Last week I had a customer arrive to collect an Engine Guard for his’ Triton. He couldn’t believe WE MAKE THEM HERE. In Mission Beach in Far North Queensland (of all places). We get asked this all the time.
He thought they MUST be made in China because, well, everything is. I guess it’s unusual to find an electronics manufacturer in Australia. After all, that’s not what our politicians said we should be doing.
They wanted a free market where globalization dominates. Something about competitive advantages, efficiency, free trade, blah, blah, blah. They thought we should have no tariffs and no government support for manufacturing……cos it makes us lazy and forces Aussies to pay more for stuff that isn’t as good.
What happened was we made less here. Instead, we dug stuff out of the ground to sell it to China cos we are good at that. Our dirt is world class. The Chinese employed lots of cheap labour that flooded into the cities and off the farms. They got to develop, lift people out of poverty, and get wealthy as a country. Big businesses here and elsewhere wanted to make bigger profits, so they stopped making stuff here, and capital flowed into China. Aussie manufacturing gradually shrank. Our supply chains started missing links.
On the flip side, mining boomed and foreign banks were allowed to lend to Aussies. Aussies worked out that you could get cheap credit and buy houses. Lots of houses. And then you didn’t have to pay as much tax. All the demand for houses drove up prices.
On paper Aussies got rich. We were really good at selling houses to each other, and lots of service businesses boomed (like banks, real estate agents, insurance companies). We had a nice looking country so lots of people wanted to come and live here. We built lots more houses for these new arrivals, and building boomed……even more.
We decided that educating Aussies wasn’t as profitable as educating foreign citizens, so we hooked into that big time. And services businesses flourished to support this ‘industry’. The ‘students’ needed somewhere to live. House prices went up even more, so people got even richer. On paper.
And in the middle of all of that, we kept making electronics. The business manufactured its first product in 1997. The product was called Radio Billboard, and it was a low power output FM transmitted with a solid state voice recorder. We sold them to put on tradie vans, etc. The vans had a sign on the back that said ‘What we can do for you – tune to 100FM’ or similar. The product seemed like a winner but didn’t make money. Other products followed and we made forward progress in skills and capacity. We started making money on manufactured products.
Engine Guard was launched in 2013. It is our’ most successful product and is now sold across Australia, in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the States.
Mates have said I’m crazy making stuff here in Oz. The profit would be higher if I outsourced, and life would be simpler.
So why not outsource the manufacturing? After all, it’s what the politicians wanted us to do. Truth is, I like making things. The staff are proud of what we make. We take great pride, and we love the amazing feedback we get from happy customers. We have Engine Guards on our own cars. We are true believers.
Was swimming against the tide the wrong choice? Probably. If I went back and did it again, would I outsource? No way. Made in Australia has more value than just money to me.
