Tournedos – I am not making stuff up. There are many companies who choose to outsource their higher end products to Taiwan rather than mainland China. If you look at higher end computer products, including high quality mechanical keyboards that cost $100-200 they are made in Taiwan and not mainland China. It's the same story with many GPS systems, and with a really professional scanner I own that was a few thousand dollars when it came out.
The Chinese have not outsourced silk manufacturing to China. They were famous for it for thousands of years but it doesn't mean they have the best mills available or that they are the best at it. Following the “cultural revolution” many craftsmen were killed off or their businesses taken away from them. There are not many craftsmen left in China that spend one year to produce silk fabric as they do in Japan for example. In Japan fabric for a single kimono can take a year to produce, and the attention to detail and quality is unparalleled. In China it's more about mass production and cheap silks rather than a focus on quality and you would be very hard pressed to find silk with the same attention to detail. China is perhaps now the worlds most industrialized country, and even though Japan and Italy had their own industrial revolutions, they kept hundreds of thousands of their own craftsmen instead of persecuting them!
Puncher – This is just B&Os own propaganda. You tell me to back up my statements with fact and then spew their advertising on me as proof of quality? My point AGAIN is that the price point is NOT LOWER than comparable portable products they have released in the recent past (BS1, BS3, etc...) Intentions for quality and what actually comes out of it are different. In my perception it is far and between the quality of other products they are producing. They even admit that it's not a luxury product by saying “ The classic Bang & Olufsen brand will continue to exist and represent luxury electronics products.” meaning the Play brand is not that...
Moxxey – Armani outsourced not because China has better weaves but because like many clothing manufacturers they wanted to save on cost. If you look at Wool as an example the finest micron wools that win awards every year are always New Zealand and Australian Merino Wools, which are often milled in Italy. These are the ones that win the gold prizes, not Chinese wools. As far as silks go , look at the attention to detail of Kimono milling in Japan where it takes upto a year to make fabric enough for one person, the rope is died by hand, and the machine used is one from the middle ages where the silk is lined up to the pattern and corrected by each thread. I don't think any other country in the world uses these types of machines.
This is exactly why Japanese denim is considered the best. Where Levi's and other companies have outsourced and mass produce jeans in horrible quality. Japanese brands are often produced using the Selvedge method which takes 10 times longer to produce using special machines that were produced before WWII. They also make their jeans from died rope, often with natural local indigo, and quite often their jeans are raw. Dior and a few other western fashion brands see this and actually produce some of their Jeans in Japan as well. Where as most western manufacturers took to cheaper worse quality manufacturing after WWII, Japanese brands stayed with the higher quality, traditional methods of denim manufacturing.
China might have had excellent quality craftsmen before the cultural revolution and they might have a few now. But these are not the mass produced goods you buy such as the BS8 and Beolit 12. Neither are they the 99% of mass produced products you buy from the store or from brands, etc... The best Lacquer produced used to be in China maybe 1000 years ago, but today it is from Wajima where they take years to make on lacquered image on a bowl or plate for example with techniques such as Makie or Chinkin. It's the same with fountain pens where Japanese use traditional techniques to produce them such as in the Nakaya pen company that hand grind their nibs from 18k-22k gold and then make by hand the pen from ebonite, wood, or even tortoise shell. The list goes on and on and there are not any offerings I have seen even close to this quality from China. In fact Denmark is known for some of the highest quality audio manufacturing just like the products I mention Japan is known for or Harris Tweed in Scotland, etc... This is what made B&O what it is in terms of quality.
The Scottish cashmere I buy is Made in Scotland not in China. There are maybe some brands that have outsourced to China though. There are still many Scottish mills available. Some wool such as Harris Tweed is actually protected by the government and has been partially subsidized, in fact it cannot be called Harris Tweed unless it is hand woven by local craftsmen in the Outer Hebrides from local wool.
KMA – I don't think that it is deceitful propaganda but a company must sell its products and what better way to do this than to justify their new move to a lower end product line... Do you personally believe everything a company says? I never buy stuff based on marketing hype or company advertising, in fact I sometimes do months of research before I buy something and even then I ussally have to see it and test it and feel it...Many companies say that they are better than a competitor such as one vacuum advertisement I saw "Better than Dyson" well I don't even think Dyson is that good and that vacuum was just pure crap. Miele on the other hand never advertises that they are better than Dyson, but they just are without having to say it....
