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Thread: Made In America - Sold Out

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by David Weaver View Post
    It's funny nail clippers are mentioned. I actually went out to find western-world nail clippers because every pair I'd found made in china were either soft or very poorly cut. Ended up adding a plain jane pair of giesen and forsthoff clippers to an order from a straight razor shave place (admittedly, not the kind of place most people are already ordering from) and they are so much better than the half dozen chinese pairs of garbage we have floating around the house that it would've been cheaper just to get the good ones first. They were only 6 or 7 bucks (the G&F pair made in german) for a pretty large one, they are sharp and everything on them is tight and lines up perfectly.
    I normally use German made clippers, but I was out and about and needed a set NOW. I play guitar, and I'm pretty fanatical about keeping the nails on my left hand trimmed very short, especially the thumbnail. It cracked back in 1998 or so, and has been split down the back ever since. Through years of keeping it ridiculously short, it's finally back in one piece as of last year. LOL. Too much information, I know. I have a set in my laptop bag, backpack, one in every car, in every bathroom, etc. Yes, those German ones are great. The Chinese ones are absolute junk and I ended up using them and then throwing them out. Garbage.
    Last edited by John Coloccia; 06-26-2013 at 9:55 AM.

  2. #32
    It is amazing how something as simple as nail clippers can be completely screwed up by people who could care less whether or not what they make is any good.

    They should be given the same title we use to refer to third world stuff elsewhere with the suffix "-shaped objects"

    "nail clipper shaped objects".

    It's only out of a complete lack of appreciation for quality that consumers allowed themselves to be sold garbage for $5 instead of quality for $6 or $7.

  3. #33
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    Welcome to the new world order of global enterprise. It won't be long before the made in America is gone entirely. Maybe some assembly in USA but fabrication elsewhere. It is inevitable because we as consumers demand the lowest possible price and you can't have that with American wages. It will always be cheaper if purchased from oversea's.

  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Weaver View Post
    It's only out of a complete lack of appreciation for quality that consumers allowed themselves to be sold garbage for $5 instead of quality for $6 or $7.
    I appreciate quality. Let's say I did need a set of nail clippers and went to CVS/Walgreens/Walmart/Target for a set of nail clippers. It is likely that they only carry low quality models made in China, Mexico, or similar. I don't usually have a choice to pay $1 or $2 more for a better set made in the USA or Europe. If I want something better made in the USA or Europe than I might be ordering online and then paying as much in shipping as the item cost. Maybe a beauty supply place might have the good clippers, but I have never set foot in one of those places.

    All Chinese made stuff is not junk. There is plenty of good stuff coming from China. I would like to buy Made in the USA stuff to keep the money in the USA and to keep Americans working.

    Many American factories are highly automated to reduce labor as much as possible. Some third world countries have such cheap labor they can produce stuff completely by hand with no automation for less cost than making the same item in a totally automated factory in the USA.

  5. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Pat Barry View Post
    Welcome to the new world order of global enterprise. It won't be long before the made in America is gone entirely. Maybe some assembly in USA but fabrication elsewhere. It is inevitable because we as consumers demand the lowest possible price and you can't have that with American wages. It will always be cheaper if purchased from oversea's.
    I'm going through this now, actually. I have a new product coming out, and I have to decide where everything's coming from. Pretty much everything I possibly can is sourced from the US, including the printed circuit boards, but I'm somewhat forced to go into Taiwan for some components, and China for others (because they're simply not made elsewhere!). It greatly increases the cost to stay local...more than doubles it, actually. The bare PCB alone costs me $10 Made In The USA....and it's about $2 if I want to go to China. I can go down the list and it's the same for everything. On a product that has a $150 or so price tag, this adds up very quickly. I don't care...it is what it is, but I'm going to do it for as long as I can and as long as the US actually still makes things.

  6. #36
    You're right, a Sally store might have good ones. They definitely have good clippers, which is another thing I found out about the hard way.

    All chinese stuff isn't junk, and all american stuff isn't good (there is less american junk than there used to be, though, because there's no reason to pay high labor prices to make junk here now). There's some middle stuff that's not that great now, like in one of the other threads here about danaher-made craftsman stuff and how it's dropped in quality in the last 20 years, and how suppliers like klein have let quality slip.

    In my case, though, the difference is stark for the clippers, but you're right, the order has to be coordinated with something else. You just can't know what's good from china until you actually see it and use it for a while.

    Mujignfang planes and their HSS irons are fabulous, though, as long as you pay mind to the specs when you order (they have some oddballs, like planes with irons that are too narrow, etc).

  7. #37
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    IF you want to buy a good pair of nail clippers then buy a a set of wire cutters [either side cutters or end cutters ] I cut my nails with the wire cutters because of the bad nail clippers problem

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Matthews View Post
    It's a publicly traded company that was for sale. They want to export American products.
    Neither sounds like a bad thing to me.

    It's not as if they're buying up companies to jack up prices for domestic consumption.
    Jim,

    At this point we aren't sure what they're intent is, once they own the company they could decide to export 100% or double prices.
    Clearly they don't have to purchase a company in order to purchase or export the companies products.
    .

  9. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Matthews View Post
    This is reactionary, political and clearly in violation of the Sawmillcreek charter.

    This sort of thing is why so many of us left Lumberjocks to come here.
    Defending the wholesale shipping of jobs (Grizzly) overseas as a win-win,
    but decrying the export of domestic products makes no economic sense.

    Given that the mods and administration are actively engaged in this worries me greatly.

    We're a bunch of hobbyist woodworkers blessed with the occasional submissions of genuinely talented professionals and gifted amateurs.

    I do wish Sawmillcreek would adhere to this charter.
    Jim,

    Grizzly isn't shipping jobs overseas, the company has been an importer as long as I can remember. If anything Grizzly has created jobs here in America that did not exist before the company was established.

    Exporting food is like selling golden eggs, allowing a foreign company to purchase a major food producing company id like selling the golden goose. I'm all for selling food to China but not the company that produces the food.

    This subject has nothing to do with politics, its about economics and consumer safety. In fact we could be talking about table saws but I see food as a much more important issue since we have to eat in order to survive.
    .

  10. #40
    As a side note, I have a friend that just got back from China. They outsource products to China daily. He was telling me that as he walked around and met people, they all said "Where is all the work, things have really slowed down from the USA". His response was "Your prices have doubled. People came to China because the cost of doing business was low, people didn't have jobs, and there was a class of people will to do the work for less. Now those people have had children, and those children didn't grow up without things, so they aren't as willing to work for next to nothing as their parents were."

    He told me that the cost to do business in China has caught up with the prices in Mexico, so it would make more sense to buy from Mexico now because it wasn't a 4 week boat ride to get the items.

    I suspect you'll see more and more coming back. Apple's new MacPro is going to be built in the USA, so the trend seems to be reversing or at least slowing down.
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  11. #41
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    Would folks buy from an American manufacturer if Grizzly wasn't importing less expensive tools from overseas? Grizzly may have created jobs at their HQ and distribution centers, but how many jobs have been lost as Delta and Powermatic quit producing in the USA?

    I know a guy who works for a company that designs and sells some sort of electronics. His job is to interface with the factories in other countries that actually make the stuff. They used to manufacture in Mexico so he went to Mexico at least one week a month and was home for the weekend. Manufacturing was moved to China five or six years ago and now he has to go to China regularly. When he goes it is a two or three week trip due to the cost and time to get there. He is away from home a lot. I haven't seen him for a few years so I don't know if they are still in China.

  12. #42
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    I'm not convinced the federal government will allow this to go through. I don't think the Chinese buying one food manufacturer is all that bad. It is when they start buying up a whole bunch that is becomes an issue.

    If the Chinese control a lot of the food supply what happens if we get into a war with China? The first thing they do is choke off the food supply or poison the food or something similar.

  13. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Elfert View Post
    Would folks buy from an American manufacturer if Grizzly wasn't importing less expensive tools from overseas?
    Actually, I don't think they would. They would do what they used to do and simply not buy the tool. Look at a hobbiest woodworking shop today and compare that with a shop from 30 years ago. Look at Norm Abram's shop. In the 80's, we all looked at his shop and absolutely drooled at the collection of tools that were simply out of reach. We used to make fun of him for it. What did he really have? A 14" bandsaw, a modest drill press, a bench top jointer, and bench top planer, and a Unisaw. A couple of routers? Maybe a bench top mortiser, but I distinctly remember him mortising with the drill press. A modest drum sander. There was a hand held belt sander kicking around. At some point, he got some dust collection.

    I didn't know anyone that had ANYTHING like that except professional cabinet shops. They were too expensive, and people simply did without. Now look at a typical hobbiest shop. This is all commonplace machinery, and with the exception of the Unisaw is very modest by today's standards. I have about 6 or 7 routers in my shop alone (maybe only one or 2 made in China, incidentally).

    I'm really not sure how much imports have cut into the market for US made goods. I think it's more a matter of maximizing profits. I wish someone in the US would make a decent, $1500 woodworking drill press. It doesn't exist. I'm not going to spend $1000 on some cheaply made import, I don't care how heavy it is and what color you paint it. I think part of the lament is that as prices have dropped, quality has also plummeted and there's now a huge vacuum between expensive junk and very expensive, world class equipment.

    I'm not really sure why companies like Delta and Powermatic started trying to compete with the cheap import market. Talk about diluting your brand. Who here feels good about blindly purchasing a Delta or Powermatic tool? How about Dewalt? You used to buy the brand. The new leader in "buy the brand" is SawStop. I would bet dollars to donuts that if SawStop introduced a 17" bandsaw tomorrow, WITHOUT the brake technology, they could charge a premium over other Taiwanese imports and it would fly of the shelves because of the reputation they've built for quality and service.

    So I'm rambling about, but as I look back at what I wrote I realize that a big part of the ill feeling here isn't just loosing the physical manufacture of the product. That stings, but what stings even more is actually loosing the ability to create and support great products, even if they're made overseas. Given the know-how, we could aways ramp back up here and produce if we needed to, but we seem to be loosing control of that as well.

  14. #44
    I think you're right john. It's eliminated the middle of the market more or less, but the majority of people buying the grizzly tools wouldn't buy tools at 2 times the cost because a whole shop would pretty much be unattainable.

    I had a friend whose dad was big into car restoration, but he did most of the work by hand with the exception of mundane things like drilling and grinding. He loved norm's show, but every time we turned it on and norm went to the OSS, which he did all the time, this guy's dad would go nuts "nobody has that in their shop!!! that's what I hate about this show, nobody has the stuff!!".

    And a minute would go by and he'd be fine again, loved the show just like the seconds before the OSS appeared. The OSS really set him off.

    Norm did sell a lot of drill press mortising attachments for delta, though. I've seen a few in person in friends' shops that have really never been used.

    The only folks I can remember having that kind of stuff locally in the 1980s were a few folks like United captains who had more money than they knew what to do with, and too much time on their hands. My dad had one of the more well outfitted shops I ever saw because it was income producing (not furniture, but trinkets) and he had a 12" bandsaw, a couple of combination belt/disc sander, a small router table and a belt grinder. His shop is still income producing, he marvels at the stuff in mine and then calls me names. I can't blame him.
    Last edited by David Weaver; 06-26-2013 at 3:47 PM.

  15. #45
    Oh, and I almost forgot about Festool. Talk about targeting a market and taking it over. Why do I have to go to Germany for that sort of quality? Why don't we have a Festool here? Why didn't Delta take over that market? It's not like there isn't a market for this sort of stuff. US companies made a conscious decision to go after the junk market. Surely it's not cheaper to manufacture and import from Germany, is it? Having worked in Germany for several months, I have a hard time believing that they could even make a bologna sandwich less expensively than we could, yet they have the market and we don't.

    Lie-Neilsen is doing fine. So is Veritas. The market is there and it hasn't been destroyed by imports. We've simply let it go. Maybe it was too hard. Maybe we just don't have the drive to attend to the boring details anymore...easier to just target the low end where no one really expects perfection.
    Last edited by John Coloccia; 06-26-2013 at 3:56 PM.

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