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Re: [chossmonkey] Do you care?:
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crackers
Jul 10, 2008, 2:44 PM
Views: 5766
Registered: Apr 20, 2005
Posts: 416
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So here's my question for all of you:
Do you realize that only about 1/10 of the cost of any climbing / outdoor sports stuff is labor? The real costs and environmental impacts are from the manufacture of the raw materials. Do you care or even know where the material inputs are from in your climbing gear? Would you rather have something made from materials manufactured in the USA and sewn together (for example... ) in Turkey or something made from raw materials manufactured in the PRC and sewn together in the USA?
extremeactuary wrote: There are only two reasons why we outsource: 1. To circumvent minimum wage and labor laws. ... 2. To circumvent higher pollution standards. ...
Um. In my professional experience, I don't think so.
In the sewn products business, you outsource because there's only one place (East Asia) that has lots of factories doing the work to the highest standards. Look, I guess most people haven't gotten the memo, but the batch manufactured sewn products business in the USA and Canada is more or less toast. In real terms, it's only the military. I'm busy cutting fabric right now, or I'd get into it more, but at least in batch manufactured sewn products, I can get better quality, better timeliness and it happens to be possible in East Asia. It's not just the factories or sweatshops that you think of, it's the upstream manufacturers of tooling, the fabric mills and of course trained, highly skilled workers.
It's a simple actuarial problem; no tools, no workers, no production...
chossmonkey wrote: They make more profit, we still pay the same or more for the product and quality normally takes a hit.
Or, as I think is more likely, companies outsourcing try desperately to hold the line on costs so the cheap bastards they sell stuff to don't stop buying the products...
(This post was edited by crackers on Jul 10, 2008, 2:44 PM)
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Post edited by crackers
() on Jul 10, 2008, 2:44 PM
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