CHeap Chinese Multitool

[Peter Atwood]

I was in a convenience store today, waiting in a slow line. Amongst the piles of novelty crap at the checkout was a cheap Chinese POS multitool. Naturally I picked it up and took a closer look.

The first thing I noticed was that it was a blatant ripoff of a Leatherman. It was sort of Wave style in miniature. The pliers were surprisingly good though, needlenose with a wirecutter, standard fare and they appeared fairly sturdy.

The tools were accessible with the pliers in the closed position. On one side there was a tiny phillips, small blade, flat screwdriver and mini saw blade. The tools were actually quite nice looking but I'm sure the steel was garbage. I noticed that I couldn't completely open the tools as something was wrong with the action. But they did snap shut really nicely.

The other side of the handle had a LED flashlight in it. It looked like the battery was some sort of weird small size and I couldn't get it to work except intermittently.

All in all the thing was so CLOSE. That's what I couldn't get over. For $4.99.......Unbelievable.

Many thoughts come to mind: Why couldn't they have made the darned thing right instead of cheesing out. If they had pursued a real market instead of the novelty market then they could have had a hell of a nice product for $20. Why would someone buy this thing when it is so obviously a POS? What's wrong with consumers in this country? Why does anyone buy the tons of cheap crap coming out the orient or anywhere else. I mean why even bother making something that you know is going to fall apart and be thrown away. WHy waste your time ? Where's the sense of pride in craftsmanship? If you know your art history you know that the Chinese are famous for centuries of incredible craftsmanship.

It's sad and so wasteful. And I think that going beyond the economic implications of $5 multitools and the obvious intellectual property infringement, the proliferation of these kinds of cheap goods reflects poorly on both our cultures.

 

[MelancholyMutt]

One. The concept of quality in an export product is not high on their list of priorities. The Chinese can make quality stuff, but if they're going to do so, they are sure as hell gonna keep it within their own borders. One example is the Chinese AK's I've been told that the AK's they keep for their military have better tolerances and are better made than those made for export.

Two. Why bother making a quality product when the phrase "made in China" already turns off most consumers. Since is it more difficult for most Chinese factories to retool and retrain their workforce to make a quality product, it would actually cost more, in spite of cheaper labor, to make a high quality product.

Three. Chinese manufacturers already make a lot of quality products that are repackaged and re-exported through countries like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Some are simply repackaged, some require final assembly from the contracting companies in their home nation before final export.

 

[yobbos1]

So... are you saying we have no real way of knowing if we are buying Chinese made products? They could be manufactured in China from scratch and shipped to Taiwan or Japan for final assembly and basically mislabelled to mislead consumers who don't wish to purchase Chinese made products for whatever reason.

 

[MelancholyMutt]

I'd venture to say that most electronic equipment that come from southeast Asia have components made in the "People's Republic of China". Please keep in mind that Taiwan is still the "Republic of China", so when you see made in china, it can actually come from one of those two places. However, most of the time, Communist Chinese products will specify that it comes from the PRC.

I recently picked up a trade publication while I was in Taiwan and noticed a few articles about German, Swiss and Belgian companies that have put full steam into projects which take European machinery and Factories, run by European Managers and Foremen(or women) in the PRC, and worked by local Chinese labor trained by European trainers, manufacturing components which are assembled either in China, or in the "home country". Now, depending upon the laws of the "home country", the manufacturer may or may not slap a label that says (for example) "Swiss Made". As a matter of fact, Swiss law states the required percentages of a watch that must be manufactured in Switzerland so that the watch can be labelled "Swiss Made", or Geneve. This means that a certain percentage may be manufactured elsewhere. Common sense says that chances are, they are not going to turn to Germany, France or the US to make these parts, but to where labor and costs are cheaper.

Now, to say that parts are manufactured in China and assembled in another country and marked as made in that country, is a fraud and deliberate mislabelling, is akin to unreasonable thought.

If the metal comes from ores in africa, does it require a "made in Africa"? What if the technology is developed in Germany? and the plastic molded in Thailand, the wires produced in Macau and the doohickies molded in Korea and printed in Taiwan? In the world of international business and high tech manufacturing, it is not unusual for an object, especially electronic equipment to have components made in over a dozen or more countries.

Think of it, even the most Xenophobic consumer dumps the majority of his or her money overseas. Makes me chuckle.
However, not to worry... We as Americans and First world nations cannot live the luxurious life that we do, without this happening. These other nations dump those dollars right at us, buying military goods, and McDonald's hamburgers at inflated prices. It's a vicious circle of exploitation, and we're the ones who are benefitting.

 

[DaveH]

MM,

This should probably be moved to politics, but, I only disagree with you on one thing.

We used to benefit from this kind of world economy, but now that we have lost many of the relatively well paying production jobs and replaced them with relatively lower paying service jobs.

 

[Manji]

Originally posted by yobbos1
So... are you saying we have no real way of knowing if we are buying Chinese made products? They could be manufactured in China from scratch and shipped to Taiwan or Japan for final assembly and basically mislabelled to mislead consumers who don't wish to purchase Chinese made products for whatever reason.

this has been going on forever, and not just with china, stuff made in other asian countries like malaysia, and places like mexico and such, and btw if you can't tell the difference then it doesn't really matter then does it

 

[MelancholyMutt]

Originally posted by DaveH
MM,

We used to benefit from this kind of world economy, but now that we have lost many of the relatively well paying production jobs and replaced them with relatively lower paying service jobs.

Well, that's only looking at one side of the coin... the other is that we now need fewer dollars to pay for all the cool things we want to have. For example, a Television/VCR unit is only $119, or approximately 2 days wages as opposed to $500 or more.

Another part of the arguement is that we collectively, cannot cut it as a manufacturing nation due to our unwillingness to accept low wages. Higher wages mean higher priced items, means lower sales, means lower profits, means higher unemployment. Although one can argue that higher prices mean higher wages which allows more money to be spent on these goods, the truth is, when one job is gone, another will come around to take it's place. It's sort of a Darwinistic equilibrium. Whether or not that one guy will be qualified to fill that new position is another story, but somehow, there is an entire equilibrium to it... every fluctuation will create its ripple effect and there will be benefits as well as problems.

As for this discussion being moved to politics, every discussion into macro-economics is political. There's no avoiding it. However, the explanation on why a particular knife is a POS is that the economic and political climate dictates that the knife be a POS.

 

[Peter Atwood]

MM, I'm not opposed to a global economy per se, especially since we seem to be inevitably heading towards it. And I'm not opposed to change which is also inevitable. But I don't see any of this benefiting us right now. I think Americans are going to lose a lot because of these new economic trends. Of course, the argument is easily made that we have had an unusual and artificially good economy ever since WW2 when the world's industrial complex was destroyed and we were the ones with our factories intact. If you go back 100 years the US was basically what we would think of now as a third world country albeit with an advanced political system.

But you haven't addressed my questions. Why make the POS knife? Why would anyone buy a knife that is so inferior that it doesn't work right at the store?

What America has that is so valuable that other cultures do not have is the ability to innovate. All the Asian countries seem to do is copy us. The Chinese had gunpowder for 1000 years or whatever but did nothing with it except make fireworks. It took Europeans to come up with the idea of adding projectiles for warfare.

I'm praying that we will find a way through the current changes but I think it's going to be rough.

 

[JamesA]

Originally posted by Manji
this has been going on forever, and not just with china, stuff made in other asian countries like malaysia, and places like mexico and such, and btw if you can't tell the difference then it doesn't really matter then does it

It certainly matters to me. I'd much rather have my money going to the USA than elsewhere. If it has to go elsewhere, I'd much rather have it going pretty much anywhere that isn't China than to China. Regardless of whether I can't see a difference in the products.

 

[Peter Atwood]

Well, my wife has offered an explanation that seems somewhat plausible. According to her, the novelty multitool is not really supposed to be functional. It is merely a symbol to be bought by the masses of people in this culture who have no real need for a working tool. But these same people who are living in a world where they haven't been raised using tools and who have everything done for them in their comfortable suburban homes still feel the need to identify with the image of the resourceful handyman. SO they buy a POS knife or tool so they can feel like they've done something to achieve that. She thinks that many of these guys who work in offices doing nothing called real work are secretly craving masculine identification and they can't really get it all by buying SUVs and working out at the gym.

Interesting perspective whether you buy it all or not. I think there'e some truth in it.

 

[MelancholyMutt]

Tend to use American and European tools when they feel that certain tasks are important to them. The POS, although available in SE Asia, are generally exported and your wife it totally right. That is their market, along with those who need such a tool but cannot spend that kind of money on quality.

Why the People's Republic of China produces them is that they sell, along with all the other reason's we've discusses.

How it affects our economy, is another story.

I think that our economy suffers for several reasons. You can't list them in any order, nor can you assign any weight to each factor, but here goes...

Trade Protection Laws
Favorable Trading Statuses
Human greed
Unions
Consumer Interest groups
Governments
Foreigh Aid
Welfare
Drugs
Alcohol
Religion

The list goes on and on.

Essentially, the best analogy I can think of is...

Trying to predict, control or even analyze international economics is like filling a basketball with different size and weight marbles, and trying to hit it with a baseball bat into a hoop, the entire time standing on a moving Flatbed truck, across a 6 lane highway full of moving 18 wheelers, at the same time the hoop is mounted sideways on a Volkswagon Beetle on the third lane of traffic, travelling in the opposite direction.

Gee, I'm confused

 

[MelancholyMutt]

Originally posted by JamesA
It certainly matters to me. I'd much rather have my money going to the USA than elsewhere. If it has to go elsewhere, I'd much rather have it going pretty much anywhere that isn't China than to China. Regardless of whether I can't see a difference in the products.

I'm no fan of China, but I wonder why you won't buy from China?

I resist buying from Arab nations, but as the entire world's manufacturing or transportation is run on Arab oil, if you were to buy an American Flag, made from American cotton, printed with American ink, from a mom and pop store in anytown USA, a big chunk of that money is going to some guy in the middle east.

Don't you realize that no matter the differences, as long as they are not idealogical, Trade is what creates peace and harmony.

Take Germany and Japan for instance. They hated the US after the War, but you give them a market as well as consumer goods and after a few decades, the kids are more American than many of us here.

Give China a taste of what conspicuous consumption is. Let them become reliant upon the American market. Let them enjoy the strength of the American dollar and sooner rather than later, they will become as friendly as Canada. Make capitalism their priority and human rights violations will fall by the wayside. They will trade with Taiwan, instead of threatening to invade every week. They will test new cars instead of nukes. If you want to keep them as a viable military threat, then you refrain from trading with them.

Let's look at Germany and Japan again. Germany rolled into Czechoslovakia in '39 because he needed natural resources that were taken by the French under the demands of war reparations. The Pearl Harbor attack was prompted by American trade embargos that took place leading up to the attack. Lack of trade and economic prosperity makes people hungry and desperate. It makes them belligerant. To take the heat off themselves, Politicians must distract the public, and what better way to better the economy as well as distract the puclic than war?

Another example... the Cuban Embargo... what has that accomplished? Crappy cigars for upwards of fifty bucks a pop.