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.