Are American companies losing the battle because of customer service?
Here’s the story. I wanted to make some simple plastic parts. They are for a fish kit where you put together different shapes to make your own lure. The shapes are part of a kit where people can make their own lures. Cool project. We've been making the shapes ourselves for a year, but we wanted to make thousands of them so we needed an industrial process.
Usually that means injection molding. First, to make sure my design was good, I had it printed at Shapeways, a 3D printing company. The part cost $12 to make plus $6 shipping, which is fine for a prototype. The sample looked awesome. Better than I anticipated.
Then I went online found several American companies to quote the cost to make 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000 parts. My initial quotes were so ridiculous I thought I was going to have to give up the job. First, instead of just telling me how much it would cost, the companies came back with lots of random questions basically to find out if I was real and if it was worth their time to quote. That turns out to be the American way, but I get ahead of myself.
Protolabs, icomolds, rapidcut were some of the initial places I asked for prices because they pay Google the most for advertisements. When they finally got to giving me a price (I had giving up on Protomolds because they were so challenging to get a price from), the prices were $7 or so.
Could you imagine paying $7 for a tiny piece of plastic! Toys would be hundreds of dollars. These companies must be out of their minds.
I also tried Alibaba. Here’s a tip for Alibaba, use a separate email address than you typically use because the Chinese companies will inundate you with messages. This was too complicated for me, so I moved on. Maybe it’s good for some people, but it was such a cluster that I couldn’t track it well.
I also tried Voomoo.com for 3D printed parts. After a lot of going back and forth, it ended up around $6.50 each for 3,000 parts. That’s a bit drastic for a part that has about 10 cents worth of plastic in it.
Then I found mfg.com. This is a great website. I signed up put up my CAD drawings and asked for quotes from anyone. I got 9 quotes back. ALL of them except one was from Chinese companies. And all within 2 days. Prices were good. For 3,000 units prices ranged from 60 cents up to about a $1.50, plus shipping. The differences were mostly because of the differences in the tooling costs which ranged from $1650 to $3500.
The one American company, Slant Concepts was a 3D printer company who suggested 3D printing all of the shapes and skip the tooling altogether. This was a great idea. They even printed one to show what it might look like. And prices were 60 cents to 85 cents.
Outside of mfg.com, I also asked from a quote from what I thought was an American company, but it turns out they outsource it to China too. So they outsourced and then just added a profit on to the top. I see my next business venture now.
Here’s the story. I wanted to make some simple plastic parts. They are for a fish kit where you put together different shapes to make your own lure. The shapes are part of a kit where people can make their own lures. Cool project. We've been making the shapes ourselves for a year, but we wanted to make thousands of them so we needed an industrial process.
Usually that means injection molding. First, to make sure my design was good, I had it printed at Shapeways, a 3D printing company. The part cost $12 to make plus $6 shipping, which is fine for a prototype. The sample looked awesome. Better than I anticipated.
Then I went online found several American companies to quote the cost to make 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000 parts. My initial quotes were so ridiculous I thought I was going to have to give up the job. First, instead of just telling me how much it would cost, the companies came back with lots of random questions basically to find out if I was real and if it was worth their time to quote. That turns out to be the American way, but I get ahead of myself.
Protolabs, icomolds, rapidcut were some of the initial places I asked for prices because they pay Google the most for advertisements. When they finally got to giving me a price (I had giving up on Protomolds because they were so challenging to get a price from), the prices were $7 or so.
Could you imagine paying $7 for a tiny piece of plastic! Toys would be hundreds of dollars. These companies must be out of their minds.
I also tried Alibaba. Here’s a tip for Alibaba, use a separate email address than you typically use because the Chinese companies will inundate you with messages. This was too complicated for me, so I moved on. Maybe it’s good for some people, but it was such a cluster that I couldn’t track it well.
I also tried Voomoo.com for 3D printed parts. After a lot of going back and forth, it ended up around $6.50 each for 3,000 parts. That’s a bit drastic for a part that has about 10 cents worth of plastic in it.
Then I found mfg.com. This is a great website. I signed up put up my CAD drawings and asked for quotes from anyone. I got 9 quotes back. ALL of them except one was from Chinese companies. And all within 2 days. Prices were good. For 3,000 units prices ranged from 60 cents up to about a $1.50, plus shipping. The differences were mostly because of the differences in the tooling costs which ranged from $1650 to $3500.
The one American company, Slant Concepts was a 3D printer company who suggested 3D printing all of the shapes and skip the tooling altogether. This was a great idea. They even printed one to show what it might look like. And prices were 60 cents to 85 cents.
Outside of mfg.com, I also asked from a quote from what I thought was an American company, but it turns out they outsource it to China too. So they outsourced and then just added a profit on to the top. I see my next business venture now.
I also got a call from a company in Quebec asking for more
information, and another company in the U.S, emailed asking similar questions
that boiled down to “is it worth us wasting our precious time to give you a
price quote?” I really wanted to tell these sales guys to go jump off a bridge.
One representative said the reason why I didn’t get more
U.S. quotes is because I didn’t give them enough time. WTF!? I got 9 Chinese
company quotes! ONLY ONE U.S. quote! I wasn’t too slow for the 9 Chinese
companies!? And they didn’t come back and ask me “will you be making these
every year?” “What do you expect the business will be like?” The Chinese
companies in general just sent me back a price quote that were very easy to
read and told me what it would cost and the time frame.
I’m a little nervous about dealing directly with the Chinese
companies, so we’ll see. It can’t be worse that the American companies trying
to hose me.
I really want to have these parts made in the U.S., so I’m
trying the 3D printed parts first. And I may try 3D printing them myself.
It really bothers me that the American companies that I’ve
talked to have been so bad at this. I guess they already have enough business.
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