Interesting reading one or two of the comments about markets. Selling DVD players to China caught my thoughts particulalrly and this is why: Both China and India are growing despite the global downturn and their Middle classes continue to grow at a rate of knots. Demand for high quality, luxury, lifestyle goods will hence grow and most of these are developed over here(the so called west). My company, Sonneteer, makes such things for example.
Also, recently, we were costing up a new product for production and one of sub contractors insisted on getting part of the quote subbed out to China. So we compared this with another supplier based in the UK and landed cost actually turned out to be the same. On top of the fact they are less than an hours drive away, in the same time zone, and speak English means the choice is a no brainer. We had decided to make everything in the UK anyway, but it was interesting to find out that the cost argument already means making it here. This will happen more and more as long as we encourage R&D to stay here and we continue to develop and make the quality products here.
In our particular case its luxury 'sexy' hi-fi and area which Britain has a traditional reputationonce akin to Swiss watches. If this can be harnessed in all similar areas of engineering and manufacturing then we have a solid bases to take advantage of these growing economies and at the same time winning the cost as well as the quality argument. it also means keeping and developing the skills and expertise right here.
This is a solid basis to build an economy and if we see it by looking far enough ahead(and it's really not that far to look really) then we can thrive.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
On Stephanomics Something I put on a BBC News blog site-Haidernomics anyone?
Posted on the BBC Blog:
I wrote;
82. At 4:39pm on 22 Jul 2009, Sonneteer wrote:
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