Dkatz wrote:

Jonathan wrote:

So would you buy a high end Chinese label that's made in China?

If I felt it was made to better standards, better quality, with better materials than an equivilent product in Developed countries. If the company were completely transparent about their manufacturing process and product and materials used. If they paid their workers decent wages and gave them decent working conditions with benifits. The product would also have to be quite unique and significantly different than an equivilent product manufactured in my own country in order for me not to want to support my own economy and workforce. Then, I might consider buying a Chinese product. I, however, do not know of any products from China or any developing countries that meet those requirements or even come close... 

Why does it have to be "..made to better standards, better quality, with better materials than an equivilent product in Developed countries." Why couldn't it be made to the same standards, the same quality and the same materials as an equivalent product made in developed countries?

"The product would also have to be quite unique and significantly different than an equivilent product manufactured in my own country in order for me not to want to support my own economy and workforce." -  Does this mean that you ONLY buy American products that are meade in America?

see below

Would I have bought a Beo10 if made in China. Hell No.  Unless of course it was the same price as a Samsung.

If B&O wants to outsource, just stick with CZ.  Even Leica has a plant in Portugal.  I do not like that my Beo remote was made in CZ, but I understand B&O has to control cost and maintain profit.

In the USA, Levi's became a "marketing company" moving production to others and just putting on a label.  Seeing the demand for american made Levi's, now they charge $100 per pair, verse when they were $30 a few years ago.

wesheltonj wrote:

Would I have bought a Beo10 if made in China. Hell No.  Unless of course it was the same price as a Samsung.

If it were made to the exact same standard with the exact same materials and it was exactly the same, why would it matter where it was made? I don't see the difference being made in China as opposed to being made in Czechoslovakia..

Bentleyman wrote:

Look at prices of higher end cars, higher end real estate, quality jewellery, quality watches, designer clothes, higher end hotel room rates, art prices etc etc. Prices in these luxury goods markets only go up, never down.

You have successfully identified why these markets differ in general from consumer electronics!

For those keen on repeating the Rolls Royce analogy, B&O are also selling in China - the difference is RR is doing very well while B&O are struggling to break even! There were many posts several years ago when B&O seemed to make a big push to go after the Chinese and Russians (to the detriment of its european customer base, it was felt at the time).

They need to sell enough product at sufficent margin in order to make money and it's not happening at the moment! Doubless it will pick up when (if?) the economy ever improves but that looks a very long way off at the moment. These higher volume products can only help.

Perhaps more posts focusing on the situation as it stands rather than "what ifs" and "what could've been"  would be more productive, for instance, given their current situation, what would you do next? Dkatz - during this difficult recession period, having recently suffered a large loss, and bearly breaking even.........what would you do to improve the profitiablity of the company in order than it see out the slump and set the company in good stead for the future?

Dkatz wrote:

To be honest much of Apples technology has come from someone else. An example is that the Tablet PC was introduced by Bill Gates in 2002 and Steve Jobs only introduced the iPad in 2010, nobody cared about the Tablet PC yet everyone started going crazy over the iPad. In essence Apple only improved and made things more user friendly, not necessarily invented them.

That is exactly the point IMHO. Innovation is not only about inventing new technology but also about making the technology acceptable and even the marketing of it. Without those you're lost.

Jonathan – I have yet to see any products that even match the standards, much less exceed them coming out of China. The reason I said better, is because it should be better in order for me to want to buy it from China rather than from my own country or from Europe which is established in high quality manufacture. I don't only buy American products but I try to for many things in order to support the economy in which I live. I don't believe that any country can be completely self sustainable these days and it shouldn't be. Each country is the best for their own things, I don't think America could be as good as Italy or France for Tailoring, or as Italy or England for car manufacture, hence why I have mostly Italian clothing, and an English car, because I think they are the best. However, most parts I buy for my car are American, so is my casual clothing (American Apparel), etc... But even if there was something from China that met those standards, I still wouldn't want to support the kind of labour conditions and pay that they have in China, so until the whole system there changes, I won't be buying anything from there...

I explained the difference between China and Czech already many times – Czech has 10 times the wages of China plus EU labour laws and working conditions, and social and direct benefits. On top of that B&O has their own factory with their own workers that they trained in Czech but in China it's not even B&O who makes it! Therefore Czech B&O products are made to the same standards as Struer in my opinion as it's their own factory. Had B&O opened their own factory in China, trained those employees themselves through apprenticeship schemes, paid them decent wages and had good working hours, used better quality plastics and materials as they did in their Czech and Danish products, then it could have been of a similar quality... but it wasn't!

Wesheltonj – Leica has a plant in Portugal but they have ceased camera production there due to quality control issues and it was their own factory! They make certain parts for their Camera's there now, which they then ship to Germany for assembly.

Puncher – If my company wasn't doing well, I would try to market my products better. The move to sell at Apple stores was a good one, so was the integration of a dock. I'm not refuting this, but outsourcing is something I would refuse to do. In the case of B&O I would manufacture those products in my own factory in Czech, used much better quality materials, and perhaps made it a bit more unique than it is. Again the beauty of the BS1 was the way the antenna and CD player opened up, just like the Ouverture/2300/3200 with the sliding door, etc... That gimmick alone made many people want one. I feel that the BS8 and Beolit 12 should have had something unique, more of a daring design and with something like I described, something that differentiated it from other similar docks. That along with it being made in Europe, which I would have used in the advertising as the only dock that was made in Europe would have saved face for B&O. All those things combined would have made it more successful, and even though it would have cost more to manufacture in Czech. To be honest, if I was in charge I would know the break down of cost of manufacture and know how much profit I would be making per unit. For example if it cost $100-200 to produce (versus say $25-50 in China) I could sell it for $1000 and still make a hefty profit and have it be cheaper than other B&O products... Again, I don't know the figures, but I believe that B&O would still have made a decent profit producing the product in Czech and marketing it as a European made product.

Dkatz wrote:

Puncher – If my company wasn't doing well, I would try to market my products better. The move to sell at Apple stores was a good one, so was the integration of a dock. I'm not refuting this, but outsourcing is something I would refuse to do. In the case of B&O I would manufacture those products in my own factory in Czech, used much better quality materials, and perhaps made it a bit more unique than it is. Again the beauty of the BS1 was the way the antenna and CD player opened up, just like the Ouverture/2300/3200 with the sliding door, etc... That gimmick alone made many people want one. I feel that the BS8 and Beolit 12 should have had something unique, more of a daring design and with something like I described, something that differentiated it from other similar docks. That along with it being made in Europe, which I would have used in the advertising as the only dock that was made in Europe would have saved face for B&O. All those things combined would have made it more successful, and even though it would have cost more to manufacture in Czech. To be honest, if I was in charge I would know the break down of cost of manufacture and know how much profit I would be making per unit. For example if it cost $100-200 to produce (versus say $25-50 in China) I could sell it for $1000 and still make a hefty profit and have it be cheaper than other B&O products... Again, I don't know the figures, but I believe that B&O would still have made a decent profit producing the product in Czech and marketing it as a European made product.

Am I correct in summarisng the above as - add more features, use more expensive materials, assemble at European rates and increase the price of an £875 iPod dock accordingly? Surely this would be a dock for existing customers only .............. at best!

How would a £1000+ iPod dock attract the new customers and additional sales that is desperately required?

Dkatz wrote:

 

Jonathan – I have yet to see any products that even match the standards, much less exceed them coming out of China. The reason I said better, is because it should be better in order for me to want to buy it from China rather than from my own country or from Europe which is established in high quality manufacture. I don't only buy American products but I try to for many things in order to support the economy in which I live. I don't believe that any country can be completely self sustainable these days and it shouldn't be. Each country is the best for their own things, I don't think America could be as good as Italy or France for Tailoring, or as Italy or England for car manufacture, hence why I have mostly Italian clothing, and an English car, because I think they are the best. However, most parts I buy for my car are American, so is my casual clothing (American Apparel), etc... But even if there was something from China that met those standards, I still wouldn't want to support the kind of labour conditions and pay that they have in China, so until the whole system there changes, I won't be buying anything from there...

 

I explained the difference between China and Czech already many times – Czech has 10 times the wages of China plus EU labour laws and working conditions, and social and direct benefits. On top of that B&O has their own factory with their own workers that they trained in Czech but in China it's not even B&O who makes it! Therefore Czech B&O products are made to the same standards as Struer in my opinion as it's their own factory. Had B&O opened their own factory in China, trained those employees themselves through apprenticeship schemes, paid them decent wages and had good working hours, used better quality plastics and materials as they did in their Czech and Danish products, then it could have been of a similar quality... but it wasn't!

 

Dkatz, you obviously don't know much about manufacturing in China (or anywhere in the world for that matter). The quality that comes out of Chinese factories these days is often better than anywhere in the world! Therefore, you should be buying more Chinese made goods. You cannot increase wages in a developing nature 10x overnight. There needs to be slow adjustment. For example: if workers earn $10 a day normally, then suddenly one day the employer says "here, I'm going to pay you $100 a day now!" the employees would not show up for work for ten days. The would suddenly have 1o days worth of pay for one days work.

If we all stopped buying products made in China, all of these workers you so desperately want to save will be out of a job. The wages you so desperately want increased will not exist at all. The shift towards a more capatalist culture will evaporate. There is a section of China that is now leading the world, and soon China will be the most powerful nation in the world. This means that the list of things they already do better than the rest of the world will get longer and longer.

You need to learn that there are different cultures in the world, and you need to learn to respect these cultures and the fact that they do things differently. You can't expect Muslims to drink alcohol because the liquor industry is underperforming, or expect Jewish people to eat pork just because you think pig farmers are getting a raw deal. People in different countries and different cultures do things differently. They also have different ways of life, and don't need to buy $1000 pieces of clothing or drive flashy cars. You need to respect the Chinese way of life, rather than try to 'solve' these problems you think they may or may not have.

You say that B&O should open their own factory there and train the staff through apprentice schemes. Should they then wait 4 years so that for each new product they make they put all the staff through apprentice schemes?? This is laughable! You cannot learn the manufacturing industry through a textbook, the real world is a different place. You really have your head in the sand, and if you were to be in control of a company it would go bust within weeks. You clearly do not demonstrate any business sense. Your 'plan' is to increase costs on manufacturing a product? The production costs you use for an example are not real world sorts of figures. If the Chinese cost is $25-50, then the European cost would be $500+. Why would you instruct a company to not save money to this sort of level? That's just absurd. If you want a company to survive, it needs to make money! This is a very simple thing to consider. B&O is not a not-for-profit organisation! 

The fact that you single out China reeks of snobbery or racism (or both), as you really have no grounds for abstaining from Chinese made products. Your arguments have been continually proven to be baseless, yet time and again you choose to ignore everything that everyone else has said despite the evidence they produce that refutes what you say.

P.S Does Britian even have a car manufacturing industry? British cars are terrible, the best cars come out of Germany and Japan. The only British cars I can think of are TVR, Ariel, Morgan. Hardly world beating cars there... (sorry to the Brits who read this)

Puncher wrote:

Am I correct in summarisng the above as - add more features, use more expensive materials, assemble at European rates and increase the price of an £875 iPod dock accordingly? Surely this would be a dock for existing customers only .............. at best!

How would a £1000+ iPod dock attract the new customers and additional sales that is desperately required?

Not neccesarily more features but something gimmicky that draws many people to B&O products in the first place. It's what made the Beosound Ouverture and Century so succesful and many other B&O products. This would draw people to it as it would be unique (although it looks a little bit different than most docks, it's still pretty generic looking imho). I didn't say use more expensive materials, in fact they could possibly save costs by producing the plastics and metals in their own factory (as they do for many of their own products) instead of buying them from somewhere. I would possily use some more metal as well to make it look more expensive than the plasticky look that the BS8 has. Those little legs alone look like they could break off in a sinch and it looks cheap overall, something that's not good for a 900 pound unit.

It would not be average European rates, much less than most European countries in fact. Assembly in Czech is 5 times less than it is in Denmark, hence why B&O opened a factory there in the first place but it would allow them to advertise that it was made in Europe and could possibly even apply for European subsidies of some sort (never hurts to try, some companies that aren't doing well do exactly that and many Japanese car companies manufacture in Europe thanks to those subsidies as well as tax and import duty benifits). 1000GBP vs. 900GBP is not much of a difference, in fact someone who is willing to pay 900 would probably pay 1000, especially if better plastics/metals were used and it was made in Europe. Right now it doesn't look expensive enough to me and many other people, and looking at it even many people on the forum say it's overpriced. I don't think it would be the case if they used better plastics and metals, changed the design a bit and added a nice feature. The fact that it's made in Europe will only help with sales if it's advertised.

Also you have to remember that it is more expensive in the UK than the US, and the UK is not the only market for this or many B&O products. In fact it's much cheaper in the US due to lower taxes and a different exchange rate to the DKK/Euro than the pound. So if it's 900GBP in the UK, it can sell for 1000USD in the US which is only 632GBP... Actually most people get paid about the same in USD in the UK and US for many similar jobs, for example in administration I am getting the same salary in the US as I was getting in the UK, actually in today's exchange rate I am earning about $10,000 more dollars per year in the US for the same job even though everything is much less expensive.

The US is a huge market for B&O, probably bigger than the UK and people often look at where something is made here. In fact they are quite a bit more transparent here than in the UK. So if they knew that the unit was made in Europe people would be more likely to part with $1200 for one rather than $1000 for something made in China. Here in the US many people would see it as a much better deal!