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Indeed it was this popularity that prompted Forschner in the 1980's to ask the Swiss Defense Ministry if it objected to the use of the Swiss Army name to sell other Swiss-made products in the United States. A special model is manufactured for the astronauts on United States manned space shuttles. Johnson and George Bush, ordered special models with the Presidential seal and their autograph on the back as gifts for White House visitors. Such is the popularity of the knives that several American Presidents, including Lyndon B.
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Although the model supplied to Swiss officers has only four blades, Victorinox sells more than two dozen variations, including the top-of-the-line Champ, a six-ounce clunk of 31 different blades and other features, including a wood saw, wire clipper, several screwdrivers and a corkscrew, that retails in the United States for $90. Elsener, a boyish, soft-spoken man of 36, said the popularity of the Swiss Army knives arose after World War II, when American servicemen stationed in Europe snapped the knives up wherever they found them. But no one here forgets that they spawned Ibach's bonanza. For Victorinox, deliveries to the army of silvery aluminum-clad recruit knives and the fancier red-handled version for officers now account for less than 1 percent of total sales. Elsener's family began making a pocket knife for the Swiss Army, and is now one of two official suppliers the other is Wenger, a smaller Swiss company. Kennedy said, after Chinese-made knives began appearing with the cross and shield and the words Swiss Army. James Kennedy, the chairman and chief executive of the Forschner Group in Shelton, Conn., which distributes the genuine item, said Chinese exports of bogus Swiss knives were "nothing new it's been going on for 20 years, ever since Washington allowed trading with China to commence." But Forschner was roused to legal action in 1992, Mr. The lawsuit that has captured attention here arose two years ago when the American distributor for Victorinox, whose factory here manufactures seven million Swiss Army knives a year, sued to stop Chinese knock-offs from being sold in the United States with the distinctive white cross and shield, the Swiss coat-of-arms. Diggelmann, the director of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich, called "another Swiss export success in a classical niche market." The knife was never exactly a mainstay of Swiss exports, and deliveries to the United States in 1993 totaled $37.6 million, only six-tenths of 1 percent of all the manufactured goods Swiss companies shipped there. The news that the name Swiss Army is a gold mine strikes many Swiss as paradoxical, coming as the Government in Bern is dramatically thinning the ranks of the armed forces, the fierce defender of this tiny Alpine nation's centuries-old neutrality, as part of a general effort to cap Government spending. Ibach is the headquarters of Victorinox, the Swiss knife maker that manufactures 80 percent of Swiss Army knives sold abroad.Īcross Switzerland the case has also served to focus attention on the power of the Swiss Army name as a marketing vehicle to sell not only knives, but, increasingly, other consumer goods like watches, sunglasses and compasses, as well. The legal test for the red-handled knife - a product that is virtually a Swiss institution - is crucial for tiny Ibach, population 3,500, an hour's drive south of Zurich. The burghers of this hamlet on the slopes of the Swiss Alps have been anxiously watching the progress of a lawsuit in New York, which is expected to determine later this year whether a Swiss Army knife can be cloned in China.