My misadventures in trying to be pro-America

Let me start off by saying that I'm not xenophobic nor am I racist. Anyone outside of the USA with an interest in our politics and economic struggles are familiar with our unemployment rate and the continued trend of moving manufacturing overseas. Anyone inside the USA is probably only a few degrees of separation from someone who has lost their job because of this.

I've been doing everything I can to purchase US made goods through US based suppliers with a focus on small business. In some cases the cost differences aren't too bad, and in others I pay through the nose, but I get warm and fuzzy doing it. I've been trying to do the same with electronics parts, and the responses I've been getting from American parts manufacturers has been terrible! Resistor company that doesn't return e-mail or phone calls, a transformer company that provides one sentence responses that can be summed up as a f$%K you and die, a connector company that refuses to sell direct even though their distributors don't carry the parts I'm looking for, and another company that is deceptive about the country of origin on specific parts. Do they want to make money? The companies I deal with overseas are very responsive and sweet as kittens, meanwhile, the attitude I catch locally is making me change my goals of supporting their business.

/rant

90% of my American business interactions make me realize why we're so left behind. We're not a polite, industrious, friendly people like we want to think we are. Most of us are jerks. That's strictly my opinion. Ymmv

gemini86 said:

90% of my American business interactions make me realize why we're so left behind. We're not a polite, industrious, friendly people like we want to think we are. Most of us are jerks. That's strictly my opinion. Ymmv

Click to expand...

I have to agree. This experience has me hyper sensitive about dealings with my customers and other people.

The real burn here is that at least one of the companies posts in this community so I expected a little more from them.

That problem is not unique to US.

Few years back I was designing a servomotor for low cost robotics application. It did not require special technology of sort. Something that any gearmotor manufacturer could knock on the fly. A standard planetary gearbox configuration with an off the shelf small 6V DC motor. I was quoted thousands of pounds for the prototype with a lead time of months here. I faxed a sketch to a guy in China who could barely say hello in English and did not even have e-mail. About two weeks later the prototype was dropped through my mailbox. Free of charge. I am very busy just now but I'll dig it out and post the photographs over the weekend.

I ran into the same problems trying to source powder coils for inductors.  I think on a general level the avg DIYer will always be low man out because of low purchasing power - we can't order a big enough quantity to make it feasible.  Why the Chinese seem to be willing to take on the smaller jobs is interesting but the trend lately seems to be moving away from that.  I don't know what their costs vs profit margin is but smaller businesses in the US are soaked in the worst way possible - too many hands in their pockets, and they're just sick of it.  I expect a less than amicable attitude.

I hate to sound negative toward supporting US made goods but it may not be doing any good.  I say support those who offer best quality at best price and give the best customer service and let the rest sort itself out.  The avg US consumer may be the biggest problem of all.  We willingly buy junk and don't seem to care that it's junk.  We buy a 60K diesel truck that gets 10 mi to the gallon and accept this as ok while that very same truck costs 30K in Thailand and gets 38 mi/gal. Sorry for the minor rant. I just think it's a 'state of the union' problem in the US right now. A 726:1 ratio reflects a lot of squeezing down the line.  Japan & Germany operate at a modest 12 and 14:1 ratio and I think China  is somewhere near there.

Nothing particularly American about those experiences. I've bumped into the exact same thing all over the place, be it manufacturers of PSU transformers, sticker print shops, powder coating, ordering special nuts and bolts, sourcing exotic pots. If you aren't ordering in large quantities the manufacturers don't have to care which is why some of them are just plain rude. "why did you even call here, stop wasting my time asking stupid questions" *click*.

The "best" scenario ever was with a transformer manufacturer who refused to set up a customer account because it would be "too laborious". Translated from accountant speak (tm) it meant the invoicing costs for one off custom order is so high that making the transformer order would be practically impossible in their system. And money was waved right on their face! Here, take it, I'll pay the extra account costs. They just didn't care because it wasn't a large quantity order.

I too am feeling the pain of trying to get anyone in the USA to "do" anything. No one is interested in my jobs. I even posted here in the classified section just to see if anyone would respond and no one did.

Machinists would rather go out of business then do a few parts for cash.
Painters would rather stay home then to have to paint a few parts.
Metal shops don't even want to hear about a one off chassis.

These people I have talked to were actually out of work! Not too busy for small jobs and such. They literally would tell me that it isn;t worth their time when I had cash in my hand.

No matter what anyone tells you Americans do not want to work.  They would rather sit out in the cold and blame someone else.

Maybe I am bitter cause I have been waiting for two months for some parts from my painter who has now gone MIA, with my parts!! So I am totally screwed.

Chuck

Then there are the exceptions, the small American companies that show how it should be done. I'll start with Jensen Transformers -- my dealings with them (always very small orders) have been exemplary.

One time I called up the company and Deane Jensen answered the phone, shot the breeze with me for 35 minutes. I learned a lot about transformers that day. He also gave me one of the greatest one-liners I ever heard: I asked why he didn't make output transformers for tubed power amps; he replied that he didn't want to build anything which would generate more than 85dB-SPL when you dropped it on your foot.

Peace,
Paul

my dealings with US companies have also been pretty bad, so much so that i try to avoid any dealings with the us now.
bad service can be found anywhere but i definitely found it worse in the US.

pstamler said:

Then there are the exceptions, the small American companies that show how it should be done. I'll start with Jensen Transformers -- my dealings with them (always very small orders) have been exemplary.

Click to expand...

I agree. Jensen's awesome.

Cinemag, Heyboer, and Mercury magnetics have all treated me like gold, too. McMaster-Carr is incredible and has been known to deliver crap to my doorstep at 10AM when I put the order in at 6PM the night before -- for NO extra cost. I could go on and on.

I have a long list of folks who treat me well, and I continue to do what I can for them. And not just my hobbies, but everything from a local butcher to a coffee shop to a dude who helps me with machining parts and fixing my motorcycle. That's the way it works.  Anyone who remembers when they could get great service everywhere, all the time, is either old as shit, or is misremembering things.

And, while there is no reason for rudeness when doing business, when folks don't want to do a one-off for you, you have to put yourself in their shoes. Think in terms of opportunity cost. Think in terms of the value of labor, time, and all the regulations that go into an industry like paint or electronics.

If someone doesn't want to machine a single chassis, even if they don't have other work, it is probably because they value their time more highly than they think you're willing to pay. Maybe it takes half a day to set up and make one chassis, and all day to make 50-100 more. That's the way CnC has changed machining. That means a one-off is $200 in labor costs, plus machine time and costs, materials, overhead... do you really want a $500 bare-bones chassis? If the guy quoted you $500 or more, would you bite? And when he delivered it, if there was the tiniest flaw, wouldn't you get bent out of shape and cost him all kinds of time to make you happy? Lots of folks don't think it's worth the hassle because they assume you aren't willing to pay.

I bet a lot of folks turning down one-off jobs are doing so because the price of doing things is distorted. If you're used to paying for a product from China, whose currency is artificially low and whose people would be paid less even without that extra gap, you start to think that things are cheap. When someone whose operating costs are based on $20/hr labor (which is really like $30-35/hr to the employer after paying all carrying costs) plus licenses and permits, certifications, insurance, all kinds of pollution and regulatory compliance costs, and the significantly higher costs of energy and real estate here, they can't come close. And when they quote their cost plus a reasonable profit margin, they'll just get berated by the customer who wants local and hand made, but wants to pay china and mass produced prices.

Add to that the fact that, if you're dealing with a salesman, he's probably on commission. Doesn't make money unless he sells, and the paper work could be the same to him if he sells one or 10,000.

I'm not excusing them. I'm just trying to understand their point of view. There's a real disconnect between value effort right now, and I believe it to be psychological. It's not just wal mart pricing distorting the expectations of consumers, either. You see it on the opposite side -- hiring.

Companies complain they can't find qualified workers, yet they don't have training programs and won't pay more money. If you can't find a worker for $10/hr, maybe you need to pay $15 or $20. And if you can't make a profit at that wage, neither can your competitors, so you either don't need the employee, or you need to rethink your business model. But this isn't happening, just like small companies aren't taking one off jobs even if they have nothing else going on. It's as though people expect the worst.

OK, now I just depressed myself.

sometimes I find US suppliers funny

ordered some electronic parts from www.digikey.de - they have a german site.
what I got as a response was:

I have received your order. I see that you are referencing the company 51XAudio, as this is the first time you are ordering for the company outside of individual, I will require some more information. What kind of company is this? Is this your own personal company? When you say your customers, do you know specifically who your end user is or is it a group of people like example musicians, etc?

Click to expand...

I told them 51xAudio is an Iran based company building war equipment and ordered the same parts to my private name ;D
the parcel arrived 3 days later 8)

Moose, good post. The costs, financial and regulatory, which are inflicted upon small ( all ) business here in the USA make it very difficult. And let's not forget, this is a Country that has a history of paying many industries to NOT produce, in order to keep prices artificially high.
I don't think paying a higher wage will necessarily mean finding a qualified worker. I see a trend where people are expecting higher and higher wages/benefits for doing less and less, with no skills and no desire to learn.

I haven't had so much trouble.

For our soon to come out microphone products a good bit of the products and services are locally done.

This includes:

CNC body/capsule  machining
Plating
Laser marking
custom transformer design and manufacturing

A few things are offshore sourced:

PC boards
connectors
shock mount /holders

In almost all cases we got rapid service and usually free prototypes.
Some things we keep inside...mostly punch press stuff like grilles.
Also backplate lapping, assembly, and testing.

Granted we are not hobbyists...but our orders are usually very small. Seldom over a couple thousand dollars.
Often much less.

We try to do the same thing as we make custom microphones, electronics, and machined assemblies
in small quantities.

Here's a funny one: we make a special industrial  microphone that is used for testing in chinese factories!

Many of us love rapid delivery of one off parts...as long as the customer realizes the costs involved.

Les
L M Watts Technology

pstamler said:

Then there are the exceptions, the small American companies that show how it should be done. I'll start with Jensen Transformers -- my dealings with them (always very small orders) have been exemplary.

One time I called up the company and Deane Jensen answered the phone, shot the breeze with me for 35 minutes. I learned a lot about transformers that day. He also gave me one of the greatest one-liners I ever heard: I asked why he didn't make output transformers for tubed power amps; he replied that he didn't want to build anything which would generate more than 85dB-SPL when you dropped it on your foot.

Peace,
Paul

Click to expand...

+1 Deane was passionate about audio performance and generous about sharing his knowledge (RIP), but that was some time ago. Jensen is a small company selling premium product to an enthusiast market, not mainstream.

Ok back on topic. It is perhaps unexpected for a community based on free design help to value work for hire as highly as for profit businesses do, but if you don't make a profit you don't exist very long.

Small one off projects, cost almost as much as 100x or 1000x to set up and run, so I perceive a disconnect between expectations and actual costs.

We are lucky in some segments of our food chain. Raw prototype PCBs seem pretty low cost, but trying to run small quantities through a contract MFR for assembly would quickly get burdened by tooling and set up charges.

2D sheet metal is almost automated using modern soft programmable cutters, but once that metal needs to be bent or welded, the overhead adds up with human touches.

I suspect the US does not have a corner on poor customer service, and about all we can do as customers is reward the companies that do good and try to avoid those who don't. OTOH as employees, and most of us are or have been, the shoe is on our foot to be gracious to all of our customers, either inside the company or outside. 

In my recent dealings with several small domestic US vendors, I have several anecdotes that would be humorous if they happened to somebody else. I won't bore you with the full list but here's one. A small face plate overlay company insisted on me giving them my shipper number so they could ship me a proof copy. I asked them to bill me and they said, it would cost $50 to generate an invoice. I demurred but asked that they send the proof copy surface, as I wasn't in a time rush. Sure enough it shows up the next day overnight service, and wrong.. So I give them my corrections and get them to promise that the next proof will be sent surface... again it comes in overnight delivery. The lady who was such a biotch about the invoicing, was sorry but of course she said it wasn't her fault, and would give me a credit.

However to counter that Digikey is one of the typical bad vendors, they recently allowed me to return a full reel of a few thousand SMT parts that I ordered in the wrong package footprint, after I had opened the reel so they couldn't sell it to somebody else as new. They gave me a full credit and sent the open reel to their cut down department so sell as cut tape. So they are on my short list of OK vendors.

Note: In my dealings with small companies, it doesn't help when they learn I am based in MS. They automatically assume that between the two of us, I must be the dumbass... 

The one general trend that I see, is huge price differentials between US companies and foreign companies in manufacturing friendly regions. Not to put a political spin on this, but everything I see coming out of our political leaders is damaging to small companies and supportive of large capitalist cronies and organized labor. Hopefully we can stop this trend soon. it is embarrassing to watch Greece and Italy pass new austerity budgets, while we haven't even bothered to formally pass our own (opposite of austerity) budget, kicking the can down road with one continuing resolution after another.. And the drunken pols want to increase spending and taxation. I don't expect any spending discipline until after the elections (maybe), or people stop lending to us cheaply (otherwise), like happened in Europe. 

JR 

JohnRoberts said:

Small one off projects, cost almost as much as 100x or 1000x to set up and run, so I perceive a disconnect between expectations and actual costs.

Click to expand...

Exactly!

I recently received a tour of a small local metal shop and it becomes obvious when you see the process that small jobs simply are not economically feasible.

Think of it this way.  Someone emails the shop looking for a small job quote (say 5 enclosures), they spend an hour working out a quote and checking drawings (assuming there are any), outside venders and give a quote of $500 per enclosure.  Then they never hear a word back and they are out that hour of work.  Rinse and repeat.  It won't take long before they start ignoring these requests.

I'm not saying that accounts for every bit of bad customer service, but there is another side to the story.

Mike

Think of it this way.  Someone emails the shop looking for a small job quote (say 5 enclosures), they spend an hour working out a quote and checking drawings (assuming there are any), outside venders and give a quote of $500 per enclosure.  Then they never hear a word back and they are out that hour of work.  Rinse and repeat.  It won't take long before they start ignoring these requests.

Click to expand...

Agreed on more intricate custom work like building an entire amp or other studio unit, or custom racking, etc.  However for something simple like a rack chassis a good metal fabricator should be able to give a rough quote pretty quickly.  I just recently spoke with one on an La2a style chassis.  He looked at some basic example chassis I brought him and looked at some drawings and pics - maybe 10 or 15 min and gave me a per unit cost.  I'd say same thing for painting a front panel.  I think it's too easy for some manufacturers to pad consulting costs when dealing with corporate clients and they may find the small guy upsetting right off the bat because they know he can't foot a huge (and non efficient) consulting fee.  If they're honest it should be a matter of shop rate per job.  I think the problem that others have been lamenting comes about in another reality.  Say shop rate is $75 per hour, now, how tough of an hours work is it in labor or thinking strain?  3 jobs come in, all 'one hour' jobs.  Two are quite involved relative to the 3rd which is a "piece of cake".  If shop owner can afford it he will probably take number 3 and focus on getting as many #3s as he can and avoid the rest even though they are actually profitable.  Sometimes those easier jobs can work out to getting paid double the standard shop rate.  Lazy or just normal human nature?

I hope to report back a happy ending on an La2a chassis inquiry to some local fabrication shops but I can see the writing on the wall.  I'm asking qty of 20 -50 initially with the understanding that it will be a long term business with repeat orders as sales dictate, so not a one off situation. Still may not be big enough to play ball like they're accustomed to.

I'm speaking strictly about general paint and metal fab shops.  I realize the small pro audio custom guys like Samar, emrr, Sowter and others care a great deal about quality and efficiency and should not have to suffer fools who waste their time.

Is it like the banks that want the big  [ volume  ] biz , and don't care about the little guy
[ or anyone , really ]  or you run into the little guy locally who is trying to get as much as he can
and you give into his greed trying to support local . It IS really tough these days to not buy something from
China , but if that's sending the local guys  [ who import ] a message , I'm still trying to do it as much as possible
by not going to known stores [ walmart ] or buying anything from China .

Interesting topic. My only bad experience with US companies so far is actually about quality. I don't want to go into details, because they are "good and famous".
It is very obvious that most companies want to deal big, and small orders are usually either impossible or expensive. Then there are quite a lot of companies that are so badly stuck in the past that I've sometimes had to fax or snail mail information about for example payments. UH.

But, best luck trying to avoid US when it comes to high tech. No way. Fortunately most of the companies have been great.

The only country I have actually tried to avoid is actually China, and for good reasons I think. How ever, I needed a lot of neodymium magnets, and since China is the only real source for them I decided to order directly and save about 30%. Wow, that was some experience. I was really taken care of, and got mail afterwards asking if everything was good etc.. But then, shouldn't all companies do this?

In Finland I have noticed many times, that small customers are actually lied to. If lead times don't hold all kind of crap is invented to explain the situation, and never ever the customer is called first, it is always customers duty to waste energy.

I love German mentality. Sometimes rude, but usually effective. I love Swiss quality. Always expensive but never fails. But perhaps my most "touching" experience was when a gentleman from Sifam called me to explain the whole tragedy of their wonderful double needle meters going out of production and offering me the last chance to get some of them. Perhaps I am a bit silly, yes, and OTOH I do love to place orders using fully automated  systems.....when they actually work.

Big business if effective and we as normal consumers "need" that, unfortunately. But as small business we do suffer from the demise of "cottage industry" and it is pretty obvious at least in Finland that those who still try to survive with their small companies might not be the smartest ones or the ones capable of producing anything of value or quality. It seems that somewhat sensible business model these days for small batches is something that works on the principle that customers provides good CAD drawings and the manufacturer has really spent some time to reduce the effort to get that design programmed and executed. This obviously requires some effort from "us". We have to be able to provide CAD drawings of high quality or manufacture everything in a workshop of our own or pray that someone in China would actually care to do a good job this time.

When I was temporarily dissappointed with a local machining company I sent the next designs to several companies around. ONE if them actually cared to reply. Good luck trying to survive now that the economy is going down. Actually very recently there was a doctoral dissertation here about the policy of preferring growth over profit, the idea being that when a company is big enough it will turn out to be profitable. The author was not very convinced about this.

Just my two unstructured Friday night pennies.