Hackaday: Last summer was an exercise in developing a completely different kind of product from my normal wheelhouse; a costume. My Halloween costume had been so popular that I decided to have a go at commercializing it, and that took me on a path into manufacturing that I hadn’t yet taken; shipping by boat from China. The short version is it’s a ridiculously difficult mess.
3 comments:
Generally, one assumes that getting things produced/manufactured in China is going to be a fairly inexpensive ordeal; and for the most part, it is. As someone who’s been intrigued by production and shipping in one’s own business (as I had aspired to do for many years when I was much younger), it was incredibly interesting to read about what it’s actually like from someone who went through with it and was kind enough to detail the experience. I also greatly enjoyed his comedical approach to the storytelling, such as “...weighing in at 550kg (1200lb in freedom units)” while remaining informative. Although what else would you really expect from a man producing ‘Wacky Dancer’ costumes? A lot of what Bob Baddeley says in this article makes sense, such as shipping one large order costs less than shipping multiple small orders, as it is with most shipping services, and that there are a lot of little fees and things in between to look out for. One has to be careful and do research as to make sure they aren’t signing themselves up to pay more than than they had originally presumed. I feel like this logic applies to many things that have to do with trying out new things that revolve around money or transactions.
I worked for an internationally touring dance company for a couple of years, and for the latter half of my employment, I managed all of the domestic freight and some of the international freight. As the author mentioned, flying freight is expensive but quick(er), while shipping freight on a boat is cheaper but can take weeks. Sometimes, after a container arrives in a port, sits in customs for a week, and finally gets trucked up to the warehouse, everything inside is still wet. Sometimes, I'd get a photo of my beautifully palletized freight as it was getting loaded at the origin, but upon opening the container when it arrived, I'd find everything upended and cases broken or damaged. Even domestically, when I loaded and unloaded the freight personally at every stop, results varied wildly. Occasionally, drivers would have to redistribute the weight of the pack in order to pass weigh stations. Sometimes, drivers would show up a day early; sometimes, disastrously, a day late. The heading in the article, “Please Somebody Do This Better,” is pretty similar to how I feel about it, except I think I'd amend it to: “Please Somebody Do This Better Without Making it Egregiously Expensive.”
I found that this article was informative on the process of shipping from China. I had been particularly interested in China while studying history in undergrad and did a thesis on the subject. I felt particularly drawn to this article as well because so much manufacturing is happening in China and coming into the US that learning more about the process is in my opinion an important thing to understand. Especially as a technical director who will very likely be in charge of ordering and keeping track of shipments, potentially on a large scale depending on where someone is working. I can’t say that I was very surprised with the difficulties encountered by the individual trying to get his goods shipped from China and the expenses that he incurred, despite the fact that shipping from China is done so frequently. It was informative that the differences in shipping by air and ship were so dramatic and the drawbacks and benefits of one vs the other. Tariffs and unexpected fees were in my mind to be expected. I really only think the transportation and shipping issues are dealt with because of the low manufacturing cost, which is done unsustainably and is another completely separate human rights issue.
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