Um, Richard, who do you think makes the billions of widgets that flood this country's ports from China every day, a great percentage of which is of shoddy or questionable quality and durability? Prison and child labor in some cases perhaps?
Hard to compete with that....
I think the world is a very complex place, made even smaller by the Web and other modern Information Technology marvels, and this is of course a very complex issue. There is certainly no simple "answer."
I agree that it's a global market / business environment these days, and Nationalistic blinders certainly don't work in our modern world (and never really did without serious Government intervention and cooperation), but there is a very clear timeline that occurs in many Manufacturing industries for companies that start outsourcing to "save labor costs." The final step is going out of business!
Once you've gone to the absolute cheapest labor and raw material sources, regardless of quality, relinquished your design and manufacturing duties, and are merely an importer that "badge engineers" instead of being creative and finding other ways to compete and actually manufacture product, what do you do next with your cookie-cutter MBA practices? Nuthin,' that's what, because you've lost almost all control over your product, and the book don't tell ya what to do at that point, other than invoke your golden parachute and/or defraud your investors on the way out. Look at the first Schwinn bankruptcy for a textbook case of how to run a third-generation once-class-leading company into the ground. (Not implying fraud there, just bonehead moves). Crain's Chicago Business did a great multi-part article about it - I recommend it highly. Giant exists today as the juggernaut it is due in great part to Schwinn's management ineptitude through those times. It's a jungle out there!
Greg Parker
former Corporate Stooge
People's Republic of Ann Arbor, Michigan ;-)
> Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 13:50:07 -0500
> From: Richard M Sachs <richardsachs@juno.com>
> To: questor@cinci.rr.com
> Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Cc: Grant.McLean@SportingLife.ca
> Subject: Re: [CR]Re: How the mighty are fallen - OT Raleigh comments
> Message-ID: <20040305.135618.3220.50.richardsachs@juno.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Precedence: list
> Message: 11
>
> snipped:
> "A rider use to be able to say a Raleigh came from England, Peugeot from
> France, and Bianchi came from Italy, but this is no more... There no
> longer
> seems to be a national pride in the which countries stand behind what
> bike
> products or brands."
>
>
> why does this matter?
> i say national pride can take take a back seat to
> global pride any day of the week as long as no one
> is hurt or tortured making these bicycles. otoh, if
> asian production of generic frames is going to lead
> to a nike- like "sweatshop" story by geraldo, then i
> respectfully recant my opinion.
> e-RICHIE
> chester, ct