_Dear Friends,_
Twenty-eight hours of traveling later, I am back in the Green Mountains and the dogs were the only ones awake when I got home at about 2AM. It is hard to believe that I started the day in Hong Kong on the other side of the planet.
I had a productive trip to Miami and then to Hong Kong and into China to Shenzhen and Dongguan. The trade shows were crowded, and it is a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack to find innovative products and sort out which companies are the manufacturers of unique products and which ones are simply brokers.
One of our responsibilities is to visit the factories of the companies we purchase from to verify working conditions and assure that we have a personal connection at these companies. It is also the best way to separate the fly-by-night traders from the true manufacturers of goods.
You will be seeing some new products from “*Chill Pill Audio*”:http://chillpillaudio.com/ and “*Hammerhead*”:http://www.hammerheadcase.com/ over the next several weeks that are a result of this trip. I want to thank our man in China, Simon Liao, both for his hospitality and his diligence in assuring that we are only purchasing quality products from companies that will stand behind the goods.
I have had a couple of customers question why we source products in China. I understand the sentiment, and believe me I would love to source products here in the USA; however, it would not be possible to be price competitive, as the manufacturing center of the world is now in China.
Many of the factories in China remind me of factories in the USA in the ’50s and earlier. The production lines in the factories I visited are clean and well ventilated, and while the work appears monotonous to me, the workers seem to be happy. Most are younger workers who stay in the dormitories near the factories and send much of their wages home to their families. I think that as we see the middle class and standard of living rise in China, the demand for higher wages will also impact the manufacturing base there as well.
I saw newspaper articles while I was there that talked about how inflation and higher wages are forcing manufacturers to move production to other Asian countries such as Vietnam. We look around the world–and especially in the USA–for new products, but the reality is that most manufacturing of commodity products is not competitively done in the USA.
It is good to be back in Vermont where the trees have already lost most of their leaves and the smell of fall is definitely in the air. I am thinking about snow tires and putting the motorcycles up for the upcoming winter, but there is always time for one last ride if the sun shines.
