Jonathan – We all live in the same world hence why we should all have respect for each other and not profit off other peoples poverty with near slave labour. We as consumers all have a choice.
Moxxey – I think we in the west learned our lessons, hence why Labour unions were formed. In the UK people were getting paid much better wages in the 1970s than they are in China today for labour. Many union workers even at that time were living fairly good lives. Actually until Thatcher tried to disband all the worker unions and close down all the factories, mines, etc... it was better for them. I recently watched a documentary on BBC about the shipbuilders, how England used to have so many cities that relied on shipbuilding and now those local economies have just dwindled and many of those areas are now abandoned all due to outsourcing. Perhaps the Health and Safety has gotten more strict nowadays but otherwise building ships is still a lengthy and laborious task. Britain built some of the best ships that the world has ever seen, yet the industry is dead now thanks to outsourcing. Ask any of those laborers most of them would love to go back to their old job and build those ships again, it was their passion and their livelihood!
You have to remember Moxxey that the UK is a democratic country, has been for ages. The fact that the Union Workers can rise up at all is a statement that it is a free country. In China if workers did that they would get fired. If they complained about the government, etc... they would be put in Jail. Britain hasn't been like that for a couple hundred years now. Even in the 19th century Unions were formed and people were up in arms about many things as far back as then!
Yes it is hypocritical of countries to complain about China's conditions, but only because they support those conditions by letting their companies outsource (again neoliberalism, Thatcher and Reaganism at work, liberalization of trade, etc...)
China already has the biggest economy in the world. That doesn't mean much to most of the people who live there. If nearly every company in the world produces billions of products with trillions in money being exchanged, of course China will become the worlds leading economy. It already is but it is not part of the OECD, and will not be for many many many many decades because it is not a developed country. In fact they don't try to portray themselves as such, in the UN for example they show themselves as developing in order to get help from other countries!
It wasn't so long ago before China and the UK/US and other countries liberalized their trade in the early 80s that everything was made in ones own country. Before that time almost all American products were made in America, same with British. Outsourcing was very rare for manufacturing in comparison to today. So NO, it hasn't always been the case that companies just move from one country to the next, in fact it's only been the case the past 20-30 years or so. The US and Europe talk about how China should liberalize whilst they themselves are overly protectionist about certain industries but the point is that if you look at every developed country, non of them have developed because of liberalization. In fact most countries have developed because of protectionism. South Korea's economy developed thanks to them not importing foreign products but instead building their own automotive, electronic and other industries before putting them out on the world Market. It was similar in Japan, and even the US. In fact the US government used to promote protectionism up until the mid-late 20th century to other countries in order for them to develop as they did. The reason China has the worlds biggest economy and is yet considered one of the poorest countries in terms of human development, etc... is exactly because it's done the opposite of Japan and Korea when they were developing!
Puncher – It depends how much they sell that product for. And obviously not all companies are out of business that produce in developed countries (including electronics). I can name thousands of electronic products which are produced in a developed country and the companies still make a profit. Look at Fujitsu producing some of their computers and other electronic devices (including motherboards) for the European market in Germany, in fact they chose a city near Munich in Bavaria which is the most expensive place in Germany for labour cost! Many of the laptops there are sold at a lower price than Apple or other competitors that produce in China! They still make a nice profit and have been there for many years! If you sell the product for $200 and it costs $25 to make instead of $6 you are still making a decent profit of 800%! The fact that a company should be making a 3300% profit on a single product is proof of greed. If they need to make that high a profit to survive then there must be something wrong with the company. Also if Outsourcing was the only way to survive, then all the companies that don't outsource would have completely died.
KMA – You are sending a link to Apple propaganda on their website. Of course they are going to say they have the best standards, etc... That link was probably put up after all the scandal a year or so ago! It's to cover their asses...
B&O is known for its attention to detail if they produce it themselves. Hence why they made their own plastic and metals factory in Denmark! B&O does not make the BS8, nor the Beolit12, they simply design it and order it for someone else to make it for them. Even though they are a smaller company, their products are made at a company that produces electronic and audio goods for other companies at THEIR standards, not necessarily B&Os. It's like saying if you order a custom made shirt, you give them measurements, but if they are not the best Italian craftsman that have been doing it for 10 generations and have the best skill in the world, but instead someone that was hired in China that was taught in a month or so how to stitch the shirt and cut it, etc... the difference will be huge. That is my point! Why do people consider Kiton and Brioni the best in terms of tailoring craftsmanship? Because it was handmade in Italy by people who were tailors for many generations. For the same reason that peopled considered B&O the best for Audio craftsmanship that it was made and assembled by hand by Struer's own craftsmen and not by a huge assembly line with thousands of people mass producing hundreds of thousands of units for cheap. It's common sense that the quality and attention to detail will go down, even if it were made in Denmark it wouldn't be of the same quality as the higher end products because they wouldn't have time to pay as much attention to detail to the manufacture with the mass production of millions of units. To top it off if you have thousands of workers, how many of them will be extremely skilled at their job? Not likely that every worker, or even most of them, will have the attention to detail that people working directly for B&O have, nor the passion or pride for working for such as a company (as the workers in China do not work for B&O but for a Chinese company with Chinese wages and Chinese labour laws).
Tournedos – Thanks for the interesting article. The N9 is funnily enough made in Finland unlike the iPhone. Nokia tends to keep their production of their higher end phones (such as many of the E-series) and others in Finland. Here is a factory video of the N9 Production line in Finland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwoGxrLZlAk
I'm sure they still make a decent profit of it even though it is made with high Finish wages vs. lower Chinese wages! It's unlike most companies though. In fact I see outsourcing as more of an Anglo-Saxon and Scandanivian ideal in general than that of mainland Europe. Although many European companies outsource there are still many many many factories in Italy and France that produce high quality clothing items for example. France has hundreds of shoemakers, Italy has thousands, England has a dozen, and the US has one or two left! Why? Because the UK and US are much more keen towards outsourcing and cheaper prices, where as mainland Europe places a lot more emphasis on craftsmanship and quality. There are probably more French who would prefer to buy French leather goods and be proud of it than Ameicans for example.
Linder – Actually everyone I know, knows about Bang and Olufsen in the US. In San Francisco alone we have 2-3 stores and it's quite a small city with only about 500-700k residents. They have had stoes in the US for 20 years now and I have known B&O since I was a little kid because I would always go to their store. Perhaps a few people in the bible belt (probably who wouldn't even bother buying even a BS8 or Beolit12) don't know of this brand but it's been pretty famous here for near on 20 years!!!! In fact Bang and Olufsen has stores in really small suburbs as well and used to have one in Walnut Creek about 10 years ago where I live which has only about 64,000 people. All this new range is doing is introducing some cheaply made and cheap looking products to spread the name and make a huge profit off of it. Somebody mentioned keychains and t-shirts of car companies, very similar in my opinion and lowers the brands image to an almost tackiness.
Moxxey – Key there is portable iPhone players. I agree that it is one of the best of those as well. But the fact that B&O made one is already a turn off for me. The brand has always been about high end high quality manufacturing. This is a different direction for them and like I said before, it really degrades the image of the brand. I don't know why that Journalist was turning away from other excellent speakers such as the Beolab series and instead only reviewing a Beolit 12, that's beyond me..
Bayerische – Great point on the BL5! This is my point about them and other B&O being good value for money. You have a hand assembled, amazing quality speaker with some of the best components and materials that sounds so crisp and goes through the most rigorous quality control. Then you have a Dynaudio which is also made in Denmark and costs 3 times more!
Linder and Symmes – Anything is outsourcing if it's made by a separate company (made to order) for you, usually in another country. IE you outsource the work to someone else... In the car industry this is done usually for the local markets because of high import tariffs. Some companies such as VW, Audi and a few others will outsource their lower end models to Mexico for the US market and many other brands manufacture their lower end cars in the US. BMW's X series was designed and built in the US... I don't think it's necessarily the same because these companies have their own factories here so technically for me it's not outsourcing. BMW didn't ask GM or some other manufacturer to build the car for them, they went and opened their own factory and US HQ here!
