Integral Designs Gear now made in…China

So RAB didn't buy them? That was the rumor last year.

Yes – Rab did buy them but manufactures its products in China.

I do know that 'they' are still making gear in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for the military and that includes bivvies so I am not sure if this is a case of someone qualifying the additional cost / gouging of the product in Canada or instead, all product is now being manufactured in China.

I have to think that local employment is more important that maximizing margins…; )

Problem is, local employment is mighty difficult to provide if your company isn't profitable. Keeping a company afloat is #1 priority – altruistic considerations tend to come after the 'can we survive' question.

That isn't to say that it is impossible to remain a viable company without going to overseas production, and maybe the executives in charge are just getting greedy. But they might just be acting to keep ID alive.

One bit of food for thought – why is gear manufactured "locally" in the UK or Europe, then shipped to the US any "better" than stuff made in Asia then shipped?

"One bit of food for thought – why is gear manufactured "locally" in the UK or Europe, then shipped to the US any "better" than stuff made in Asia then shipped?"

Because they pay a living wage in Europe rather than slave wages in a Chinese sweat shop.

"One bit of food for thought – why is gear manufactured "locally" in the UK or Europe, then shipped to the US any "better" than stuff made in Asia then shipped?"
I lived in China for about a year and a half mostly in Beijing. Recently I read Poorly made in China by Paul Midler .He has a website as well.http://www.paulmidler.com/
Basically the Chinese will do everything they can to get your initial deal, including offering to prototype your design. From that point on they will cheapen the design materials to increase their profit and leaving you with a quality control problem.They will be slow to ship, increase your price, and eventually one off your design and sell it directly or to your competitor. It's all about THEM not you once you understand it. As Midler says. You think you are playing Checkers while they are playing 3D Chess from the first meeting.

It's also a matter of what price point people want to pay. If 90 % of people are buying the gear that is 40% off because it's manufactured overseas and the manufacturer can offer that discount by making overseas vs being made in the US, then the consumer is endorsing it. Consumers need to vote with money, not with ideals. Companies may try to do the right thing, but they need to make money.

I would really be curious to see if you had to similar products and one was made overseas and was 40 % the cost, where the vote is. I could ask mountianboy sleds, since they made almost identical products in China and in Silverton CO. They don't make stuff in Silverton anymore now. I guess that was the vote.

Huh? I thought NAFTA put an end to all of that.

Rab is made in China also.

To be accurate, Rab didn't buy Integral Designs. Equip Outdoor Techologies, which bought Rab a few years ago and also owns Podsacs and Outdoor Designs, bought Integral Designs.

http://www.equipuk.com/

NAFTA only applies to Mexican, Canadian, and American made products. So if a product is imported from China to the US and then shipped to Canada the duties do apply to it. If it is made in the US and shipped to Canada then duties do NOT apply. I also believe that items which final assembly occurs in the US are not subject to duty. (this is important for industrial products where much of the castings are imported but final assembly occurs here)

Now for most mail order stuff shipped through USPS / Canada Post you usually end up not having to pay duties on it because of the small value. Even at the border if you are a little over the duty-free limits they will usually let you go.

It also depends on how the shipper labels it and values it. Gifts are excempt up to $50 so most of the ebay shippers will put 'Gift' on their package and value at less than $50 to avoid the reciever paying duty.

Does every single textile factory in China run as a pennies per hour sweatshop? Do they all have shady business practices? I don't doubt that these conditions exist, and that they are going to be more common in countries like China that have lax regulatory protocols, but it seems premature to paint everything that gets made in China with the same brush.

A lot of very complex chemical and industrial manufacturing that require EXTREMELY tight quality tolerances is also based in China. The country is more than capable of reliably producing a quality product. There are factories that pay well (based on Chinese costs of living).

Sure it's possible to find companies that try to keep a tight rein on things but this probably comes after the experience of getting taken has made the company wiser. I suggest you read Poorly made in China. I took it out of the library and read it in a few days. At least look at the Blog if you don't wish to read it. My wife is a Cultural Anthropologist specializing in the Chinese, my daughter is adopted Chinese, and we have many Chinese friends. This is a cultural situation in which you simply don't matter as you are an outsider. It happened to me when studying folk art, to a good friend who had her book idea stole and translated into Chinese. In other words it happens all the time on many levels. It is better to prepare yourself and to be wary than to assume that your experience will be better than most . Subscribe to the Oriental List run by Peter Neville Hadley or read his Cadogan guide to Beijing. Getting fleeced is the norm .

Thanks Greg. I just misunderstood the original quote from Integral Designs. I still find the quote from them confusing, but don't care anymore. Your description is what I understood to be true, and it makes sense.

I have multiple pieces of ID gear – and now I won't buy anything else from them, and I recommend that you do the same. If we continue to support firms which eliminate Western jobs for short-term profits, we're effectively digging our own economic grave. When you consider the "new norm" of 9-10% unemployment (actually about 18%), consider how many jobs have been lost to the outsourcing of production to Asia.

You may have a job for now, but in five years, will your job also be outsourced? Have you seen any drops in the prices of Integral Designs gear? I just looked – prices are exactly the same, just ID's owners have been able to arbitrage labor costs. When jobs are lost in the US or Canada we all do bear the costs in terms of higher unemployment expenses, increased health expenses, and a loss of future opportunities for our children.

ID was somehow capable of producing high quality gear for over twenty years in Canada. Suddenly, new owners, no doubt highly leveraged, found the need to ship production offshore. Fantastic, just fantastic.

i have no problem with gear being produced overseas … i buy plenty of stuff that is made in the land of the dim sum

i do have a problem when those companies dont pass on the savings to me by moving production offshore … now its possible that there are no monetary savings … but in many cases i suspect that is not the case

sometimes though, if the piece of gear is what suits you best, you buy it no matter where its made … fortunately no such product exists with the new ID … ive already got my microbivy and sil poncho …

>>>"Because they pay a living wage in Europe rather than slave wages in a Chinese sweat shop."

+1

"Slave wages" is just the tip of the iceberg. For me there are other issues at play like us buying goods from Communist China yet we have a trade embargo with Cuba. Makes no sense when we have spent trillions of dollars over the last half century fighting communism. Then there is our HUGE trade imbalance.. Why are we buying their goods when they are not buying ours?? On top of all this their Fascist government has a serious lack of respect for the environment.

>>>"Problem is, local employment is mighty difficult to provide if your company isn't profitable. Keeping a company afloat is #1 priority – altruistic considerations tend to come after the 'can we survive' question."<<<

So would it be ok for a pharmaceutical company to sell a harmful drug they know doesn't work just for the sake of keeping the company afloat?

Not sure where to add this in, but I'd appreciate if in the course of a gear review the BPL staff would note where a particular item was manufactured.

Perhaps this is why the siltarp I bought a few months back was less waterproof than a piece of momentum DWR.

It was promptly returned. Misting is one thing, leaking like a sieve over its entire area is another.

It would be interesting , but maybe too elusive to try to determine if China sourced Sil-Nylon has produced more seconds or other lower quality indications over time. While I don't understand the production of the fabric the key would be eliminating a costlier fabric or process for a cheaper one. This is the typical pattern in Chinese cost-cutting. I've seen it first hand in things like a replaced zipper which is so poor to be almost sure to fail in 5 uses, or nylon fixtures that turn out to be black plastic that snap in half. You get the idea, I hope.

Thank you for posting the book reference. To me, it is preaching to the choir; but the book may be of great interest to many.

On thing that comes up repeatedly on this site that puzzles me: Why do we Americans so often think we can influence corporate behavior by buying choices, boycotts, and the like. We live in a global economic system now, where business decisions are made by megacorporations that care not a wit about you and me. This system has very little to do with classic concepts of supply and demand that we learn in elementary economics. Face it, we have been disenfranchised economically.

As with most systemic problems, real change can only happen at a system wide level. There is no getting away from it, even in the remotest bush. At some point, which we may have already reached, not even the US government will be able to have any control over this situation, even if it wanted to. We need to set aside our cherished American delusions of economic grandeur and individual choice, and push as hard as we can together to get the US to make tax and trade policy changes that will allow more industry and jobs to develop here.

">>>"Problem is, local employment is mighty difficult to provide if your company isn't profitable. Keeping a company afloat is #1 priority – altruistic considerations tend to come after the 'can we survive' question."<<<

So would it be ok for a pharmaceutical company to sell a harmful drug they know doesn't work just for the sake of keeping the company afloat?"

Don't be silly. There is a major difference between actions that are legally prohibited and those that upset the morals of a few people. Furthermore, selling a harmful drug could burden the company with massive financial penalties if they were successfully sued – which would obviously be detrimental to the health of the company.

And don't start on the "war" on communism – if you want altruistic, airy fairy ideals, you should be all for communism. These terrible, profit-motivated actions all derive from our fantastic capitalistic economy.

Another interesting point is that (from reports from Roger Caffin and others) the highest quality silnylon available in Asia comfortably outperforms the stuff we have available to us here.

In the end, the physical location of where something was designed, produced, and sold matters much less to me than the actual business practices of the particular company. Be a good company, wherever you happen to do your business.

> (from reports from Roger Caffin and others) the highest quality silnylon available
> in Asia comfortably outperforms the stuff we have available to us here.
That is true, but you need to look at the reasons.

Duro (USA) used to make the 'wet-look' silnylon for Westmark (USA), and it was the best I have seen. But the coating process used liberated volatiles into the atmosphere which the EPA banned, and Duro was not willing to invest in the necessary enclosed reclamation gear to handle this. That was many years ago. Since then the EPA has introduced further restrictions, such that the silicone coating now available from Americna companies is just rubbish quality.

The Asian companies are not restricted by the US EPA, so they can produce effective coatings. Very often that is done using Western silicone polymers!

I am NOT advocating the removal of the EPA restrictions, but it would be nice if someone in the USA took the financial plunge and set up a coating system with full solvent reclamation gear. In the meantime, 'free trade' just means we export the hazardous chemicals to somewhere else on the planet.

Cheers

So why does this quality problem surface again and again?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8476080/Top-10-Chinese-Food-Scandals.html

And this. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/world/asia/18briefs-Watermelon.html?scp=1&sq=exploding%20watermelons&st=cse
A good synopsis of the book here. http://www.economist.com/node/13642306
Read about some of the cultural issues here
http://old.urbanatomy.com/index.php/i-ahearts-shanghai/85-i-love-shanghai/1576-interview-with-poorly-made-in-china-author-paul-midler

Read about the complexity of Chinese business relations here -guanxi is the topic .
http://guanxi.pbworks.com/w/page/6282267/FrontPage