custom bicycle Parts, The China Threat

We all know that after quite a few years of exuberance, our V-Twin after-market manufactures has slowed down and that at the same time, coincidence or not, Asia produced bike parts have invaded our showrooms and found their place on our American motorcycles. In reaction to this invasion, Team America is the theme of a collective ad campaign regrouping major American manufacturers and running now in bike magazines. It aims at convincing bikers to only buy American Made Products.

If I agree with any endeavor supporting the cheaper of my country, I think that this campaign doesn't address clearly adequate a combine of requisite points. First, let me ask you. What are the 2 main reasons why, as a biker, you buy an American bike part? Probably because it is of excellent quality, of its beautiful fabricate and because deep inside it makes you feel good to own the genuine part (by the same token rewarding financially the traditional inventor/designer/manufacturer). In the copy of the Team America ads I didn't see in any place any justification given to buy American. Why? This campaign is signed by a group of the best American clubs of our industry. So, why don't they promote their creativity, their engineering as the main justifications of buying their products?

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Let me tell you right away: I am in favor of free trade. The relative costs, benefits of free trade are debated since centuries by governments and trade groups. Nearly all economists maintain the proposition that free trade is a net gain to both trading partners and that the gains from free trade outweigh the losses. Approximately it means that if there is a excellent genuine foreign goods at a reasonable price, I don't feel guilty to buy it. Nor you. And it can be anything you buy: bike part, Tv, car, etc. So, can an American manufacturer convince you to blindly buy its products because they are made in America? I don't think so. The real issue affecting negatively most of us in the manufactures is not free trade, the fair competition from foreign corporations trying to outsmart us. It is the unfair competition from low cost labor Asian countries whose enterprise is to steal our designs & engineering, repackaging everything in knock-off products to be sold back to our clients in the Us.

Our manufactures is made of small corporations and craftsmen producing parts in very small quantities. The cost of explore & amelioration being the same anything the final number of parts produced, our institution parts are costly and at the same time are all the time on the lower end of profitability. And I don't think it will change soon. Approximately none of us have the financial means and time to apply for a Us patent, which anyway would not safe us from copies produced abroad. As a institution builder, I know (and I experienced) that it will take only 3 to 6 months for a foreign corporation to copy and store back here poor copies of my own parts at 25% of my manufacturing cost. Even more disappointing is the fact that a large number of foreign born knock-off parts are marketed through Us catalogs belonging to Us corporations.

As I stated before, I am against protectionism, tariff barriers and taxes. I favor competition in the frame of fair trade. I believe in the law of hard work & merit. Since there is no way that we can avoid cheap and poor artificial copies of our parts, the only clarification to help and safe our V-Twin manufactures is education, education, education of our clients. But it seems to me that the V-Twin manufactures acts more as a group than as a team. Everyone is whining but very few are acting. And a group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team related in the same purpose. We must all act daily and individually with our clients to by comparison the reasons why to buy our genuine products.

It must not be so difficult to by comparison to bikers that motorcycles being risky by nature, it is never wise to equip them with unreliable mechanical components and with unfit and poorly designed accessories, which at the end of the day will cost much more than the traditional parts. All well known institution Builders are having a large fans base. So it must not be too difficult when we meet our admirers to tell them that if they love so much our bikes they should repaymen the traditional designers by buying parts from them. Since we are never going to come to be the cheapest producer of bike parts, at least we can demonstrate that we supply top design, engineering, and manufacturing skills for a very good value. In addition, we supply assistance for installation and services after sales. Nobody is going to maintain Team America only because it is called Team America. Bikers will maintain us only because we remind them and demonstrate that without us there is no more innovation, creativity and technological enlarge to advantage their bikes and their lifestyle. Maybe the next collective ad campaign should be on a more practical theme. For example: "Why And How To maintain Your America Team".

custom bicycle Parts, The China Threat

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