On the weekend my six-year-old son, Willis, was investigating his latest acquisition, a Ben10 toy (for those of you who don’t have sons, nephews or grandsons, Ben 10 is a cartoon character and the best thing ever according to most boys under the age of about eleven). So, Willis was examining his new favourite thing (favourite until the next craze arrives anyway … roll on the Batman movie!) when he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Dad! This toy says ‘Made in China’ on the bottom. It’s made in China, Dad!’ (Gasp! Shock! Horror!).
‘So is everything,’ I told him … ‘so is everything’. And you know what? Eventually everything will be. That is until Vietnam becomes the new China, and China becomes the new Taiwan, and Taiwan becomes the new Japan.
I am sure you can appreciate just how hard it is manufacturing products in Australia, competing with not only all the other manufacturers in Australia, but with everyone who can make it for less wherever they are located.
In years gone by the low quality of imported products made buying local the wisest choice. Then as overseas quality improved, the time delays with importing made it easier to buy Australian – if you couldn’t wait 14 weeks for your product to arrive, you needed to find a local solution.
But things are getting faster and better overseas … and therefore tougher for Aussie factories. One of our suppliers, Zambelli, makes top-end fashion shirts right here in Marrickville. Their fabrics come from countries all over the world, including Italy, Spain, Portugal, and oh … China (of course). But they make their shirts here. Their quality is fantastic and we have used them several times over the years when we wanted to create serious shirts for serious clients who really value what their staff and clients look like. Every time I visit Zambelli, they tell me how tough the competition is, and how hard they have to work to convince people that their expertise and speed is worth the slightly extra expense of an Australian made shirt (because I am a convert to their products, I just nod sagely and agree that the world is indeed going to pieces).
Eventually though (crystal ball all warmed up) they will probably be forced to move production offshore and simply become a brand not a factory … and most people probably won’t notice the transition. Last year, for example, Australian Fine China stopped making their Fine China in Australia … yet oddly enough they are still called Australian Fine China. Perhaps eventually they’ll just follow the acronym boom and become AFC, pandering to the apparent pressure for every business to shorten its name to three letters … I call this growing trend the BOME (Bane of My Existence)! What happened to using actual words, which describe what a business does, where it’s from or what it stands for?
There is a snippet in a Diane Keaton movie called Mad Money where she is looking for a job and being ‘middle aged’ isn’t helping. In one phone call she is asked, ‘Haven’t you heard of outsourcing?’ to which she replies, ‘If I move to India do I have a better shot at getting this job?’. Yep, pretty much.
Anyway … the news flash from today is that one of our suppliers, Buckingham Pewter in Perth (www.pewter.com.au), who has been making key rings and medals for 30 years is closing down, and I have to admit that I am probably to blame. Okay, well maybe it’s not entirely my fault, but their quality was exceptional, and they even offered free freight from Perth, which made them seem local, and in many cases it would have been just as easy to propose an Australian-made product to a client rather than an imported product, but I didn’t. I didn’t always use them, and so a piece of history goes. The funny thing though is that in some cases, it was cheaper to buy from them than overseas. And it was always faster. But we didn’t always use them, and now they’re gone.
So, for Australian options, what’s left? As far as promotional products are concerned, what does Australia do really well?
Decoration is definitely one of our strong points in local industry. You just can’t beat the speed and certainty with which logos can be applied locally. In fact, I’d say that about 80% of the promotional products we stock are imported (from China) without decoration, and then made available for clients to have decorated here. This availability of undecorated stock gives clients a lot of freedom of choice – if you want small quantities, you can usually have them. So if someone wants half a dozen lime green shirts with their logo, they can generally get them relatively quickly and easily. If you wanted that same product, created from scratch offshore in that quantity, you’d need to blackmail someone or sell your first-born to make it happen – and then you’d still have to wait for it to arrive.
So for great quality, relatively ‘last minute’ decorated items, Australian is often still the best option. But for the well-organised client, wanting larger orders of custom stock, it really might make more sense to go offshore. The only way to know for sure is to consider both options for each project you have and ask which alternative will work best for you.
If you’re concerned about keeping local businesses afloat, find out what the Australian options are, or if it’s possible to have even part of your project completed on home soil – you might just be surprised about exactly what’s possible to have produced locally. And remember, choosing to go local today might just mean that you’ll make it possible to have the option of choosing it again in the future.
