Interesting Conversation

[Mojo]

Bob Kovar from Toledo Sewing Machine has become a great friend of mine. We talk about every two weeks or so on the phone and occasionally I chat with his son Bobby. Both of them are so laid back and easy going and fun to chat with so I jump at the chance to call him with questions on adjustments and other machine related issues. Other times I call him just to shoot the breeze with him and we try and solve the worlds problems in a half hours time. ( I love hearing his stories about service calls and the things he see's and runs into at the Amish farms. )  :)

We talked the other day over the PTFE thread I bought and after that discussion got off on the discussion of new machines. He said something that I never even considered though I had read a lot of articles about the Chinese Yuan/dollar.

He indicated that he is now seeing price increases from the factories in China on machines as well as sewing machine tables. Part of the reason for the price increases is because China is raising the value of their Yuan and are expected to raise them more because of pressure from other countries. ( They have artificially held the value of their dollar down to increase exports for years ).

So one of Bob's parting comments was " with so much of our goods coming from China these days, we can expect to pay more for nearly everything we buy ".

Great, just what I didn't want to hear. Now we have to pay more for cadmium and lead laced products. :)

Chris

[scottymc]

I also heard an interesting thing about china awhile ago, I was talking to a guy that gets outdoor furniture made there and I pointed out that the chinese were buying alot of our factories as the went broke and he said that the writings on the wall for production is going to be coming back to australia but it will be chinese owned, as shipping costs get higher and higher it will make more sense to go through the whole process in the country the iron ore come from, makes sense.