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That's the thing that drives me nuts about buying stuff manufactured in China. They'll make this amazing Remote Control Car, with good suspension, a battery th

That's the thing that drives me nuts about buying stuff manufactured in China. They'll make this amazing Remote Control Car, with good suspension, a battery that lasts half an hour, plenty of power, and just all around amazing. But then it'll break after a day because somebody saved 1/20th of a penny by speccing this impossibly thin wire the thickness of a human hair to hook that powerful battery to the powerful motor and inside the remote. They could have used actual wire-sized wire and had the most amazing product ever, for roughly zero more cost. (Possibly less, since surely it must cost _more_ to manufacture and solder micron-diameter wiring). It just makes no sense.

ebonnafoux 9mo ago
China is a 1.4 billion people country, more than US + Europe, so it is expected that there is a wild gap between high end product and low cost there.
mlrtime 9mo ago
You're not wrong, but there are 1000 of those rc cars, and maybe 20% have that feature you want, but everyone buys the cheapest because they don't know which has slightly better quality. Now go with Kyosho or Tamiya and you DO know it will be best in class, but at 10x the cost.
- detourdog 9mo ago
  We live in an age where we can make our own inflation. We can choose between 2 products one with realistic expectations at greater cost and one that just looks like the other product but didn’t go the extra mile to ensure the product will function.
detourdog 9mo ago
I felt the same thing with GE home appliances. They would last forever if someone didn’t choose to make some little plastic thing so cheap.
- hvs 9mo ago
  * ANY consumer-grade home appliances.
mattmaroon 9mo ago
It makes a lot of sense if you agreed on a price per unit before everything was locked in. If their profit is a flat price minus expenses, lower expenses is more profit. I ordered cups and did specify the thickness (based on a reference) of the plastic but didn’t specify how thick the boxes they shipped in should be. Guess what happened!
- JoshTriplett 9mo ago
  > It makes a lot of sense if you agreed on a price per unit before everything was locked in. If their profit is a flat price minus expenses, lower expenses is more profit. That's the thing that makes no sense to me. Wouldn't it work better for everyone involved, including the manufacturer, if they come back with a "here's exactly how we interpreted your spec and what materials we're using, including cases where we picked something you left unconstrained", and a corresponding price for using those materials, with the understanding that if you want different materials you get a different price, before they do any manufacturing whatsoever?
  - mattmaroon 9mo ago
    Yes but as OP pointed out, that requires you (or them) to spec it all out. And if you do, that’s how it works, and that’s probably exactly what happened when you buy any well-made product that was designed in America and built in China. But a whole lot of manufacturing relies on the OEM not just for the production but also some of the engineering. They probably don’t communicate to you all of the little parts you didn’t spec because they don’t think you want them to. A friend of mine worked for a major vacuum company that has 3 well-known lines. The very high end line is manufactured in the USA. The mid range line is fully designed here but manufactured there. The low end line they basically tell a Chinese OEM what it should look like and certain parts of it and let the OEM fill in the blanks. OEM makes vacuums for other brands too, they know what size wires to use where, why waste money on American salaries speccing all the tedium? OP is making something fundamentally different than what exists in some ways. It’s a lamp, but obviously it has some considerations other lamps don’t. Also hardware (as OP pointed out) has long development cycles during which prices can actually fluctuate significantly. You don’t want to lock in cost plus pricing or you’ll end up buying components from their sister company at astronomical prices. You might not have time to source 100 different parts from Chinese OEMs yourself. Etc. The whole thing is a complex guessing game. I’ve only manufactured approximately the simplest objects imaginable (stuff like gaskets and cups) and found it to be far more complex than I thought it would be. Manageable but something like a lamp I could see being a lot of unexpected work. I did not see, for instance, how much effort I had to put in speccing out the packaging for simple objects but then I found myself repacking things here.
alansaber 9mo ago
This stuff is inevitable as per the article, it's just whether there's a will to fix it for the next batch
rkangel 8mo ago
There's an extra point here about how quickly home grown stuff can go from drawing board to manufacture. Because it takes us months or years, we go through multiple iterations of prototyping and discover a lot of design issues. They seem to go through much less iteration because they can get stuff manufactured quickly and so don't always discover longevity issues like a too-thin wire.

ebonnafoux 9mo ago

China is a 1.4 billion people country, more than US + Europe, so it is expected that there is a wild gap between high end product and low cost there.

mlrtime 9mo ago

You're not wrong, but there are 1000 of those rc cars, and maybe 20% have that feature you want, but everyone buys the cheapest because they don't know which has slightly better quality. Now go with Kyosho or Tamiya and you DO know it will be best in class, but at 10x the cost.

detourdog 9mo ago
We live in an age where we can make our own inflation. We can choose between 2 products one with realistic expectations at greater cost and one that just looks like the other product but didn’t go the extra mile to ensure the product will function.

detourdog 9mo ago

I felt the same thing with GE home appliances. They would last forever if someone didn’t choose to make some little plastic thing so cheap.

hvs 9mo ago
* ANY consumer-grade home appliances.

mattmaroon 9mo ago

It makes a lot of sense if you agreed on a price per unit before everything was locked in. If their profit is a flat price minus expenses, lower expenses is more profit. I ordered cups and did specify the thickness (based on a reference) of the plastic but didn’t specify how thick the boxes they shipped in should be. Guess what happened!

JoshTriplett 9mo ago
> It makes a lot of sense if you agreed on a price per unit before everything was locked in. If their profit is a flat price minus expenses, lower expenses is more profit. That's the thing that makes no sense to me. Wouldn't it work better for everyone involved, including the manufacturer, if they come back with a "here's exactly how we interpreted your spec and what materials we're using, including cases where we picked something you left unconstrained", and a corresponding price for using those materials, with the understanding that if you want different materials you get a different price, before they do any manufacturing whatsoever?
- mattmaroon 9mo ago
  Yes but as OP pointed out, that requires you (or them) to spec it all out. And if you do, that’s how it works, and that’s probably exactly what happened when you buy any well-made product that was designed in America and built in China. But a whole lot of manufacturing relies on the OEM not just for the production but also some of the engineering. They probably don’t communicate to you all of the little parts you didn’t spec because they don’t think you want them to. A friend of mine worked for a major vacuum company that has 3 well-known lines. The very high end line is manufactured in the USA. The mid range line is fully designed here but manufactured there. The low end line they basically tell a Chinese OEM what it should look like and certain parts of it and let the OEM fill in the blanks. OEM makes vacuums for other brands too, they know what size wires to use where, why waste money on American salaries speccing all the tedium? OP is making something fundamentally different than what exists in some ways. It’s a lamp, but obviously it has some considerations other lamps don’t. Also hardware (as OP pointed out) has long development cycles during which prices can actually fluctuate significantly. You don’t want to lock in cost plus pricing or you’ll end up buying components from their sister company at astronomical prices. You might not have time to source 100 different parts from Chinese OEMs yourself. Etc. The whole thing is a complex guessing game. I’ve only manufactured approximately the simplest objects imaginable (stuff like gaskets and cups) and found it to be far more complex than I thought it would be. Manageable but something like a lamp I could see being a lot of unexpected work. I did not see, for instance, how much effort I had to put in speccing out the packaging for simple objects but then I found myself repacking things here.

alansaber 9mo ago

This stuff is inevitable as per the article, it's just whether there's a will to fix it for the next batch

rkangel 8mo ago

There's an extra point here about how quickly home grown stuff can go from drawing board to manufacture. Because it takes us months or years, we go through multiple iterations of prototyping and discover a lot of design issues. They seem to go through much less iteration because they can get stuff manufactured quickly and so don't always discover longevity issues like a too-thin wire.