[TheForge] Fw: California regulation was cranes

[ries]

I did business in Cali for over ten years, and I found that the  
"onerous legislation" was a bit of a scare tactic by right wing talk  
radio from other states.
In reality, yes, it costs more money to do business in LA- real estate  
is insanely high, labor is expensive, and there is some more legal  
requirements than in other places- but it is all more than balanced  
out by one simple fact-
You can make money there. Lots of it.

Lack of regulation is not much good if nobody buys what you make.

Greater Los Angeles in now about 100 miles on a side. And if you fly  
in, you see square mile after square mile of 40,000 sq foot tiltup  
warehouse roof, all new in the last 20 years.
The port of LA and Long Beach are huge, with hundreds of trucks going  
in and out every day.
But more important, there is more plain ol manufacturing going on in  
LA and environs than most anywhere else in the country these days.
As I mentioned before, there are more high tech, CNC machine shops in  
LA than in any other city, by far. Small, in terms of people employed-  
you see a half dozen 20 something kids in shorts and big athletic  
shoes, tending a couple million dollars worth of CNC machines, and  
cranking out a couple hundred grand gross worth of product, per  
employee, per year. Medical, aerospace, military, electronics, and  
other high value stuff. Its very easy to drive by a building, with a  
few cars outside, and not realize that in dollars and volume of  
product, it is out performing a whole city block building in Mass or Pa.

In LA, I find you can get, in stock, virtually any industrial product,  
material, or supply. There is a huge infrastructure of sandblasters,  
platers, powdercoaters, heat treaters, wire straighteners,  
perforators, galvanizers, deburring shops, wire rope testing  
facilities, and much more.

Hollywood gets a lot of press- and yes, there are prop shops, lots of  
special effects guys, lighting, electronics, and many more shops  
making wacky stuff for them- but unnoticed, there is, for instance, a  
big business in aftermarket auto parts, in musical instruments, in  
plastics, in medical electronics, and much more.

When I was there, I would get jobs, usually very high paying, with  
very high standards, doing everything from custom metal parts for  
$100,000 kitchens, to display racks for retail stores, to signage and  
lighting. Not to mention a whole lot of burglar bars, fences, and  
fancy window grilles.
I found that people in LA were willing to pay for quality, and you  
could easily make so much more than you could in a cheap rural area,  
that the added cost of doing business was something you took for  
granted.

Now, admitedly, this does not apply to lowest price, Walmart style  
commodity products- but, realistically, those are mostly made in  
China, Pakistan and Madagascar.
As usual, California leads the way- and the manufacturing model it has  
developed in the last 30 years is high value added, high quality  
stuff, not lowest price mass market.
For instance, American Apparel makes all its $25 T shirts in Downtown  
LA, and pays its sewing staff $10 and up an hour.
Those $5 t shirts at Walmart are all from third world countries.
American Apparel has been opening stores overseas, and exporting those  
expensive, made in america duds to wannabe hipsters around the world-  
they have stores in China, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Brazil, along with  
most of europe.
This is the model that works in Cali- and, frankly, I think its gonna  
be the model that will work best for the USA in manufacturing in  
general- we are not gonna win any race to the bottom, in terms of  
price and quality, and we should not even try.

Ries

On Mar 16, 2009, at 7:11 PM, Mike Linn wrote:

I cant help but wonder.. with all of the new onerous legislation coming
down on California businesses.. are they just packing it up and moving
elsewhere?

mike


ries wrote:
> Its interesting to me how regional this is- up here, where I live, we
> are seeing virtually NO auctions.  Maybe one, every six months, in a 3
> or 4 state area, with any decent machine shop equipment. I watch the
> ads, and the amount in California, which has, for at least ten years
> now, been the big growth area for machining and manufacturing- well,
> the number of auctions in California is about the same today, as it
> was when I lived there in the early 90's.
>
>
>
>

-- 
Mike Linn
Artisan Blacksmith
McCalla, AL

Start a revolution...
www.fairtax.org


______________________________________________________________
TheForge mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:TheForge at mailman.qth.net

TheForge mail list group photo site is
http://www.photoaccess.com
Login: blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com
Password: anvil

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist
http://www.riesniemi.com/