Bd C4's prices getting raised?

Tom-onator wrote: Chinese manufacturers work harder at making things "look the part" but the majority of their products fall miserably short when it comes to function...'mericans love bargain shopping and think they are actually getting a better deal by paying less for an inferior product.

There you go, the Chinese are supplying the American demand for cheap inferior products. Who's to blame? On the other hand, iphones are also assembled there and those certainly aren't cheap or inferior.

A Korean friend told me Hyundai had made quality, reliable cars in South Korea long before their changed brand perception in the states, but elected to build cheap cars for the US market in the 90's because they thought that's what the Americans wanted (well, who can blame them when Detroit was rolling out all those POS).

I'd rather have 'merica design or build the best products than buying 'merican just because, the latter will just ensure we'll lose our competitive edge over time.

china produces excellent goods when they WANT to, especially when the focus is on QC for foreign brands

conversely just because something is american made doesnt mean that its "reliable" either ... certain american made cars have not been reliable, not to mention the CCH alien fiasco

has anyone shown that their made in china C4s/X4s/C3s are more prone to failure or breaking apart than other cams made here?

if you dont want your chinese made cams, ship em to me .... ill find plenty of folks to dispose of them for ya

im a fan of bringing production back to the US ... just like having DMM cams being produced in wales ... if yr gonna pay good money for em might as well get ones that are produced in the 1st world

personally i think this "made in china" thing is very interesting psychologically ... many folks rant about it all the time ... until it comes to something they own and use ... then its perfectly fine

does anyone here thing that the made in china/bangladesh/vietnam dead bird clothing is cr@p am failure prone ... ~70% of dead bird is made in such places overseas

;)

Nivel Egres wrote: I can only speak for the clothing industry, where any time you buy an Asian-made bargain you are supporting sweatshops and child labour. Wages in China are up quite a bit over the last 10 years and working conditions have improved a lot. Which, of course, prompted many manufacturers to shift production to even cheaper areas such as Vietnam. New place, same shit.

That's not really true, production scale has more influence over cost than employee hourly rate. Again, to hold a higher level of QC you can't use slave labor. I'm sure there are some clothing manufacturers that do but I doubt any we're familiar with. Professional textile mills run lean operations and slave/child labor produces huge amounts of waste if there is QC standard.

bearbreeder wrote:just like having DMM cams being produced in wales ... if yr gonna pay good money for em might as well get ones that are produced in the 1st world

You ever been to Llanberis? :-)

SinRopa wrote: I'm not saying this is incorrect, but I can't find any mention of that on their investor relations website: blackdiamond-inc.com/phoeni…

http://www.mountainproject.com/v/mp-included-in-bds-strategic-plans-for-2015/109345269

Bill Belcourt announced it on the stock holder teleconference.

Nivel Egres wrote: I can only speak for the clothing industry, where any time you buy an Asian-made bargain you are supporting sweatshops and child labour. Wages in China are up quite a bit over the last 10 years and working conditions have improved a lot. Which, of course, prompted many manufacturers to shift production to even cheaper areas such as Vietnam. New place, same shit.

The shift is real, but we still get more than 3 times as many garments made in china than in vietname (who are still producing twice as much as bangledash).

Tom-onator wrote: Visit any harbor freight tool store for prime examples

Oh don't get me started.
There is nothing worse than going into harbor freight. I used to think it was the Verizon store, but HF gives them a serious run for their money.

Kyle Kienitz wrote: Oh don't get me started. There is nothing worse than going into harbor freight. I used to think it was the Verizon store, but HF gives them a serious run for their money.

I despise Harbor Freight's quality, however I did buy some 4' clamps for a project that were 10x cheaper. That being said, there's a place in this world for cheaper prices/one time use items and I think we can all agree that inferior quality does not belong in the climbing industry.

VVV Completely Agree Miike!

if you ever see a contractor working with harbor freight tools you want to keep a good distance from them

bearbreeder wrote:china produces excellent goods when they WANT to, especially when the focus is on QC for foreign brands conversely just because something is american made doesnt mean that its "reliable" either

^this. If c4s were anywhere close to harbor freight quality, they wouldn't have the rep they do today.... Kinda apples to oranges to compare c4s to harbor freight in the slightest in my opinion. We all know harbor freight is the bottom of the barrel, really the only thing to get there is a plastic bin at best.

i'd love to see someone QC test two random c4 cams - one made in america, one made in china... It's really not complicated to make a cam, i'd be pretty amazed if there was any difference personally.

I think most companies move their manufacturing plants overseas not necessarily for the benefit of paying their employees smaller wages but the benefit of not having to deal with the EPA and strict environmental policies. I'm not an expert but I bet there's a good bit of pollution coming from the manufacturing process of cams as well as iPhones.

The question I have is: I wonder when China is going to tighten up their environmental policies? And does that mean more manufacturing moving back to the US?

Dave T wrote:I think most companies move their manufacturing plants overseas not necessarily for the benefit of paying their employees smaller wages but the benefit of not having to deal with the EPA and strict environmental policies. I'm not an expert but I bet there's a good bit of pollution coming from the manufacturing process of cams as well as iPhones. The question I have is: I wonder when China is going to tighten up their environmental policies? And does that mean more manufacturing moving back to the US?

BD ships the finished parts to China for final assembly of the C4.

ATTN: Mods, can we move Econ 101 here to a different subforum?

It's very hard to generalize about the quality of good made in any given country, let alone two of the biggest in the world (USA and China). If everyone listened to anybody who had a bad experience with anything, no one would ever buy anything ever.

Also, who pays full price for anything anyway? I got all my BD trad rack pieces on sale 20% off and I was mad I wasn't getting even more of a discount.

even if you don't pay full price, the full price still affects the sale prices....