Don't forget, Black Diamond laid off much of the Utah engineering staff and their climbing cams will now be made in China... Not sure what other gear is taking that fate. Looks like it's Metolious Master Cams for me now.
Answering my own question: looks like it. They brought it back in 2015 and are going back overseas in 2019.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2400138/black-diamond-layoffs-...
https://companyweek.com/articles/as-black-diamond-bolts-to-c...
As another example - Jorgenson Pony clamps were made in Chicago until they closed down (like 15 years ago). They're the gold standard for woodworking clamps. Solid as a rock. The company announced they were re-making clamps. In China. At the world's largest clamp making plant.
They're garbage now. Materials are cheaper. The QC is nowhere near as good as they used to be. The price is more, even adjusted for inflation, than what they were when they were Chicago made - because people are buying the trusted brand name and getting burned for it.
It's just sad. I can't imagine that I would ever trust something like climbing gear to outsourcing. No thanks.
This is why the father to son family business model may prove more enduring.
If their comp package is weighted towards the five year term, they absolutely care about five years from now.
I'd like to add: there is no incentive for it either, shareholders want returns NOW, and so they want CEOs to act in their interest NOW. Most shareholders aren't looking at their "ownership" stake with compassion for employees at the company, or any form of responsibility to other stakeholders, but solely for their own bottom line.
I know this is the received wisdom, but as a shareholder, I emphatically do not want this. I want long-term value, as I am a long-term investor. I hate that I have to watch out for shady things like this and adjust my holdings accordingly.
Many of the biggest shareholders are major pension funds with 30 to 50 year time horizons. They absolutely do NOT want "returns NOW" with the implicit assumption that future quarters don't matter.
That is true but it is also true that they can’t risk waiting 30 years only to find their investment is worthless. Hence the insistence on quarterly reporting.
I understand that it's rational behavior for someone driven exclusively by money, but that's an important qualification. Most people are not money robots, so they aren't given these jobs.
Generally, a non-founder CEO is a ferociously competitive person--probably to the point of being pathological. They often "play poker" in situations where there is very little upside to doing so.
Great salespeople are often the same way, they simply can't turn it off.
You are asking a leopard to change his spots after he has started eating the antelope.
That was precisely the parent comment's point.
But it shouldn't be a strong incentive, right? Getting fired from a CEO position is fine, you're almost certainly set for life. I understand this is sort of a circular argument, because anyone who doesn't buy into this incentive structure won't be hired as CEO, but my point is that somebody who is willing to go along with this system isn't really behaving rationally in the normal sense of the word.
The behavior won't change until the incentives do.
What sense of "hold up" are you using here, "support" or "delay?"
Yes I have purchased climbing equipment on Amazon but I always felt bad about it.
https://blog.weighmyrack.com/black-diamond-manufacturing-pro...
Whereas a manufacture in another country might say: "For that little money, I won't do the job.", in China the answer is more like "For that little money, I'll do the job [but I'm going to rip you off, and for how little you're paying, you should already know you're going to get ripped off.]"
Got any links for a person to learn more about this cultural difference?
They broke on my first really long hike. 1/3 of the way into a 72 mile route..
That might be why
You're seriously underestimating how hard it might to to engineer and test even something as seemingly simple as a walking stick. These are lightweight, high-tech materials we're talking about (carbon fiber), which even SpaceX gave up on for their latest spacecraft. They're also collapsible/foldable. Simply put, this is harder than you think it is.
Anyway I'd think production/manufacturing and quality assurance would be more to blame, particularly if the same products used to perform better than now.
Designing the walking stick is simply the start. The problem is that you specified some really expensive materials with exotic manufacturing requirements that your supplier probably doesn't understand unless they are in aerospace.
Of course, aerospace manufacturers are ferociously expensive, and your customer can't really tell the difference if you are 1 or 2% less effective, but they can tell if you are 10% cheaper, so you start downgrading your manufacturing.
And then the problems start. The new manufacturer probably doesn't understand exotic materials as well, or they would be an aerospace supplier charging you more money. So, maybe they don't apply a cross layer, maybe they change the binding agent, maybe they use a cheaper material.
How do you, as the manufacturer, know?
You would have to put people on quality assurance analysis, but those are valuable engineers.
For a product that is $200. Max. For a company that has a revenue of roughly $100 million a year and basically no profit.
So, go find a company that charges $500-$1000 for your sticks and creates an actually good product, or suck it up and buy the Chinese crap.
I'm not sure if I see what's wrong with that. Like it or not, electronics manufacturing is centered around China and the APAC region. Trying to set up manufacturing outside that region, especially for a company that doesn't specialize in electronic goods, simply doesn't make sense.