ANOTHER SIDE TO IMPORTING

WILLIAM PENN FALLIN
Columnist
Douglas, Ga. Enterprise
Natchitoches, La. Times
Camden County, Ga. Courier

ANOTHER SIDE TO IMPORTING

Back in the eighties when I lived in Taiwan and managed the import division of Newell/Rubbermaid we were asked to help put a product together for our Anchor Hocking Division.

A-H made a really nice glass product for the oven, good looking, very serviceable and heatproof. Their problem was how to make it attractive to the shopper. Sitting on a shelf at retail with a price sticker didn’t get it done. They settled on selling it as a package deal, along with a woven wicker basket to protect the dining table and a plastic lid (to keep casserole hot before serving). They asked us to source the following:

Plastic lid that would snap on the cooked dish,

wicker baskets to fit each size dish and

printed carton.

After much searching throughout China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines we finally found a source in Manila who could provide the baskets. He convinced me he could produce 60 (40 foot) containers (tractor trailer loads) a year. That is a lot of baskets. He also had the best price. Since we had four sizes we had to send him a few samples of each. From those he had wooden molds made around which the weavers would then weave the baskets. We used colored patterns to further enhance the beauty of the basket. To get consistency he had all the wicker strips dyed in Manila. The wicker and the molds were then delivered to women and girls in the mountains of Northern Luzon and surrounding Philippine countryside. They made baskets after they finished their daily housekeeping chores. The baskets were then collected by trucks, running weekly routes to all the weavers.

We bought those baskets for less than $.60 each. The weavers got $.20 for each basket.

Next we found an injection plastic molder in Thailand who could make the lids for the glass casserole dishes. And then we located a printing company in Osaka, Japan who had perfected the finest quality printing on a carton I had ever seen. They could reproduce the photo of a dish of roast beef or of a cherry cobbler that was better than the original photo.

Now came the coordinating. The Americans had to predict how many of each size they could sell in a selling season. From their forecasts we then placed orders for baskets (four sizes), plastic lids (four sizes) and full color printed cartons (four sizes). All that took a lot of set-ups for the printer/carton maker, a lot of wooden mold making (in four sizes) for the weavers and the building of four injection molds for the plastic lids.

Once production was underway we then had to inspect the finished products in Manila, Bangkok and Osaka. No wonder I was traveling all the time.

When you consumers walk into a WalMart, Target or any other retail outlet that carries Anchor Hocking products and see that beautiful carton sitting on their shelf you have no inkling that it contains a wonderful oven proof dish made in Lancaster, Ohio, a basket in which to serve your final creation, (made by a little old lady somewhere in the hills of The Philippines who makes $2.00 a day) a plastic lid you would snap into place to keep the dish hot (made in Thailand) while the whole package is displayed in a beautiful carton printed in Japan.

And so goes the world of imports.

If that final product had to be made in America there would be no basket or if there was one it would cost at least ten times more. The plastic lid would cost about twice what it cost from Thailand and the carton would cost about the same but would not be as beautiful. The retail price of the final product (100% made in America) would be at least twice the price you pay now.

That is but one example of the benefits of importing. When we talk about bringing all those jobs back to America do we ever give full consideration to what it will cost us when we go shopping? It’s something to think about…anyway. There are two sides (and sometimes three) to almost every question.