KymcoForum.com
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stig / Major Tom on December 21, 2017, 02:39:06 AM
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Found this link on justgottascoot.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/6962490/Come-back-Not-for-all-the-scooters-in-China.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/6962490/Come-back-Not-for-all-the-scooters-in-China.html)
It does not have to be this way. My LIKE200i is a Chinese assembled Kymco - and I have no complaints about the quality.
The orig. list price for the LIKE200i was $3400, then the price was suddenly dropped some $800 !?
This scooter has been a mainstay in the Kymco line for 8 years for a reason!
Stig
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“If I had known back then how China works, I would have used a factory in England," he says wistfully. "Well, maybe not England because it is too expensive, but perhaps Taiwan or Japan. I'm looking at switching production to there for the next batch," he adds.
That should be a lesson to all would be entrepreneurs.
Do your due diligence for gods sake this guy had it coming to him.
AMAC
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I have seen this story before and marveled again how the implication that things were more efficient when it was a state operation. Well, my inference, actually. Economics operate regardless of politics and this place will close if they don't make some profit. The Chinese are culturally so different that westerners are confounded. The Chinese have so many holidays it is difficult to get anything done. They have great capability but great built-in obstacles.
Karl
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OTOH it is virtually impossible to produce for example iPhones and large scale consumer electronics in the West. In China, you can recruit 100.000 or 150.000 assembly line workers in a matter of weeks, shove them in the factory and shiny iPhones/laptops start rolling out in a matter of days. In the West, you have everything working against you as an entrepreneur (I am not entering into discussion about worker's rights now...), from state regulation, unions, higher wages, employee contribution/taxation, to employment process.
Chinese do not have more public holidays than most EU countries (I don't know about USA though). There are 25 public holidays in China, but 5-6 are mandatorily compensated by working Saturdays. When you subtract public holidays that fall on Sundays, it's quite similar.
In EU countries, the lowest number of vacation days (usually for new/young employees) is 20. In Germany, almost all companies grant 30 vacation days (Saturdays, Sundays and holidays excluded). For example, I have 30 paid vacation days annually, and additional 7 I can take as paid days off for specific reasons (appearance at court, wedding, death of family member or education).
In China, for employees working for up to 10 years, only 5 paid vacation days annually are granted. In USA - it's zero, and up to the employer.
So, in most cases, it is much more difficult to organize industrial production, than in China... also evidenced by mass scale transfer of industry from USA/EU to China from the beginning of 80s. We simply do not mass produce anything any more and rely on high technology.
The problem will start when internal accumulation of capital in China and India grows sufficiently along with human capital and knowledge, because it is *us* who will become mass producers, and they will start selling knowledge. The process will reverse itself. I think that "our empire" is in decline, but one should analyse larger timelines (decades/centuries) and not years in order to realize this.
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So with all this said, how do we account for the seemingly good quality of the Kymcos? I'm sure the answer is simple, but after all, it's still all "made in China".
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This was fascinating.
It seems like the problem with the entrepreneur's efforts were from all the lying passing through the sale manager. The company he chose specializes in creating approximations of other bikes, with apparently little consistency or quality control.
It sounds like they were way out of their element when asked to design, engineer, and produce anything to high standards. And they had no real interest in trying -- they were simply deceived into taking the order.
On the other hand, these are the specialties of Kymco.
It also seems to me that while many companies produce things in China, most don't engineer/design things in China.