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Fiskars things are good as long as they are actually made in Finland. Pity that many of their products are just chinese junk and you've got to read the labels even though you know the brand.
Fiskars product range is weird. Kitchen utensils, gardening tools and craft equipment. Sort of made sense when all contain a blade of some sort. But a garden rake? (That is pretty decent.) Guess now that much of it is just rebranding.
No, it's mostly "what else can we do with a good forge (and guys who keep smiths operational)?"
And then, sadly, "how do we improve sales performance for things where customer would not notice it's unethical shit"
Major shareholders seems to be in it for the long term, but it seems to me that all "venerable" brands are shit these days. So you can either buy mostly shit, or artisinal small scale that cost a fortune. Any new startups can never get off the ground as they can't get shelf space in any major store.
Honorable mentions are Miele, Beretta shotguns and who else?
Edit: just remembered that Beretta has a clothing line that is probably just braned crap
Fiskars still makes knives in Finland, their chinese chef is something like 30 Eur, Finnish chef is 250 Eur, versus japanese or swiss at 150 Eur. Duh. Such is the cost of labor here.
And all steel stock for abovementioned blades (except for chinese) just comes from Japan anyway lol.
And, furthermore, large potential market for less-than-masterpiece artisanal is in DIY. But kitchen knives are occupational hazard if they are crappy. Needless to say, there is an artisan smith in my village, so who cares for brands.
Learnt this the hard way. Have used Fiskars scissors since the 70s and they were top quality. Was looking for a new pair for the kitchen and found them online. Only to realise they were made in China. They’re pants.