Cutco Corporation

Cutco

Type	Private
Industry	Kitchen accessories
Founded	1949; 68 years ago (1949)
Headquarters	Olean, New York, U.S.
Key people	Jim Stitt Sr.
Products	Cutlery
Revenue	$200,000,000
Number of employees	701
Website	www.cutco.com

Cutco Corporation, formerly Alcas Corporation, is a multi-level marketing company that sells knives. It is the parent company of CUTCO Cutlery Corp., Vector Marketing, Ka-Bar Knives, and Schilling Forge. Its primary brand is the name Cutco.

The company was founded in 1949 by Alcoa and Case Cutlery (hence "Al-cas") to manufacture knives. The management purchased the company from Alcoa in 1982, and the company acquired Vector Marketing Corporation in 1985.

In early 2009, Alcas changed its name to Cutco, the name of the primary product.

Cutco is a brand of cutlery and kitchen accessories directly marketed to customers through in-home demonstrations by independent sales representatives who are mostly college students. More than 100 kitchen cutlery products are sold under the Cutco name, as well as a variety of kitchen utensils, cookware, sporting and outdoors knives.

Although the products are not typically purchased in retail stores, Cutco has opened six of its own retail stores: Indianapolis, Indiana; Okemos, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Novi, Michigan; Edina, Minnesota; and Erie, Pennsylvania. The company's knives are produced in Olean, New York, United States, while other products are made in Mexico and China.

Vector Marketing is a multi-level marketing group that builds its work force through advertising via newspapers, direct marketing, word-of-mouth, posted advertisements, letters and various media on the internet. Their fliers advertising "student work" are distributed in many high schools and college campuses across the United States and Canada. Students are hired to sell Cutco products (mainly kitchen knives) to customers, starting with their friends and family, then branching out through recommendations, all through one-on-one demonstrations. While Vector required a deposit on the sample kit representatives were issued in the past, this was changed in 2011 and deposits are no longer required from representatives.