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Made in (Hope Arkansas) America


Trey Cannon

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The THX line is not coming back to the USA. It was moved out of China into the USA for the first time. The entire line is built in Hope now and we have a hard time keeping up with demand...mostly due to the time it takes to get the China made parts that go into the product.

It took the Hope team only a few days to find a better way to build the woofer cabinet....Terry W and the team are very good at what they do.

Now we are moving the build of the Palladium line to Hope for the first time.

The Pro product is taking off and we expect to see more and new products from the pro side.

[8][8][8][H][8][8][8]

The Chinese workers for the most part are very hard working but lets face it being exploited. More or less so depending on the copmany involved. Same situation in Mexico..... and now they're getting too expensive.

And guess what. In some things the labor cost is ridculousely small. And the savings even if doucle don't justify the putting the American worker out of work. Sneakers for example. $150 sneakers. Labor $3. That may inclulde materials? In any case/ US labor $6. Sneakers $150 either way. PURE GREED. And with higher reject rates from offshore labor so real labor costs may be MORE. JMVHO. Source what I"ve read from others so may or may not be true.

But give Klipsch a lot of credit even without bringing work back... the have peope at the Chinese plants full time and monitor things and I'm sure are one of the better companies in China to work for. It's just who they are and how they've ALWAYS done busines.

And it's good business sense. Their biggest market for the Heritage many of us love (and other lines) is Asia with booming economy who demand Made In USA.

Kind of sad when the same countries kicking are derrierres in the job category understand that American craftsmanship is second to none. And Klipsch has always been at the top of excellent craftmanship. Many factory rejects are hard to spot so brand new speakers,,not many, as the level of REAL QAULITY is second to none, occasionally makes brand new hard to tell they're not perfect speakers available for a $ONG.

And they're getting back into pro audio.... as in live convert pro audio. At least that's my impression.

And with Audiovox buying them out we all (many) thought the sky was falling .... can probably only help. From a pure business standpoint, Audiovox is smart enough to let a company that's growed over the last few years in one of the worst economies in decades (and yes, Klipsch, before Audiovox, did panic and reduced it workforce... but it's not a goal as in other companies). And many of the once great brands Audivox owns and are blamed for killing? Hell no. They were long dead for years before Audiovox bought what was left. Basicallly the brand name that used to mean someting. A few come to mind.... Jensen, KLH (do they own KLH?), Advent, AR, and more. The one's listed have a very common connection. Passed away not too long ago, within the last couple of years. Also involved / founded Cambridge Soundworks and Tivoli audio. Intials H?K. Great innovator at getting new product to market. Running a business..... see track record.

Audiovox may provide what Klipsch is missing marketing BUDGET. They do a great job of marketing but on a showstring.... add a budget close to the Energizer Bunny's (yep, an Audiovox brand), even a fraction with Klipsch's market leading sound quality based on VERY SOUND PROVABLE SCIENCE and Dr AB may start crapping his drawers as it's easy to prove scientifically that Klipsch's products often causing MUCH less blow his company's out of the water...

Sorry rant mode...... Maybe I should be a political blogger or talk show host.... no real qualifications. The only thing I'm missing is some scandel, or drug addiction, and I'm good to go .... oh, some talent to at least be entertaining.

Yov've read the above on the internet so it must be true .....

lol

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The THX line is not coming back to the USA. It was moved out of China into the USA for the first time. The entire line is built in Hope now and we have a hard time keeping up with demand...mostly due to the time it takes to get the China made parts that go into the product.

It took the Hope team only a few days to find a better way to build the woofer cabinet....Terry W and the team are very good at what they do.

Now we are moving the build of the Palladium line to Hope for the first time.

The Pro product is taking off and we expect to see more and new products from the pro side.

Hopefully (pun intended) they will keep making, and perhaps further improving, the Heritage line in Hope.

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...and perhaps further improving, the Heritage line in Hope...

[Y]

"Nothing is so perfect that it cannot be improved..." (from Confessions of a Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt)

"Continuous product and process improvement is the cornerstone of a quality culture."

Chris

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My original, built-in-the-USA RF-3/RC-3/RS-3 speakers (that I've since sold) most definitely had better build quality than the fifth-gen, built-in-China, Reference V speakers that replaced them. Don't get me wrong, I love my new speakers, but I've noticed quite a few fit-and-finish issues that just weren't present on my older, US-made speakers. And after exchanging a few cosmetically-challenged Reference V speakers to try to get perfect ones, I've finally learned that I'm going to have to accept some imperfections in the Chinese-made stuff. The vinyl on the front of one of the RF-82IIs I received was so badly bubbled that I can't believe it made it through QC.

I guess the good news is that, if anything, my experience with the Chinese-made speakers has me itching to upgrade my front three speakers to the US-built RF-7IIs and RC-64II so I can again experience that great build quality I've known in the past.

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I've finally learned that I'm going to have to accept some imperfections in the Chinese-made stuff.

I guess the good news is that, if anything, my experience with the Chinese-made speakers has me itching to upgrade my front three speakers to the US-built RF-7IIs and RC-64II so I can again experience that great build quality I've known in the past.

And B Stock from the Hope factory is sometimes very subtle. The veneer is not quite perfectly matched but one has to look for it to see it for example. Bubbled vinyl (only wood veneer from Hope) would definitely not pass Hope QC. Of course we're talking the more expen$ive speakers being produced in Hope but I would expect the same quality control standards to be applied. [H]

Go back to Trey's comment that the Hope cabinet builders figured out a better way to build a cabinet in 4 hours. The Klipsch Hope workforce is second to none. And the exploding Asian market demands made in the USA. Better quality for all of us.

I have no idea if still included but I'd like to see the signed iand nspected by tags on all products made in Hope. If nothing else you may be able to meet the person or people who worked on your speakers at a future Pilgrimage but workers signing their product are also going to take more pride in their work. And the Klipsch Hope workforce does take pride in their work and it shows.

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Great news Trey, the people in Arkansas sure deserve it, the quality of there work is first class.

It's really a smart move for Klipsch, this kind of quality and made in Hope is a big deal, these days people are shocked to hear made in the USA. Very happy to hear about new products designed in Hope and getting back into Pro designs, I'm thinking the Pro market is not really happy to hear about the competition.

Good deal Audiovox, you bought a first class company, keep it growing. [Y]

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The THX line is not coming back to the USA. It was moved out of China into the USA for the first time. The entire line is built in Hope now and we have a hard time keeping up with demand...mostly due to the time it takes to get the China made parts that go into the product.

It took the Hope team only a few days to find a better way to build the woofer cabinet....Terry W and the team are very good at what they do.

Now we are moving the build of the Palladium line to Hope for the first time.

The Pro product is taking off and we expect to see more and new products from the pro side.

There's good people in Hope. Keep up the good work guys!

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I think ken wong is trying to say he's located in Shanghai and is (proud to be) a Klipsch dealer. That's a good thing. When people in China buy and like Klipsch speakers, the word really gets around, and word of mouth is the best advertising.

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The klipsch made in china, We agent for this produc,I am in shanghai

Ken congratuations assuming you are legitate Klipsch dealer in China. :emotion-29: :emotion-29: :emotion-29::D:emotion-29: :emotion-29: :emotion-29:

I think Made In USA is hot in China right now so you will probably also want to be agent as you call it for Klipsch products made in Hope.

Klipsch seems to do better at building things in China than many companies. Hopefully patents and copyrights are becoming more law instead of viewed as a suggestion as they have been in the recent past.

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  • 9 months later...

About Klipsch and American brands vs. Chinese products:

 

Modern manufacturing isn't really about the manufacturing any longer, because of how easy it is to get something made with acceptable to good quality, which is what the majority of customers expect. Modern manufacturing is about designing a product worth talking about, and then telling its story to the public in such a way that the public will want to be a part of the story, and will become a customer. There is no room for any kind of dishonesty in marketing any longer - only authenticity and honesty, and anything other than that will create a backlash.

 

I say this because yes, if something becomes desirable enough, there will be imitators and copycats. The Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese have been making knock-off products for as long as they've had industry. It comes from the view that if multiple sources offer the same product, and if the product is cheaper than the original, then that is better for the world (neglecting that people buy a brand as much as a product, so cheapening a company's brand by copying its products doesn't really work because it is viewed by the global consumer as dishonest). So you need to design a compelling product, and then you need to be better than anybody else at telling the story of your product to the world, so that your brand will be the most desirable. American companies can do this by "living" their brand story so that it is the true story of their brand, then their marketing becomes honesty itself.

 

Klipsch has a great brand because it has such a great story to tell, of technical expertise and great sound, and the other people who have made that sound part of their lives (cinema-goers, home audio consumers) and their livelihoods (cinema owners and live audio techs). It's also helpful that the technology Klipsch uses, the horn-loaded loudspeaker, so easily crosses over from the home audio world to the cinema and pro audio worlds. The Klipsch brand is something that the Chinese won't be able to duplicate anytime soon, since the Chinese only seem to understand how to manufacture products, and not nearly as much about how to create compelling products and market them in a compelling way.

Edited by Taterworks
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The rise of consumers with disposable wealth in countries that have been traditional offshoring centers represents a major shift in the typical product marketing patterns that we've seen in the past.  Re-shoring was the story that I believe started some threads like this one, and this is typically something that is good to advertise widely. 

 

Some of these heritage offshoring countries have changed due to their evolving economies.  The countries that you mention above in addition to Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, central and south America, etc. have seen varying levels of wealth retention by greater proportions of their populations--and this is the driving factor in the ability of these countries to become new marketplaces for higher priced luxury products. Just witness the rise of Starbucks in the PRC, for instance, as a boutique/high price place to congregate and drink coffee and tea.

 

I see this as yet another example of Adam Smith's economic principles and is something that is typically win-win for all (...except perhaps for global warming activists that argue that this is a bad thing).  It certainly seems to have a stabilizing effect on the world politically/militarily.

 

Chris

Edited by Chris A
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Re-shoring was the story that I believe started some threads like this one, and this is typically something that is good to advertise widely.

 

I'd like to believe it but the manufacturing sector of the US economy will largely be associated with extremely high value, high margin products and thus constrained to a limited grouping of products.  In the US, you make money by offering products no one else in the world knows how to make (jet engines, satellites, nuclear submarines) or you provided highly specialized skills few others are trained in or you provide luxury items like yachts.  The luxury sector is also a "feast or famine" sector and represent a tiny fraction of the US economy.     

 

A comment from reader of the NY Times sums it up perfectly:

 

J. Perkins  NYC 3 days ago

So long as the U.S. Dollar is the world's reserve currency, our most important export is little green pieces of paper with pictures of long-dead presidents on them. We print these little pieces of paper as quickly as possible, and send them to other countries, which are more than happy to send us automobiles, computers, cell phones, and other far more valuable things than little pieces of paper in exchange.

It's true that so long as the exchange works this way, we run export deficits and lose jobs. So long as we're the world's reserve currency, that's because other countries are willing to do the labor for us more or less for free, so long as we keep the printing presses running. It's also true that if we were no longer issuing the world's reserve currency, we would start having to produce and send other countries things of roughly equivalent value to what they send us. This would indeed create jobs at home.

It seems rather silly to look at these facts and claim that we need to stop being the world's reserve currency, because other countries sending us (more or less) free stuff simply hurts us too much. This argument ignores the actual reality on the ground in favor of a few (usually relevant) economic statistics. Creating jobs is nice. Getting the stuff the jobs would have produced had we created them for free is better. 

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One other piece to the puzzle that I believe has been lost: marketing of products within the countries of manufacture that uniquely capture the in-country buyer's needs competitively.  I believe that this is why there was so much product cloning that took place in the past by developing countries, even before offshoring widely occurred.  These companies/governments couldn't afford to do the marketing research and development of their own products in foreign countries--or they lacked the expertise to do it well by understanding the buyers needs in those external countries.

 

But this means that these firms must continue to innovate their products, or else foreign (AND domestic) "product cloners" will overtake them if they remain complacent with static product lines.  This is what has happened in the U.S. and elsewhere.  You have to continue to invest in the future.  Taking profits and giving them to, well...areas other than innovation--this is the problem. 

 

Sixty-year-old designs are going to be cloned--and even one year old designs--if these companies let these competitors do this to them.  Patents are meant to slow down innovation for the innovators, but they are also meant to fend off the big companies from overwhelming the small ones.  And patents last only 20 years (from time of filing) in the U.S. as well as most other countries.

 

Typically today, if a product happens to sell well in a foreign country, then great, but then the companies pushing those products typically didn't put much effort on really understanding those markets and directing their product development to remain successful in those niche markets.  This phenomenon still occurs too often in the U.S. and I've experienced this first-hand many times.

 

Remember the Lexus auto lines of the 1980s?  It took a great great of effort by Toyota to displace luxury U.S.-based auto manufacturers--whose own marketing and engineering departments were really asleep at the wheel selling much larger vehicles that consumed lots of fuel and having much lower reliability.  The story of how Toyota did it is very interesting but it also was expensive for Toyota, who invested heavily for the long term in a single foreign market, but financed by their ongoing operations in their successful but less expensive "down market" economy automobile lines. 

 

This is Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation model in technicolor: it's called "cramming" when marketplace competitors retreat to the high-end, then eventually lose to formerly low-end competitors who continue to innovate into the high end market using disruptional techniques and technologies.

 

I use some updated techniques used/developed during that time for product development--they're simple, work very effectively, and without added cost of operations--in fact much lower costs and much shorter product development times.  Coupled with newer techniques developed in the 1940s and now made feasible by computers, software tools, and most especially, knowledgeable product architects/engineers/organizations that can use those tools effectively to stick around and prosper.

Edited by Chris A
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