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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Made in the USA...

Manufacturing jobs and production in general has started to become replaced by the service industry jobs as far as the US is concerned. I'm very proud of the fact that I was born into a family that earns their living through production. My family owns a tool and die shop. Seeing all of the new equipment they buy as they expand and grow is exciting to me (nerd). It's like I'm watching a live version of "How It's Made".

Custom tool and die machine shops are incredibly nice to be around. The ability to produce pretty much anything you can imagine out of metal with precision tolerances within a fraction of the width of a strand of hair is truly astounding.

I applaud Red for keeping it in the USA. :}
 
As a Canadian I am obviously not patriotic toward the U.S.A. (and like most Canadians am not really much of a flag waver period) I do, however, have a real problem with us, in the West, profiting off of what amounts to slave labor. "Made in the U.S.A." doesn't just mean made in the U.S.A., it means made by people who's work conditions are reasonable, who's lives are not put at risk, who are free to leave at any time. I always buy, whenever possible, "made in a Western Country with a good notion of human rights for all its citizens", whenever possible.

Kudos Jim, Cinevate, Kessler Crane and others for truly walking the walk.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
As a Canadian I am obviously not patriotic toward the U.S.A. (and like most Canadians am not really much of a flag waver period) I do, however, have a real problem with us, in the West, profiting off of what amounts to slave labor. "Made in the U.S.A." doesn't just mean made in the U.S.A., it means made by people who's work conditions are reasonable, who's lives are not put at risk, who are free to leave at any time. I always buy, whenever possible, "made in a Western Country with a good notion of human rights for all its citizens", whenever possible.

Kudos Jim, Cinevate, Kessler Crane and others for truly walking the walk.
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This is something I think we can all agree with.
 
To me, this is an awesome accomplishment and what makes Jim and Co. a true real life inspiration. I don't remember where but someone suggested a documentary about Red, and I completely agree. Red: Made in America. Congratulations Red Team.
 
Kristin Stewart said:
Denizhan, if the Euro zone is riskier than ever, why is your country, Turkey, doing everything they can to get into it ? USA economy will probably recover, like Argentina recovered, but there will be a lot of left-overs... There are already a lot of left-overs, but be honest, the cinema people don't even know about them, they live on another planet. When I say that the cinema business is a quite a small world, I was more referring to camera manufacturers in terms of quantity, not about all the other jobs.
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That's a scary thought:eek:

Oh, I certainly hope the U.S. economy will not recover like the Argentine economy. Hyper inflation, corruption on almost every level of government (Aduana, AFIP, Police etc etc)..... In fact I'm not so sure the Argentine economy actually "recovered" at all.

I don't think you can even compare the two nations and their economies.
 
Jannard said:
We pride ourselves in the fact that we do almost everything in CA. That is rare these days. We can only hope that other companies will realize that it is possible to make things here.

Jim
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Cool, let's hope the Schizophrenic state govt you have doesn't punish you for it. CA has gotten a reputation for being very business unfriendly.
 
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Magic Pixies

Magic Pixies

Hey! nobody noticed that Magic Pixies in EPIC camera are made in Canada!

Graeme is living in the Capital City of Canada there.


Andrew
 
Jannard said:
We pride ourselves in the fact that we do almost everything in CA. That is rare these days. We can only hope that other companies will realize that it is possible to make things here.

Jim
Click to expand...

I wish you could convince Apple of that.
 
I wouldn't blame any company seeking to maximize profits by going where the cheap labour and materials are. But I think what Jim Jannard is doing by keeping as much production in the US as possible is admirable. And personally I do have a problem with stuff made in China, its often poorly made and employees are often underpaid.

Peter Schiff recently pointed out that Ford was making cars in the US at the beginning of the century, no heavy government regulations and the workers if paid in inflation adjusted terms were making 2,500 dollars a week. Red/Oakley in some ways reminds me of Ford. I wonder what Jim Jannard thinks about Government regulations, help or hindrance?

Its a big responsibility but I think it would be great for companies like Oakley to start a movement of buy American. Just like my country (UK) should. Otherwise the West is going to find itself broke in a matter of years.
 
Just a thought, 13 minutes x 8 workers = 1.75 worker-hours per epic.

Let's say he pays really well and Wages + Benefits + taxes + overhead came to $100 an hour. That's only an extra $175 per Epic to assemble in the US.

I would be more than happy to pay a 0.5% premium on cost to have it assembled in the US if it means more jobs. (Visa/Mastercard add 3% to the cost of everything.)
 
Great stuff is great stuff regardless of where it's assembled, and it comes from all over the world.
However, there are a lot of good reason NOT to outsource production. Ongoing developments, quality control, intellectual property protection, security, and the cost of having to ship your own products back here, these are real factors every manufacturing company has to weigh out.
And as we dillute and devalue the Dollar to death by dumping out more baseless or borrowed currency to pay our debts, the US Dollar falls in relation to the Euro and Yen and everything else. This is why the price of gold has tripled in 5 years, regardless of the boom increase in mining. The Dollar was falling through the floor.

End result: Imported stuff is more expensive, and it's actually a better deal to make it here. And it's fun. Just ask Jim.

I notice that the new subcompact Chevy Sonic will be assembled in Michigan, instead of Korea, like the Aveo it replaces.
We CAN make stuff here. We just kind of forgot how.
 
My information is that the annual turnover rate for electronic product assembly labor in Shenzen is about 30%. It's a fast-paced market and people are chasing higher salaries- nothing wrong with that- but it's not easy to get consistent work done there. Even though labor can be 30x cheaper (!) in China than in USA by the hour, if you have something complex (especially, both complex and also changing/upgrading over time) and the labor fraction of your product is low, I think Made in USA can make a lot of sense. Obviously, Jim knows all this- I'm just agreeing with him :-).

As for the larger picture, I think we need a lot more folks like Jim (and products like he makes).
 
Labor costs and QC issues (and IP theft) aside, increased energy costs have impacted the transportation sector to the point that puts all those cheap labor benefits on the tipping point. Red has a very high priced and very small product in the cameras and lenses they make- so amortizing shipping wouldn't be a big deal (Provided they could consistently fill up at least a 20ft container with product every 2 weeks). But in the bigger scheme of things-- the future promises even higher transportation costs. So manufacturers should think seriously about making the distance between factory and end user as short as possible. Nothing sucks the wind out of slim profit margins faster than a few round trip tickets to China to babysit your product line. De-centralized manufacturing should be a sector to watch here in the US in the future. Jim has always been ahead of the curve- I'm not surprised he's ahead on this front.
 
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