signs from india??????

[Andy Gorman]

Yeah very interesting, I think enough of our jobs have gone to India, I think I’ll stick with a supplier I can go and shout at when something goes wrong!

I wonder how many takers they get?

[Robert Lambie]

looks nicely made and jam packed with leds… gotta be a catch, maybe not 😕 but will be intresting to see how far it goes.

[Gordon Forbes]

I agree totally with Big G too much going that way and should boycotte the lot o them and any companies that have call centres there too.

Goop.

[Vince Francis]

I play the trumpet, and can buy a brand new one from India for £10.00. Guess as mine cost £1,500 i can see that the quality is gonna be good *rofl*

I think i will buy one just 2 see, but it looks so well made???? A hint of sarcasm there maybe? lol

(hot) (hot)

[Peter Normington]

Dont knock it if you dont know it
labour costs in india and asia are very low, next thing you know they will be selleng wraps and printed vinyl at a fraction of your cost.
Beware! I remember the sixties when the british motorbike industry thought they were invincible, then along came honda, the rest as they say is history.
Peter

[Simon Clayton]

I was looking at that today funny enough, looks good but i bet it don’t turn up like that? you never know

Simon

[Lynn Normington]

I have mostly found Indian/Asian people honorable
Haven’t tried these wares would be interested to hear if anyone has 🙂

Lynn

[Nigel Pugh]

Read today that all the call centres that went over to India etc are now recruiting Brits to go and work over there.

Yearly wage upto £4000 which equates to £40,000 over there.

Nigel

[Vince Francis]

quote :

Yearly wage upto £4000 which equates to £40,000 over there

So what are we doing here then????? C ya all

£40k for working in a call centre

[Simon Clayton]

you’ve not bought anything from thailand then lynn…
99% fake, the other 1% cheap sh*te

Simon

[Nicola McIntosh]

:lol1: :lol1: :lol1:

nik

[Lynn Normington]

sorry simon I have been to thailand and every thing I have bought has been value for money depends what you buy though obviously not a cartier watch you only buy them from cartier unless you are a bit silly like I say depends what you buy 😛

Lynn

[Alan Drury]

We must remember that a large proportion of what we are buying now is made in India/China etc its just shipped over here in bulk by international companies first.
Alan

[Simon Clayton]

I would say the food, drink and a few hand crafted novelties are very good over there, but most good are cheap rubbish, even the silk is poor, with hand printed design that come off in the first wash, it just a lot cheaper there. you can buy a £3.00 item in a market here, or get the same item there for 20p….but it’s still cheap tatt….. that goes for most of the third world contries i’ve been too..
Its the same with the rest of the goods we buy that comes from these third world places… look at how years ago when you bought toys, they were quality, well made and lasted, compare the quality today very poor..

Simon

[Rodney Gold]

Simon , you are behind the times here , we import from India , Taiwan , China and so forth and the quality of goods is fantastic.
In fact the Yanks are bleating much better about how good their laser engravers are and how the stuff from china is rubbish , and waving the flag and being all Jingoistic. The fact is the lasers we bought from china are better and more fully equipped than their offerings and the only thing that fails is the source , which is American made!!
I live and work in a 3rd world county , South Africa , and the quality of what I make and supply is superb.

[Keith Nilsen]

Well said Rodney,

When I worked for Phi lock Signs we imported a fair bit of stuff from Taiwan as far as I recall, and it always was good quality at competitive pricing. Our work was First World quality too, coming from a Third World country.

I wouldn’t hesitate to trade with Indian companies given the chance. I have spent time there and have always found their EXPORT quality good to be superb. Usually they pursue a internationally recognized quality mark, and most often offer one in excess of what they need to for export. They can produce cheap due to wages and lab our laws, but it doesn’t mean they automatically compromise on quality.

Simon, perhaps you haven’t looked hard enough beyond the usual cheap tat which is ALWAYS plied to gullible tourists in 3rd world countries?? Lord knows there are many around in these countries and quite often they deserve to be stung!

K

[Simon Clayton]

Sorry i didn’t mean to come across rude and arrogant…
yes if your buying big equipment, electronics in particular, that is where most of it is produced by the likes of Sony etc… but it’s only in them countries because it has cheap labour, as for most stuff that i have seen and indeed bought in places like Thailand, India, and Marius while there, , have been not up to scratch and most are still well behind.. even Hong kong where i bought a bulk ink system (mail order), the price was cheap, it works fine, but the quality was poor, the filler lids didn’t fit tightly, the plastic retainer for the ink cartridges weren’t moulded properly and fitted poorly, but the Epsom printer its going on, was built in the Philippines and is out standing quality, but it’s made by Epsom in state of the art factories to there strict quality controls, not buy Joe bloggs the sign maker in India, yes it may be fantastic value, but what will the quality be? again it may be made fantasticly well but what sort of garantee do you have, its not like i can view samples.
And i wouldn’t class south Africa as a third world country..

Simon

Simon

[David Rowland]

The far east is making everytrhing these days and most of it is pretty good stuff.
I suspect those LED sign things are imported by the suppliers anyway.

[John Childs]

Get used to it guys. It isn’t going away anytime soon.

Sure, some people here can make a living out of manufacturing and selling a quality product, but not many. The market for that sort of thing is only of finite size. The majority of customers are only interested in price and if we can’t compete then we aren’t going to last very long.

Practically everything I buy in the US has a “made in china” label slapped on it. If they took every Chinese product out of WalMart there would be an awful lot of empty superstore on High Street America. I haven’t checked it out myself yet, but I was told last week that Harley Davidson, that greatest of american icons, cannot put a “made in america” sticker on some of their models because of the content from you know where. They have to settle for “assembled in america”. Anyway, whether that is right or not, take a look at their clothing department (where they make more money than they do selling bikes) and see where most of it is made. Whoops – China again.

Over the last forty years I have watched the cost of labour in this country, and in Europe in general, escalate and worry about its sustainability. Although it has taken longer than I thought, it looks now like the chickens might be starting to come home to roost.

For myself, I am past caring, but I am concerned about my children and my advice to them is to learn Chinese and think about opening an English takeaway in Peking.

[Rodney Gold]

I have a pet theory , and that is that the Chinese are EXTREMELY clever. They let the rest of the world fight all these silly little wars like Iraq which drain their resources and cost a ton , and they squirrel away industriously whilst taking over in the economic forum. In essence , they ARE waging a war and winning it convincingly. Whatever other stuff is used to tell the masses to justify a war , they are all based on economic principles.
Even if you win a fighting war , you still lose – Japan and Germany lost WWII – look at them now – who won ,who lost?

[Vince Francis]

I know this is a serious subject, but at the end of the day, it is still difficult to be a supplier from another country. Several companies have already tried to crack the UK market. One major company from Spain tried and failed, although they supply in France and Germany.

I have seen good imports, Gemini letters from the US, but they still have made no major impact in the UK market. The main problem being the good old UK Sign deadlines, or lack of! When you rely on getting goods, with imports, you can never say when you get them, and thats all because of clearing Customs etc.

I have requested information from this Indian company. Good quick reply, it seems they are made the same as here, same materials ie grade of stainless. The only thing you can-not count on is quality. My letter makers have 4 years training, most have been to college. I can only assume that is not the case there, as it is hard enough to get on here!

So, although i am interested in what they have to offer, i am not in anyway worried about the impact they may have, after all competition is already out there. True cost of signs have been in effect, been coming down for years, so this is, pardon the pun, the sign of the times. Look how much wide format printed goods have come down.

Most clients like knowing who they are dealing with, and meeting them, that will be the biggest barrier for them to overcome. How many of you complain about call centres? The language barrier can also have a big impact.

So ends the sermon for the day, now bring on the beer! lol

(:) (:) (:) (:) (:) (:)

[Guy Burt-Davies]

An interesting topic this, we produce all of the signs for BAA airports and use tonnes and tonnes of specially drawn extrusion for the boxes. Prices from UK extruders were going through the roof so we started looking abroad – the upshot of this was that we have just taken delivery of our first container load of extrusion from China – it is the same weight, to the same specification but cheaper, even taking into account the shipping costs.

More and more signage in the UK is coming in from abroad (FIAT from Germany, BP from the Czech Republic and Poland, Shell from Spain, Jaguar from Germany and Poland etc etc) but I agree with Vinny, the quality isn’t as good as UK manufactured signage – price isn’t always everything. UK signage is far better quality and usually to a higher specification than our European neighbours (even your stuff Vince! 😉 ) but there is always a market for us as signmakers to carefully buy in selected products from abroad to enable us to make better margins. The danger is that some bright spark will use the foreign prices as the benchmark thus reducing the value of the job in the open market.

Guy

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote Rodney Gold:

I have a pet theory , and that is that the Chinese are EXTREMELY clever. They let the rest of the world fight all these silly little wars like Iraq which drain their resources and cost a ton , and they squirrel away industriously whilst taking over in the economic forum. In essence , they ARE waging a war and winning it convincingly. Whatever other stuff is used to tell the masses to justify a war , they are all based on economic principles.
Even if you win a fighting war , you still lose – Japan and Germany lost WWII – look at them now – who won ,who lost?

:appl: :appl: :appl: well said rodney 😀

Nik

[Simon Clayton]

No they just steal everybody designs and make it cheaper (cheaper materials and labour)..reverse engineering is one of there biggest assets.. That’s how their car industry took off, they bought cars from other countries and basically copied them, and we allowed that to happen.

We allow all there imports, quite freely, but try and get our exports to them they come under tight condition, I read some where that jaguar were exporting cars to china i think it was and because someone had forgot to do somthing very un-important on the forms, the cars were impounded and then returned to the UK somthing like 3 months later…
Have a look at things at home, see where things come from… and compare the quality… had some printed cups, the joke type ones, the ones from china are really poor quality, the printing and glaze finish are very rough compare to the English ones

Simon

[Vince Francis]

quote :

the ones from china are really poor quality, the printing and glaze finish are very rough compare to the English ones

I also agree with what you are saying, but at the end of the day, the customer does have a choice, and there is a market place for cheaper products.

I do agree with Guy 100%, what we need to watch is the pricing war against cheaper imports. That is where the problem will be in the future. You only have to compare this with the big sign companies over here fighting petrol fore-court work. The only winner is the client, as prices are driven down.

Vince

:drama:

[Hugh Potter]

lol, what isnt made abroad these days !!

my first query would be the issue of customs / vat, first, being supposedly an indian company, how can they charge UK VAT @17.5% ?

secondly, i import plenty of parts for my race car, customs duty is payable on nearly everything i buy, whether its from something from france or the US, i would certainly want to ask customs about that,

these people are little more than deceptive, i have a friend who bought a laptop off ebay, brand new top spec vaio, got it for about 1/2 the shop price, turned out it was coming from hing kong, not kidderminster ! he ended up paying almost £300 in import duties and tax ! not so cheap !