[Groesbeck Hurricane]

I've said this too many times:

Company I worked for stopped buying a specific item from a local manufacturer because on paper they could bring it in from China for about $.10 per item cheaper. Add that we moved ~120,000 per month on the slowest month so we saved, on paper, more than $200,000.00 per year or three people slots. Bonuses were given to person at top who had the idea for the scheme.

Now reality was:

The US Company went out of business. We were their main customer, family owned business with many decades of creating a quality product with almost ZERO issues per 100,000 units.

The Chinese Company could not provide the quality level of material quoted at the savings given so our real savings, after shipping, was about $.0176 per unit, on paper.

Quality was horrendous at first, about 1 unit per 100 did not work correctly and had to be culled from the line at the beginning. This was addressed and did change significantly and quickly but the first several 100k were horrible. We spent three months shipping late orders to customers.

We had to air the units out as they, literally, stank and made people sick.

Let us now remember also the little presents the Chinese Workers would send to us:

Rusty razor blades/xacto style blades TAPED into the boxes so they would cut your arm or hand if you picked up a box they were attached to.

Rusty razor blades/xacto style blades TAPED or DROPPED into boxes so you would be cut if you stuck your hand into the shipping boxes.

Plastic dragon or monkey or other animal pendants dropped into boxes. Did not cause injuries but did make line people a bit superstitious about the boxes and their contents.

Yes, it cost us more real money than was captured on paper. There were much longer lead times for deliveries so more inventory had to be held (higher cost of doing business). We had to change our way of operating and create a day wait between opening a box of material and using it (until they changed a process point on their end) so we had to buy tables adequate to hold a day's worth of production. We also had to change the way we handled material and buy mechanical equipment to avoid personal injuries.

End game, US Company was out of business, we were locked in with the Chinese Company, senior person got a huge bonus, our company actually had a higher cost of doing business, and our workers were constantly placed at risk of injury (which DID happen).