I definitely agree with the thinking of
Stanley Furniture Company.
Stanley recently shifted its manufacturing of baby cribs back to the U.S. from China. The company believes that parents of newborns are willing to pay a hefty premium for the “Made in the U.S.A.” label. After all, what is more important than the safety and well-being of our children?
This move was recently noted in
an article in the Wall Street Journal by Timothy Aeppel. A string of safety recalls have “soured people on imported cribs and opened a window for a domestic alternative,” the article said, “even if it costs considerably more.”
How much more? A made-in-America Stanley crib sells for about $700, “while imports that look nearly identical can be had for $400,” for a difference of $300. Anyone out there paid for college tuition recently? It hardly seems like a significant amount.
Glenn Prillaman, chief executive, states that often times a grandparent is helping to pay for the crib for a grandchild-to-be. But even parents who don’t get that financial help “seem more willing to splurge when it comes to their children,” he adds. They are looking for safety, sturdiness, durability and quality.
But the important point is that the Stanley cribs are a great example that illustrates of some kinds of production “that previously moved offshore have begun trickling back,” the article continues.
The cribs will be manufactured in Stanley’s Robbinsville, N.C. factory, which is growing. The company is investing over $8 million in new machinery there. It was earmarked for closure, but now will stay open.
We all know that costs drove the furniture production offshore to begin with. Furniture making is, to quote the article, intensive and difficult to automate.
There are signs of change in Robbinsville. One new furniture manufacturing machine requires nine employees to operate, replacing equipment that took 42 employees to operate. The factory once employed 375 workers, now 329. At one station, Micah Goldstein, Stanley's chief operating officer, notes, “In Asia, I pay 63 cents and hour for this [work]; here it is $10 an hour.”
But the workers are creating cribs once again here in America. And the Made-in-America label on a baby crib has a great deal behind it.