It’s a broad question and a good question.
The short answer is: anything.
A more detailed answer involves a strategy of arbitrage, where we capture labour and overhead savings of a China Sourcing program and then move a product to another market. Let’s talk about that.
In our experience, when you’re making a simple metal stamping or casted product, or plastic injection-moulded part, there’s very little labour involved in any one of those components. Where China becomes more interesting is if you take those single parts and you start adding value to them.
What does China specialize in manufacturing? from Christina Li on Vimeo.
An example
Take a metal stamping part that next gets welded, then riveted, then threaded – becoming part of a sub-assembly or final assembly. Once we stack these different operations together, we get savings at each one of those stages in labour and overhead. A cumulative savings can offset the shipping costs of sending it to another market.
What makes doing a China Sourcing program with CMD different than others?