the chinese connection
We all know that more and more products are coming out of China these days, with manufacturers lured there by cheap labor, promises of lower costs, full-service manufacturing and the whole bit.
In the boardgaming world, there are two major gripes I have with the industry, and one of those is the wholesale migration of board game manufacturing to China. Virtually every game I’ve gotten in the last six months has been entirely manufactured there. I’m not just talking about the plastic pieces, or individual components: I’m talking about the whole goddamned thing, from the boards to the bits to boxing and packaging. It just bothers me that the promise of cheaper manufacturing costs convinces American and European companies to abandon the manufacturing facilities of their own countries and support a vast economy that unpderpays its workers, and has no environmental restraints on industry to speak of, just to save a few bucks. Much of this savings is then gobbled up in the cost of shipping the bloody product across an ocean, through customs, and then to the company’s headquarters, all of this well before it enters the distribution networks. If you visit Fantasy Flight Games’ website, who are a current leader in boardgames (and have virtually all their stuff completely manufactured in China), you’ll see how often disasters happen as well, with badly flawed components that have to be replaced (such as with the boards on Marvel Heroes), or large percentages of their stock getting damaged in the harrowing 6,000 mile journey.
Anyway, given the toy industry as a whole, I’m not all that surprised that so many fall for the lure of China, since that goes way back. But another and totally different recent purchase completely took me by surprise –
I had to buy a new exterior door to replace a damaged one at my house, so while in Home Depot I picked one up off the shelf. I’ve bought doors before from Home Depot, and they were always manufactured by a local company in San Bernardino, so I didn’t think to look twice before buying this one.
To my surprise, and horror, however, as I was installing it I discovered that the core of this allegedly solid wood door was made of an inferior type of solid wood that splintered really easily and was a total bitch to work with. What was supposed to be a Douglas Fir solid wood door was still solid wood — only the Douglas Fir was laminated onto some other kind of crap wood in the interior.
Then I noticed the Made in China stamp on the packaging lying in a pile near where I was working.
OMFG.
Little plastic pieces in a boardgame are one thing, but whole fucking doors? What happened to the company in San Bernardino? Well, it seems that other local door and window places still use them, but being the slimeballs they are, Home Depot heard the siren call of cheap and went with a Chinese company. And the result is an inferior door.
But here’s the really ironic thing: it’s the same frickin’ price as the other doors were. So who’s benefiting from the alleged cost-savings here? It sure isn’t me.
Not only that, but I discovered to my horror that all the metal plumbing pipes for sale at Orchard Supply Hardware are now entirely made in China, as are most metal hand tools –
Case in point. I bought a three-pack of chisels from a Canadian company whose crap was manufactured in China. They cost fifteen bucks. The metal was so soft and inferior that the chisels broke after just a few uses. A month later I’m back in Orchard to buy some new chisels and find that Craftsman brand has a three pack with the same selection of sizes inside it, also for fifteen bucks … except these are made in the USA. Guess what? I’ve used them a hell of a lot more than three times and they’re still as good as new.
Come on. Is it really necessary to have our galvanised piping made in China and imported? What of our own steel industry? In Los Angeles alone there are tons of companies manufacturing metal piping. The irony here as well is that the pipes cost just as much for me to buy even though they’re inferior product imported from China!
This does not in any way imply some kind of dislike of China itself, or especially the Chinese people. I’m a huge fan of Chinese culture, language, and history. I cook Chinese cuisine. I often use Chinese traditional medicine. Hell, I’ve even been studying Mandarin Chinese.
My annoyance — and it’s growing daily — is with these weak and greedy American and European companies who so easily chuck the manufacturing facilities of their own countries and rush off to support the economy of a country over which our own laws have little or no jurisdiction, and we as customers end up with inferior crap that costs just as much as it did when it was domestically made.
I think the whole manufacturing/importing model is a disaster, and it’s only getting worse. And there’s not a damn thing I know of that I can do about it.
Shoddy goods are something new? I don’t think so.
Caveat emptor, bubi.
March 25th, 2007 at 8:46 pm