Some random thoughts:

1) The qualification system still exists in some forms in many professions. In Germany they still carry the old titles. And in most countries, professional titles such as lawyer, architect, etc are protected (Sadly, Engineer is not). You know it costs a lot of time and effort (and possibly money) to attain them, but in return you get better jobs and higher pay. The skill of people like Ralf Aust is testament to the fact that the system used to work for them. The problem is that these days, both society and industry don't reward Meister cutlery skills anymore. So what do you have when putting up with years and years of investment? A meister title and a life of menial hand labour making simple mechanical tools and competing with mass production for low wages.

2) even if people were willing to become apprentice, there is no room in the industry. Robin mentioned spending years doing nothing but polishing before moving on to the next step. But you need many apprentices, and an industry where their work is taken into the production chain. There is no industry left where any significant amount of hand labor is involved that you can meaningfully have apprentices churn out thousands of blades per month. Mass market handmade cutlery is a dead industry. Back in the olden days, the smelters would create steel, smiths created hundreds of blanks per day, grinders ground hundreds of blanks per day, cutlers would fix scales and handles, etc. You can't revive 1 craft without reviving the entire industry in high volume.

3) PRC only works because they have the appeal of 'Made in America' they have a market share just because of that. Not because they are better than dovo or more competitively priced.

4) But suppose you want to start competing in value for money. Great, but the market is only so big. Getting an influx of a couple thousand razors per month will drop market prices, lowering profits significantly. This means a race to the bottom against dovo, which has much better skills and the best resources in existence for mass market razor making. They can run you in the ground with low margins, and then simply increase their margins again next quarter when your company is dead. The only way in which you could survive is in a rapidly expanding market.