Click Hamilton wrote:

Assuming you are running a business of your own, it seems you have not been doing this for very long, have you?

Or if it's small enough, maybe you are not on the radar yet and they don't come to shake you down on a regular basis?

Yep that oppressive US govt.  http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/05/us/oregon … d-protest/

DCurtis wrote:
I don't think I like your language.

Well you don't see American made Ipods or consumer electronics of any sort do you?

Always easier to use a country like China where the wages are low and people are desparate to work. I'd call that exploitation.

Zack Zoll wrote:
I just read a short interview in a trade mag from an American audio company. I forget the name, but they make low-mid level audiophile amplifiers;  think 2-5k, made in the US.

The interviewee was explaining that some 80% of their product was sold overseas. They sell in Europe, because the import costs in the EU mean that EVERYTHING costs more. They sell in Asia, because people associate 'made in America' with high quality, and are willing to pay for it.

We have that association in the States too - but the difference is that we aren't nearly as willing to pay extra as we say we are.

Audio gear is a little different than cameras, cars, of clothes. Anyone with power tools can build a speaker, and anyone that wants to practice for a year can build an amp. It doesn't mean you're any good, but it's not a business with a high startup cost.

The market is very small too - which means that you could actually make enough with a fairly small staff to meet demand. I don't mean to meet demand for YOUR product either - I mean that if you and a couple friends quit your day jobs, you could build as many $2000 amps as were sold in a small town all year, easily. It might only be as good as an $500 Yamaha at first, but after a few years of tweaking and getting the assembly process down, you could sell an amp for $2000 that is equal to a $1500 import.

So why is this guy selling 80% of his stuff abroad?

Because Americans are so used to paying low prices, that they don't even realize they're paying low prices anymore. We just think it's what stuff costs.

I spoke to a guy yesterday that wanted to buy a guitar. We mostly sell cameras and mid-high level consumer AV stuff - better than Best Buy, but not audiophile. But we tried guitars for a while to mix it up. Long story short, a lot of guitarists don't trust guys in ties, and it didn't work out.

not trying to be argumentative, because i get your core point; but in the world of audiophile stereo gear, a name, and proven track record, do matter. that's not to say you couldn't easily make something that is akin to some of the very elite high end gear, but it's a little tougher than just slapping a couple drivers in an mdf box.

amps? probably easier. there are plenty of universal circuits that could be drawn upon, and then tweaked to your particular tastes (tone stack) and aesthetic. you'd still need someone to at least write you up as something worth spending any amount of money on.

and that's pretty funny about the guitarists. myself being one, i get it. but they (especially high end ones) sell themselves. and no one is going to just go out in their garage and make a guitar that is comparable to some of the better high end models. not without a long trial and error period.

but musicians in america will still pay a premium for premium products. maybe not the astronomical prices that collectors were paying, pre-'08, but i know of plenty of builders of guitars (and guitar amps) that make fairly decent livings, making nothing but the highest quality stuff.

same with american audiophiles. i've literally been floored to hear what some people i know have paid for a 1m interconnect. i always remind them that the studios that recorded the stuff they're listening to was using junk cable to connect up all those pricey ssl boards, and patch bays. they snicker, and continue to toss their nose in the air.

but if your business model includes a moderate range of expansion, then qc will inevitably suffer. it has to, especially if you have to hit a price point that doesn't jibe with what you'd like, on high end stuff.

but i get your point. i don't know of any high end/high dollar items coming from china. i know they make cheap copies of a lot of high end merchandise, but i don't know the cap of their manufacturing expertise.

GK photo wrote:
but i get your point. i don't know of any high end/high dollar items coming from china. i know they make cheap copies of a lot of high end merchandise...

Bang & Olufsen
Leica
Apple
Nikon
Canon
Sony
Ralph Lauren
Dolce & Gabbana
Prada
...and on and on and on...

Naturally in this world wide economy different models and different parts are made all over the place.  For example, didn't they move the D810 production over to Thailand?  And there are also a lot of luxury brands that go to great lengths to hide the China connection.  Doing the absolute bare minimum to import most of it and then be able to put a "made in Italy" label on it, etc.   Many of you will remember how carefully selective Paul Buff used to be in claiming "proudly made in America"

There are extremely high quality manufacturing plants in China.  Then there are the ones that are also running extra shifts producing "name brand" products and run them out the back door.  Many "copies" or "counterfeit" products come from the same plants that were contracted to make the originals.  But there are also many other plants with very poor quality control that do make crap and/or crappy counterfeits.  You get the whole range in China.

LightDreams wrote:
Bang & Olufsen
Leica
Apple
Nikon
Canon
Sony
Ralph Lauren
Dolce & Gabbana
Prada
...and on and on and on...

Naturally in this world wide economy different models and different parts are made all over the place.  For example, didn't they move the D810 production over to Thailand?  And there are also a lot of luxury brands that go to great lengths to hide the China connection.  Doing the absolute bare minimum to be able to put a "made in Italy" label on it, etc, etc.

There are extremely high quality manufacturing plants in China.  Then there are the ones that are also running extra shifts producing "name brand" products and run them out the back door.  Many "copies" or "counterfeit" products come from the same plants that were contracted to make the originals.  But there are also many other plants with very poor quality control that do make crap and/or crappy counterfeits.  You get the whole range in China.

oh geeze. i thought it was obvious that i meant products that weren't just "assembled" in china, but had chinese dna, from design, through r&d and "then" manufacture. i know they have facilities and supply chains to manufacture/ship other folk's stuff.

and if you take out taiwan/taipei, it gets worse.

LightDreams wrote:
It will be fascinating (and very telling) to see whether or not China succeeds in beating us to Mars. This is now one of their official goals. You can copy some of the old technology but it fundamentally requires major new technological advances on a fairly grand scale.

I'm not making any predictions on that one either way. Other than it will be quite interesting to see how it all plays out!

i hope they do. the real benefits left (for humans) from space exploration, are more to be gotten from the leo variety, not from planet hopping.

pfft. skyscrapers were such a 20th century thing. i'll still take those little guys called "chysler" and "empire state building", over the burj khalifa, any day.

i'll be more impressed when they come up with a ground up company, that designs, builds, warranties and services a product that the entire world will consume. and without the benefit of a state that controls their currency to keep it viable.

What Fun Productions wrote:
China is not our friend.

you can't think along the lines of "friend", when it comes to economics. that's the realm of politicians, not the real world.

china is indeed (for now) our friend, if you buy products from folks like apple, etc.

What Fun Productions wrote:
China is not our friend.

Agreed.  But way too many people underestimate them. And then whether we like it or not, we rely on them.  And we're not willing to make the major investments required to change the direction things are heading in.

The one good aspect is that China owns so much of the American debt, etc, that it makes it far less likely that there will be a major war down the road.   Both sides have too much to lose economically.

What Fun Productions wrote:
China is not our friend.

Oh, come now. Everyone is our friend as long as there is money to be made (from us).

Lohkee wrote:
Oh, come now. Everyone is our friend as long as there is money to be made (from us).

there you go. everyone who thinks china isn't our friend should pack up every iDevice they can get their hands on, and ship them back to beijing. that'll be a good shot across the bow.

every geo-political relationship that has ever happened--relating to trade--since we began writing, has repeated itself one hundred times. 

same shit, different millennium.

GK photo wrote:
there you go. everyone who thinks china isn't our friend should pack up every iDevice they can get their hands on, and ship them back to beijing. that'll be a good shot across the bow.

Umm, you want me to give up my iPad?  I mean it's been a good theoretical discussion and all, but come on!!!  ;p

LightDreams wrote:

Umm, you want me to give up my iPad?  I mean it's been a good theoretical discussion and all, but come on!!!  ;p

uh huh. nimbp...not in my back pocket.

rxz wrote:
I have worked with a Chinese model who came here for college.  She said her grandparents lost all property and other assets to the Communists. 

I have heard rumors after the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and the start of Mao's cultural revolution that 60-80 million Chinese lost their lives, mainly his KMT opponents and the middle class.  Is there any truth to the number?  Or is it exaggerated?

60-80 million is the number that Mao is estimated to be responsible for the death of.

Another 40-60 million for the number that Chiang Kai Sheck is considered responsible for.

Two largest mass murderers in history.

For those that are interested, I recommend:

Mao; The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. Jung Chang is a Chinese historian who has done masses of very well documented research on both Mao Tse Tung and Chiang Kai Sheck.

KOLMANS STUDIOS wrote:
I am from AFRICA, travel around on this continent also. I believe lazy people one can find anyware. However, what I see where chinese businesses set up shop, is that they bring their own workers in. Go to any chinese compound(living quaters) where they stay. It is beyond shocking . Dirty, and no dog is save. They pay there people next to nothing and most is from jails in china. So,it is either working basicly for nothing in AFRICA (do not know about the rest of the world), or sit in jail there. A company there can draw a pool of workers from jails,as long as they promise that they do not return them and they not allowed to stay in China. Do not ask what happen with these people when the contracts dry up.

But it seems, once they in a foreign country, the workers is shared amongst other china companies.

In America, that is referred to as the race to the bottom.

It is a shame that Africa allows such scumbaggery to flourish...

Obviously, the exploiters have greased a few political palms...

Corporations are leading the way to either revolution, or the destruction of the common man...

What Fun Productions wrote:
China is not our friend.

“Nations have no friends or allies, they only have interests.” Lord Palmerston

GK photo wrote:

oh geeze. i thought it was obvious that i meant products that weren't just "assembled" in china, but had chinese dna, from design, through r&d and "then" manufacture. i know they have facilities and supply chains to manufacture/ship other folk's stuff.

and if you take out taiwan/taipei, it gets worse.

When it comes to several of those companies, much of the stuff IS Chinese(or other cheap import) from inception to sale, even if the company is not.

Of the companies listed, Bang & Olafson, Sony, Ralph Lauren, and Dolce and Gabana all have an 'import' line, and a 'high quality' line in at least one of their products.

Sony makes the ES series of speakers and AV gear, which is incredible. They actually offer handmade, furniture grade speakers which are insanely expensive. Their regular speakers are still good, considering they're around $150 a pair. But they're made somewhere cheap, though I don't know if it's China.

Ralph Lauren has, I think, four lines. From cheapest to most expensive, I believe they are Ralph, Ralph Lauren, Polo, and Ralph Lauren purple label. Additionally, Polo outlets have different, cheaper line than 'real' Polo, which would be at the bottom somewhere.

Zack Zoll wrote:
Sony makes the ES series of speakers and AV gear, which is incredible. They actually offer handmade, furniture grade speakers which are insanely expensive. Their regular speakers are still good, considering they're around $150 a pair. But they're made somewhere cheap, though I don't know if it's China.

the es line is not bad, but for 10k for a set of floor standing speakers, you can do much better at that price point.

but sony is a japanese company. not chinese.

LightDreams wrote:
Like so many other Japanese brands, a massive chunk of Sony's manufacturing is now located in China, Thailand and India.  In the end, where can they get the best quality for the lowest cost trumps the politics involved (at least as far as China goes).

i seriously doubt that sony's high end stuff (in any field) is mic. a lot of japanese manufacturing has been moved to areas like jixi city, etc, as in their electric guitar markets, that used to be all done in japan. they have built plants in china to manufacture their low end stuff, but their best products are still made in japan.

funny--and ironic--that when the japanese companies initially manufactured goods ('50s and '60s), it had a similar stigma attached to it. e.g., cheap.

DEP E510 wrote:
Corporations are leading the way to either revolution, or the destruction of the common man...

But without corporations we wouldn't have fun stuff like ipads and iphones and such. So if corporations didn't exist where would ipads come from? LOL

It's a vicious circle.

LightDreams wrote:
After pondering it a bit, I actually predict that China will likely beat us to Mars

Not much chance of that.  (Caveat: we're not interested in going to Mars anytime soon either, so someone might beat us there.  But it won't be China.)

GK photo wrote:
i'll be more impressed when they come up with a ground up company, that designs, builds, warranties and services a product that the entire world will consume.

No chance of that.  None at all.  Ever.

GK photo wrote:

the es line is not bad, but for 10k for a set of floor standing speakers, you can do much better at that price point.

but sony is a japanese company. not chinese.

Yeah, I forget the models ... They had a pair of bookshelves at that price point at Adirondack Audio Video. The store started a few years ago, and they just opened up another one in Manhattan. Essentially the store started from former employees of ours, who wanted to get back into the high end audio stuff our store did back in the 70s and 80s. About half of their employees are guys that used to work for us.

I stopped in a while back to see the guys, and their retail manager walked me through almost all the product that they had on hand. He told me that those were some of the best sounding bookshelves he'd ever heard, and they weren't regular production. According to him, Sony just made them to prove that they could, and only planned on selling a few - kind of like Sigma's 200-500 f/2.8.

It's possible he was full of crap. But since he knew I wasn't a customer, I doubt it. If he really wanted to impress an employee from a (sort of) competing store, I suspect he would have ranted and raved more about the Nautilus', or something else more impressive-looking.

They sounded very good, but it's hard to form an opinion when you're listening to ten different speakers over just a couple hours, and none of it with your own music.

All that said ... the point is that regardless of where a company is actually from, almost everyone makes a less expensive product abroad, and a more expensive one closer to home.

To go back to what I said about Ralph Lauren:  every ten or fifteen years there's a new line. And as that line becomes more popular, it rises in price, and a new line forms at the bottom. Cars are like that too - almost every car gets a couple inches larger with every redesign, until a new compact or subcompact is announced.

The Prius coupe is just a couple inches shorter than the original Prius, which has grown about a foot since it first came out.

All of which is why we(as Westerners, but specifically as Americans) are unlikely to ditch the idea of cheap manufacturing any time soon. When our Prius(or any product) is reaching the end of its lifespan, we don't want to replace it with the exact same thing, even though we were very happy with it for over a long time. We want something bigger and better. Or if we get the same thing, we want to pay less for it.

M-mount Zeiss lenses are almost all made in Japan by Cosina. Japan has a relatively high labour cost, but it is still less than Germany. That has an awful lot to do with why a lens that cost $1300 in 1990 still costs $1300 today. We see the same numbers, and some of us complain that it's not made in Germany anymore, but if you do out the inflation math the current version is much, much less expensive.

That black label Ralph Lauren tie might be half the cost of the Polo tie - but it's the same cost as the Polo tie was twenty years ago. Not adjusted for inflation, but it's the same number on the price tag.

And so on, and so forth.

Much of this outsourcing is done because the average consumer wants to "pay the same amount" for products, even though that's not how economics work. Think about it:  how much do you pay for milk or bread now, versus twenty years ago? How much do you pay for jeans or underwear, versus twenty years ago? I don't think you can even buy a loaf of generic white bread for less than two bucks now, but I've been paying $40-$70 for jeans for my entire adult life, or about half that at a discount store.

Which is only fourteen years,but that's still a hell of a long time to go without a major price increase.

John Photography wrote:
Why isn't the USA interested in going to Mars?

Given up already?

George W. Bush infamously issued a great national challenge to go to Mars (shades of Kennedy's "moon" speech).  But then he made it clear that the new NASA budget would have a relatively tiny .5% increase a year (for 5 years) to actually do it (before the massive budget cutbacks that came later).

He honestly believed it could be done without all this "spending" nonsense.

Surprise, surprise, no one took him seriously.  And the media's (lack of) coverage was just as appropriate under the circumstances!

LightDreams wrote:
The one good aspect is that China owns so much of the American debt, etc, that it makes it far less likely that there will be a major war down the road.   Both sides have too much to lose economically.

As of Sep 2015, US national debt was over 18 trillion.  The Chinese govt held 1.258 T.  The Japanese govt held 1.177 T.

One third of the debt is held by foreigners.  The other 2/3s is held domestically by the Social Security trust, other govt agencies, banks, mutual funds, private investors, etc.

Tony Lawrence wrote:

A fact that 'escaped' White American and European slavers.   You know that part about Blacks being lazy when they were brought here.   Nothing like racism disguised as don't kill the messenger and yeah yours was a racist statement.   Well... I'm off for my 2-3 hour lunch, grape soda and later my dinner of chicken wings and watermelon.   I'm sure that Chinese boss can confirm that's what Negroes do.

That reminds me that I haven't had watermelon since my childhood. Boy that stuff is good - seeds were a hassle though.

rxz wrote:
As of Sep 2015, US national debt was over 18 trillion.  The Chinese govt held 1.258 T.

Agreed.

"Of all the holders of U.S. debt China is the third-largest, behind only the Social Security Trust Fund's holdings of nearly $3 trillion and the Federal Reserve's nearly $2 trillion holdings.
...
To put China's ownership of U.S. debt in perspective, its holding of $1.2 trillion is even larger than the amount owned by American households. U.S. citizens hold only about $959 billion in U.S. debt, according to the Federal Reserve."

Yes.  I'm claiming that China owning 1.2 Trillion U.S. Dollars of U.S. debt is a pretty strong incentive to both China and to the U.S. to avoid getting into a major (non-proxy) war with each other.  As they both have too much to lose economically ($1.2 TRILLION, just on the debt front, before other economic spin-off factors).

Either side either writes-off and/or defaults to that degree and you have a complete economic monetary collapse of both currencies.  A pretty good incentive, I would say...