Benchmade was founded on the belief that real quality means forever. Our founder, Les deAsis, began building handmade custom Bali-Songs in the 1980s. The success of these custom Bali's spurred the creation of the first production Bali-Song: The model 68. Benchmade Knife Company was born in 1987, driven to produce product in the US and with a strong commitment to product availability, quality, and customer relationships. While phrases like "Handmade" and "factory-made" aptly described the knives, it was "Benchmade" that truly expressed the quality of Les' product. He was building an operation that made precision parts, but with legendary American hand-assembly on the finished products. Indeed, it was a "bench" operation and Les wanted the name to reflect this marriage of production manufacturing and custom craft. This sentiment describes Benchmade's position in the market to this day.