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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
It ain't El Cap, Oregon
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Nov 13, 2011 - 12:21pm PT
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Thanks Theron... Words from the wise!
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laughingman
Ice climber
Seattle WA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 01:33pm PT
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China's metal quality is horrible. Learned this from raw experience. I refuse to buy non domestic metal and I buy 110,000 pounds of aluminum anually. The steel I make cam hooks out of is domestic also. To be completely fair the ingot that comes in is some times partialy foriegn but the alloying and proccesing are done in the US. The foreign mills don't hold tight tolerances on the alloying elements or the proccessing.
True I suspect they might not use chinese metals in the production of the cams.
Also I am as sad as anyone that they moved production to china. I like when things are made in the USA.
Death of US manufacturing has been a long painful and slow process ( extremely exacerbated by globalism).
If one wants to make a statement to DB go buy a competitors cams. Metolius, Wired Bliss and European manufacturers (DMM, wild country) all make very good cams.
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MTucker
Ice climber
Arizona
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Nov 13, 2011 - 02:54pm PT
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GrahamJ
Anybody ever heard of a BD cam failure?
Yep.
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go-B
climber
Habakkuk 3:19 Sozo
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Nov 13, 2011 - 03:26pm PT
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The China ones work better in overhangs, because there manufactured upside down!
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GhoulweJ
Trad climber
El Dorado Hills, CA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:00pm PT
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I think this is an interesting topic for STopo:
Made in China:
lowers price big time so dirtbag lifestyle is easier.
Jobs to China make it harder for said dirtbag to make a buck to fill the fuel tank on his van.
China manufacturing is an environmental disaster. Air, water, land / soil... They just destroy it all.... They have enough people, they are just disposable.
On the flip side, you could say we avoided some pollution by sending the work to China.
Oh wait, the ship that brought here was bad, and so was the truck that brought the container from the port to the BD warehouse.
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MTucker
Ice climber
Arizona
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:16pm PT
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Made in China:
lowers price big time so dirtbag lifestyle is easier.
WTF? Bullshit!!
When did Black Diamond/Patagonia/NorthFace lower their prices?
Never!
The American companies actually have better prices on a lot of goods.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:26pm PT
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I though the Americans had learnt at least a little bit about the perils of knee-jerk nationalism, isolationism and protectionism in the last hundred years.
Please, we haven't learnt a damn thing since we tossed you Brits out and you know it. LOL
Moving along, BD hasn't had any Mfg issues from moving to China. Their cams are real well made to the point where you can't tell a Chinese one form a US one. I've been trying to personally move to non-Chinese made goods, but try to find a pair of shoes or pants, and I won't be tossing my Camalots away either. Metolius and Wired Bliss make great products, I own both, and would prefer to fall on either of those before any Black Diamond Camalot, no matter where the Mfg location was. So I'm not buying any cams from anyone (until Wired Bliss comes out with the 5,6,7 and 9's). Mostly as a guy can only own so many cams:-)
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:27pm PT
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if you set up shop in china, you need a full time QC guy from the states, otherwise they will often change the game in the middle of the street without you knowing, then you have lost customers. So is it really cheaper?
Once you burn a customer, they never forget. And then the word of mouth takes over and all of a sudden you are out of biz for reasons known only to the chineese. it is hard to get somebody good to QC a room full of smoke and 1000 people working under a 100 watt light bulb.
another way to lose is having your whole product copied while it is being made in china.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:39pm PT
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Huge difference between "Lower Prices" and "Increased Profits".
Regardless of what the Corporate PR departments try to get you to believe, "Out Sourcing and "Off Shoring" are not done with any consideration of or to the US consumers. As far as the spurious notion that pollution is better over there than here s concerned, well the sentient humans are realizing that pollution is a global concern not just a local one. I am sure that appropriate analysis will show that all this "Out Sourcing and "Off Shoring" is a net increase in global pollution and a significantly heavier carbon footprint for these outdoor adventure companies.
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:44pm PT
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fat@$$, that is a totally BS point: plenty of manufacturing in Germany, which has pretty stringent pollution standards too (probably much better than ours for power generation). Bottom line is, standards for treatment of human beings, the environment, and property (whether real or intellectual) in China are the absolute lowest of any major economy, and I think it's a bad idea to support that with our dollars. Quality and safety issues also are a concern, but that's the big one.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:50pm PT
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Unauthorized knockoffs of products made by BD and other reputable manufacturers seem a bigger concern than QC for anything they have made in China, under their direction. (I'll leave aside the related environmental, human rights, and economic issues.) IIRC, both BD and Petzl have been stung by crappy knockoffs made in Ukraine (?), and that's a djinn that's hard to get back in the box.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:53pm PT
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MTucker,
Do you know the circumstances of those bent cams? Did that happen during some sort of test, or during actual use while climbing?
If it was while climbing, did the placements fail, or did they hold although the cam got mangled? How big of a fall?
The bottom one looks sort of like what happenned to one of mine when I backed my truck over it by mistake.
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rich sims
Social climber
co
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Nov 13, 2011 - 06:16pm PT
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One company I know of has two factories one in China and one in the USA. on the CA. border.
So everything made in the US, not by necessarily by US workers goes to Asia and everything made in China goes to Europe and the USA, there is a market for Made in America go figure.
Late 70s when I was paying $9.00 - 18.00 per hour, piece rate for sewing I saw a world labor rate study where Mexico was 75 cents Japan was 65 cents and some labor rates around the world were as low as 15 to 20 cents per hour.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Nov 13, 2011 - 07:01pm PT
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I climb in mad rock flash shoes and they fit great and resole well. They last just as long as any sportiva or 5.10 shoes that I have had. I prefer them because they fit my feet the best and climb really well. wish that 5.10 would sell a decent shoe for under a hundred bucks but aparently Not.
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Stewart Johnson
climber
lake forest
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Nov 13, 2011 - 09:11pm PT
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deeply breath the chinese air, you should be used to it by now.
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Oxymoron
Big Wall climber
total Disarray
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Nov 13, 2011 - 09:19pm PT
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Walmart gear....I hold none of this. My gear is English & American, with a smattering of Italian.
Oh, & tiny French bits.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Nov 13, 2011 - 11:03pm PT
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China is now home to more counterfeit silver and gold coins than anywhere else, as well. I recently saw a news story that 110,000 counterfeit 1 oz, Silver Eagles were seized coming in to the U.S.
Before I retired in 2009, I was involved in purchasing some research chemicals for one of my projects. I had to return several batches that were manufactured in China as NON AUTHENTIC, or the wrong fukking stuff.
I have a very low opinion of Chinese quality control standards, in addition to the fact that chemical waste disposal = Yangtze River.
As far as climbing gear and any new cams or carabiners, I'm buying either Metolius or DMM.
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Oxymoron
Big Wall climber
total Disarray
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Nov 13, 2011 - 11:13pm PT
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They've been the home of counterfeit DVDs for as long as they've existed. As with CDs, and cassettes, ad infinitum. China=sketchy
Actions speak louder than words.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 13, 2011 - 11:32pm PT
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Let's not forget that during the rise of the US to imperial and industrial might, from say the 1830s on, it stoutly resisted attempts by other countries to get it to respect intellectual property rights. The US was in a ferment all through that time, and creating many things - but a lot of industrial processes and equipment, and many written things, were for practical purposes stolen from Europeans, often the British. The Chinese may now be going through a similar phase.
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