Swiss Knife Sales Slide at Airports

[afang]

GENEVA, Jan. 22 — For years, tourists stopped in at the Coutellerie du Mont-Blanc shop in the Geneva airport and scooped up as many as a dozen Swiss army knives, the mainstay of the tiny business, to take back home as souvenirs for family and friends.
But sales of the venerable — and ubiquitous — red knives with the white cross quickly plunged in such shops when airports around the world imposed strict security restrictions after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Suddenly, blades and sharp objects were banned from carry-on bags, backpacks and purses.

For the first couple of weeks after the attacks, "no one came in here at all," said Genevieve Loisel, manager of the airport shop, whose business in nail and household scissors also slumped.

The shop still displays an array of Swiss-made knives, from the basic pocket knife to the complex SwissChamp with 33 gadgets. But sales have shifted, at least temporarily, away from tourists and toward local customers shopping for birthdays and similar occasions, she said.

Victorinox, the larger of the two Swiss companies that produce the brand, turns out 25 million knives annually. In the last three months of the year, its sales plummeted 32 percent from the period a year earlier, dragging down an otherwise booming year, its marketing director, Urs Wyss, said. For the year, sales were down 11 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/23/bu...ss/23KNIF.html

[afang]

GENEVA, Jan. 22 — For years, tourists stopped in at the Coutellerie du Mont-Blanc shop in the Geneva airport and scooped up as many as a dozen Swiss army knives, the mainstay of the tiny business, to take back home as souvenirs for family and friends.
But sales of the venerable — and ubiquitous — red knives with the white cross quickly plunged in such shops when airports around the world imposed strict security restrictions after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Suddenly, blades and sharp objects were banned from carry-on bags, backpacks and purses.

For the first couple of weeks after the attacks, "no one came in here at all," said Genevieve Loisel, manager of the airport shop, whose business in nail and household scissors also slumped.

The shop still displays an array of Swiss-made knives, from the basic pocket knife to the complex SwissChamp with 33 gadgets. But sales have shifted, at least temporarily, away from tourists and toward local customers shopping for birthdays and similar occasions, she said.

Victorinox, the larger of the two Swiss companies that produce the brand, turns out 25 million knives annually. In the last three months of the year, its sales plummeted 32 percent from the period a year earlier, dragging down an otherwise booming year, its marketing director, Urs Wyss, said. For the year, sales were down 11 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/23/bu...ss/23KNIF.html