You business folks... clue me in.

I fish for salmon in the NW. A lot.

One of the most consistent lures is... well, let's call it Brand X.

The lures are manufactured - of course - in China.

This year, we had a great season, and the lures were in short supply after a few weeks. The stores couldn't get them because the supplier couldn't get them. Apparently there is a 3 month lag between order by the lure company and delivery to the retail stores. The most productive color of Brand X was totally unavailable after the season began.

Ok... here's my question.

Wouldn't it be better for the lure company to make them in the US, and charge more? The lures would be available for people to buy, and that's gotta be good for the bottom line. What with the cost of roughwater boat, fuel, reels, downriggers, etc., anybody who can fish for salmon can afford to pay a lot more for a lure that is a proven producer.

Or... How about buying a shitload of the blank metal lures from China, and painting them in the US? The "hot" lure colors vary sometimes from season to season, so the company could respond quickly and put the new color on the store shelves. Painting isn't rocket science, so your labor costs could be fairly low.

This question applies all across the manufacturing sector. Wouldn't it be better to make stuff in the US and shorten the transit time, as well as allow the company to respond quickly to changes in demand?

I agree with you, but I don't think the myopic business sector can see it. Hope you could paint them yourselves!

Now...everything is assembly-lined in China.
I have a friend that makes custom lures for bass fishing--they are a work of art and I sincerely think that he could make a fortune if he did it full-time.
He can't leave his full time job and bene's to do it though.:(

we had healthcare like the rest of the countries in the industrialized world. i know i would go back into business if i did`t have to worry about healthcare and taxation on small business.

The design of that particular item - and the brand name that goes with it - most likely is the property of a Chinese company. This company gets subsidies, low interest loans & other economic support from the govt of China for the express purpose of dominating the markets they deal in. This company would have no interest at all in opening up a manufacturing plant in the US, no matter how great the demand is.

Started up in the '50s and still locally owned. And proud of it.

I cannot understand why they would do what they have done.

They may just buy it from a Chinese company & have them put the local company's name on it.

the fabric store and buy pink yarn

they may cost more but the quality would be better and supply would arrive sooner to the market.

this is a true story......
my daughter works at x plant that buys y from country i. part y is cheaper than y made in the usa but y made in i is poor quality and takes over a month to two months to arrive. there is a problem with y plant x can`t call up a us manufacturer and have them make a new y with in a few days to replace the bad part. the supplier from country i has engineers here in the usa just to deal with plant x`s quality issues.so how much money has plant x actually saved by buying part y from i?

this is what is happening across the country when a us manufacturer runs into quality or just in time supply issues from overseas suppliers.

One of the reasons that some companies are bringing production back to the US is the lead time.

Any surge in demand for whatever reason stresses the supply chain. Wholesalers and retailers run out of inventory and everyone awaits a ship to arrive in port.

This is a good reason to manufacture close to your market. Companies discover that whatever savings they enjoyed manufacturing abroad can be offset by lost sales with spikes in demand. Their customers are unhappy because inventory is not available and customers can be lost if they find other suitable products.

Some companies return to the US because of quality issues that can't be resolved. They run the same risk - that customers moved on to some other option.

The well managed companies with prudent management are manufacturing here and never believed the grass was greener than it is in the US.

save more money by manufacturing offshore or lose sales due to shocks to the supply chain. It seems that something simple like a fishing lure could easily be manufactured in America for a reasonable cost. The manufacturer of this fishing lure must have run numbers and made a different decision.

we'd take old soup spoons, cut the handle off, grind the end smooth, drill a hole in each end and it was good to go. Paint was optional. Caught quit a few big ones on them out on Lake Michigan.

One more thought, old spoons are really cheap at yard sales too.

These are spinners, right? They paint the spinning part before they put the lure together, so if they were to PAINT the lures in the US they'd have to MAKE them here too.

I think the greatest impediment to bringing lure manufacture to the US is environmental: they want the paint to dry real fast so they can get the lures into packages quickly, but to do that they've either got to use solvent-based paint (which requires air handlers and filtration) or heat-cured aqueous paint (which requires an oven). In China they can do pretty much as they please; in the US they've got to run their factory in a way that won't eat a hole in the ozone layer.