Buying British

Tripod maker 3 Legged Thing are British, but I don't know if they manufacture here in the UK.
 
ianmarsh said:
Bowens (studio flash) is a British-based company
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In fact it's American owned,and all their manufacturing is in China, it's been that way for about the last 5 years.

There was a time when China was just a copycat, no innovation, no technical knowledge and no commitment, thousands of backstreet sweatshops produced poor copies of designs that belonged to other people.
But that is now history, Shenzen in particular is a very high tech centre of excellence, with the best engineers, the best and most modern factories and the best paid employees, they now have the technical and manufacturing capability that we just don't have in this Country. It simply isn't economic to set up a modern factory here, and to recruit the best engineers. The skills shortages, the very high taxation and all the other problems make it virtually impossible to succeed, and the photographic market is just too small anyway.

There was an interesting programme on the box tonight, basically they were saying that increasing wages in the far east are now making it cheaper to make some products in the UK... Yeah, right - their best example was a cushion manufacturer, who is slightly reducing his Chinese manufacture and increasing his British manufacture - but cushions... low tech products that are bulky to transport. Even if what they were saying on that programme was true, it would be very different for high tech products.

Incidentally, someone asked what constitutes "Made in Britain". Final assembly, that's all. Just click one component into place and magically it becomes British made :(
 
Garry Edwards said:
In fact it's American owned,and all their manufacturing is in China, it's been that way for about the last 5 years.(
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Yup, that's why I said "British-based" not "British-owned" and given all the discussion above, just because it puts components together in china doesn't mean that is where all the money goes (but neither does it mean all the money comes here either).
 
Garry Edwards said:
There was a time when China was just a copycat, no innovation, no technical knowledge and no commitment, thousands of backstreet sweatshops produced poor copies of designs that belonged to other people.
But that is now history
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I agree entirely. I work for a British company which is owned by an American company which in turn is owned by a huge Chinese company: http://www.johnsonelectric.com/en/index.html

People get the wrong idea about Chinese manufacturing bec ause all they see is the low quality cheap stuff. People are more interested in cheap than value for money, so that is what they get. However, Chinese manufacturing can also be excellent, as can their design and ingenuity.

Some of things people say about China are exactly what people used to think about Japanese manufacturing in the 1970s.


Steve.
 
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That's how many countries learn to manufacture. Most of Asia has done it at one time or another. They rapidly grow a manufacturing base using labour being shifted from the agricultural sector applied to (usually) foreign capital. Then as they grow, they start to own the capital and they add more value to the manufacturing process. The interesting bit comes when they have caught up with the leading nations in terms of processes and when the supply of quality labour they need has dried up. Then growth typically slows a lot unless they can drive innovation. For me, that's one of the big questions China will face soon. Costs in China are rising, there is a shortage of skilled workers, their currency is edging up and competition from elsewhere is getting tougher. There are pockets of innovation but that needs to spread through the whole economy. Of course, China has a proper long-run growth policy (helped by having single party rule, for good or bad) and doesn't have to rush things too much.
 
Lee Filters indeed are a British firm but when I spoke to them three months ago, some of their filters were being made in the far east.

They did say, however, that quality issues were forcing them to bring those activities back to the UK.
 
JohnnyJ said:
Lee Filters indeed are a British firm but when I spoke to them three months ago, some of their filters were being made in the far east.

They did say, however, that quality issues were forcing them to bring those activities back to the UK.
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Quality issues can arise with Chinese firms, but they are avoidable.
Basically they are used to a domestic market where price is everything, so if they can save a penny by using a cheaper component then they will do so, and it won't occur to them to even ask their customer for agreement on this.

But, if the specifications are very clearly set out in writing, and they know that they will lose all future business if they fail to adhere to them, they will do the job properly.

A certain large manufacturer in Shanghai had an entire container of goods returned to them, at their expense, because some of the labels hadn't been put on straight... they learned from this.
 
ianmarsh said:
Of course, China has a proper long-run growth policy
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Indeed they do. Whilst we might think in terms of a five year plan, it's not uncommon for the Chinese to think in terms of decades or even hundreds of years.


Steve.
 
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