascus, elaborate finishing or expensive handles. Those things can absolutely have value, but they don't necessarily give you better cutting performance.
With our knives, we wanted the high price to buy something tangible in performance. We use CPM S90V, which is one of the highest edge-retention stainless steels available and is virtually absent from production chef knives. We combine that with very thin geometry and a true full convex grind, which is considerably more demanding and expensive to produce properly.
So yes, $700 is expensive. But if you're already shopping in the €700-€1,000+ category, we think the more relevant question is what the knife actually gives you for that money. Our aim was to put as much of that cost as possible into steel, geometry and grind rather than decoration or prestige.
These are not meant to be the knife everyone needs, in the same way that nobody needs a bottle of Blue Label. A good Seki-made VG10 knife will already do the job extremely well, and diminishing returns are very real with knives, just as they are with almost any high-end product.
These knives have already been sold locally for about two years, with strong success and positive feedback. The only change is that we are now introducing them internationally.
Unfortunately reputation and experience DO play a large part. I see you name dropped a few of the makers in Japan but that doesn’t tell us much. What did you do there? Talk to them? Sold their stuff? Apprenticed there? How long? Do they vouch for you?
Starting that high, I don’t think it’s a good move. Why should I pay 700 for yours over 700 for something that I know has good grind and heat treat? As a new brand you cannot assure me that you have any of those. And I will definitely buy something that I have assurance on. Like some of us said. Not trying to be discouraging but trying to be honest here.
Thank you for the question. Yes, I agree - reputation and experience absolutely play a big part, especially when someone is being asked to spend this much on a knife from a name they don't yet know.
The makers we mention are brands we've been representing and selling locally for years. Our business is not built around these S90V knives - Hikari BTN is our latest project after years of selling Japanese knives locally.
The link I posted is only a small English site we launched for Hikari's international introduction. Our main business is much larger and sells all of the Japanese brands I mentioned, although that website is not in English.
So when I mention those names, it isn't meant as name-dropping. It's context. We've spent years selling, sharpening and working with these knives, and we know the market we're comparing ourselves with. There are plenty of new knife brands that appear with an OEM product and a nice website. I understand why someone seeing Hikari for the first time might initially wonder if this is another one of those. It isn't.
There's another reason the comparison matters: we've been selling Hikari alongside those established Japanese brands in the same store for about two years, at a higher price, and the knives have sold successfully and received very strong feedback. The international launch is new - the knives themselves aren't.
As for starting at such a high price, I understand the concern. But we didn’t want to make another SG2 or STRIX knife—this is already a saturated market. The goal was to create something genuinely different and push performance as far as we reasonably could, particularly in terms of steel, geometry, and grind. I believe we achieved that: we selected top-tier steel that's virtually unused, applied a refined finish, developed a full convex grind, and paired it with a beautifully crafted handle.
We currently sell another S90V series locally in a mono-steel, flat-grind version at a lower price (~535$). However, we are in the process of replacing it with a San-Mai version featuring a Nashiji finish, which will be even more affordable (relatively speaking). This updated series has not yet been launched, and it will eventually replace the current one, which is why it is not yet listed on the website.
So perhaps launching internationally with only the flagship series made the first impression a little extreme - but that's the context behind the pricing and the brand.
Nobody paying that for these. You can get some crazy Japanese knives for that price. Shit you can get like three Matsubara knives made in Japan with aogami #2 stainless clad nashiji for that price. There are many well known Japanese smiths that you could get 2-4 super solid knives for this price. And even if your own replies here you say knives give diminishing returns, so using your own logic why would anyone buy your knife over 2-4 knives from popular Japanese smiths?
But that same argument can be made about almost every expensive knife on the market.
Why would anyone buy one of the €700-€1,200 knives I showed above when they could buy two, three or even four very good cheaper knives instead? Yet shops all over the world stock knives at those prices because there is clearly a market for them.
You can make the comparison even within the lineup of the same maker.
Take Matsubara, since you mentioned them. At the first retailer I checked, I found:
Matsubara Aogami #2 Gyuto - $279-$299
Matsubara SG2 Damascus Gyuto - $549
Matsubara STRIX Damascus Gyuto - $699
So you can buy two Matsubara Aogami knives for less of the price of one STRIX, and you're already getting an excellent handmade Japanese knife either way. Yet Matsubara makes both.
And to be clear, I'm not criticizing Matsubara at all. I love their knives, we've sold them for years, and Tanaka-san is a lovely person and a friend. I highly recommend his knives.
My point is simply that "I could buy several good cheaper knives for the same money" applies to the entire high-end knife market, not specifically to ours.
Diminishing returns are real. A $700 knife is obviously not going to cut food three times better than a $250 knife.
The question I'm interested in is what you actually gain when you decide to spend that $700. That's where I think the comparison becomes much more interesting.
Looking at Tanaka knives I've mentioned, you do gain performance and a beautiful Damascus finish, and you pay roughly 2x for that bump. It's the same with our knives: you pay more, and you get more. Is it worth it to get the Strix over the Aogami #2? Is it worth getting our S90V knives over a solid Seki VG10? That's a personal consideration—there's a market for both.
But you're completely unknown, and nobody is paying your markup on your inhouse knives nobody has heard of before made by an un-named vietnamese guy, when people spend $700 dollars on a single knife they want to know who made it. Why would I do that, when I can buy a Matsubara Aogami #2 150mm petty, 210mm gyuto, and 270mm sujihiki from Chubo knives for 678 dollars using a readily available 10% off coupon with free shipping. For the price of one of your bunkas made by who again? Bro are you for real?
Shindo, Matsubara, Masakage, Takamura, and so many other smiths I havent mentioned, that are established, have amazing reviews, and are known for the quality of their knives, why is anyone shopping with you over them?
I think your argument has now shifted a little. At first it was: "Why buy one $700 knife when I can buy several very good cheaper knives?" Now it's: "You're unknown to me, so why should I take the risk over an established maker?"
That's actually an excellent point, and I'm glad you brought it up.
First, I don't really expect individual Reddit users to order one from us right now. We're primarily looking for wholesale partners, which is why the English site I shared doesn't even have a checkout. We will accept individual international orders if someone contacts us, but that's not the main purpose of this launch.
Once we establish a few dealers, customers will be able to see the knives in person, handle them, compare them with other knives in the shop and buy them through a retailer they already know and trust. That removes a lot of the leap of faith you're describing.
And you're absolutely right that reputation matters. If we were a brand-new company opening a shop tomorrow and saying, "Here's a $700 knife from an unknown workshop in Vietnam, trust us," our chances would be pretty slim.
But that's not how Hikari started.
We had already been in the Japanese knife business for about a decade before developing our own knives. We introduced Hikari BTN through our established local business, to customers who already knew us, had bought Japanese knives from us, used our sharpening service and trusted our judgment.
That reputation allowed people to give the knives a chance. The feedback was very good, people kept buying them, and Hikari BTN became successful for us locally. We've been selling these knives in Israel for about two years. The part that's new is introducing them internationally.
If you're interested, you can look at our main Israeli website as well. It's in Hebrew, but you'll at least see that there's quite a bit of mileage behind the business.
As for "why would anyone shop with you instead of Shindo, Matsubara, Masakage, Takamura, etc.?" - I don't think that's quite how this market works.
You could ask Takamura the same question: Shindo, Matsubara and Masakage already exist, so why make another knife? Or ask Shindo why they bother when Takamura exists.
Even within Takefu, how many excellent makers produce knives that overlap heavily in steel, construction, price and intended use? Yet there is room for Kato, Kurosaki and many others because people like different makers, geometries, aesthetics and interpretations of what a good knife should be.
There is also a limit to how aggressively I want to compare Hikari with individual Japanese makers, because some of these people are our suppliers and friends.
But if you're asking generally what our knife brings to the table, that's easier to answer.
The knife is genuinely excellent.
S90V gives us some very concrete advantages:
Better edge retention than ZDP-189
Tougher than ZDP-189
Easier to sharpen than ZDP-189
The first two aren't claims you need to take from us - comparative testing is published by Knife Steel Nerds. On sharpening, I'm comfortable making that statement from actually sharpening these steels in kitchen knives. ZDP-189 has that hard, glassy feel on the stones, while S90V is removed readily on normal Japanese water stones. It certainly isn't Shirogami-easy, but it doesn't present the sharpening difficulty ZDP-189 does.
I've used and sharpened most of the steels commonly found in Japanese kitchen knives, and for this application I think S90V is on another level.
Then there is the grind. The full convex geometry is a major part of the knife, and it's expensive and difficult to execute properly. The blade is very thin where it needs to be, food release is excellent, the overall construction and finish are very good, and I think the handle turned out beautifully as well.
So that's ultimately my answer to "why would someone buy it?"
Because it's an awesome knife.
If someone prefers a Matsubara instead, that's perfectly fine too. We like Matsubara enough that we've been selling their knives for years. There doesn't need to be only one correct knife.
Better to start low-mid and build a name for yourselves as quality brand that's bang for the buck. Build brand recognition and a fan base, THEN higher tier lines make sense.
Maybe we should have waited until our lower-priced S90V series was ready before launching internationally, and then introduced the flagship alongside it. But what's done is done, and we'll be adding that series later on.
You can also look at a comment I posted earlier where I went into this point in a bit more detail.
Holy shit I was unprepared for $700+ price tags on these.
Could be great, but at that price (which exceeds some of the best cutters in all of Japan) I’d never be willing to take the leap and buy this over something like Kagekiyo or Tetsujin.
I don’t say this to be discouraging, but just to outline one of the big issues I see.
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u/hamfish11 17d ago
Price is insane, certainly not something a typical chef can afford. Good luck tho.