Quote:
Originally Posted by piece-itpete
A conundrum indeed.
Two things spring to mind. 1st, are you doing apples to apples labor cost wise? We should be able to out produce developing countries' workers.
2nd, I hate to say this, but think Barney. You need to create a premium brand awareness if possible. Anyone can make a purple dinosaur, but only one has the correct spots - and most people know it.
It might be unseemingly, but I think you've got no choice but to keep an import plan as a backup. Even importing, you're keeping the sales and engineering here, as well as the profits.
Pete
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Good points.
-- If we produced here, yes we were thinking initially of higher cost "boutique" quantities to test market, and then a full ramp up.
-- If we initially went overseas, full investment and large quantities to hit economies of scale, and especially to hit container-load shipping pricing is needed.
-- Still, when you do compare apples to apples quantities, the shipping savings stateside are more than eaten up significantly higher wage costs. Our numbers show Asian production wins, but we may be missing something.
-- In a sense I think we have the "Barney factor" to a relatively high degree, but I've been there before with new product launches where we both won big and lost big. Naturally, we always thought we had the best idea since sliced bread going in to the rollout
.