Monday, August 3, 2009

How they can make mini bikes so cheap !


If you don't know where 95% of mini bikes (AKA Pit bikes) come from let me set the record straight before we go on any further. Pit bikes come from 70% of the worlds products are from. You guessed it 'Made in China' . Anyone tell you any different they are B.S to you. I mean how else can they make them so cheap in the world and have the resources and man power. The Chinese philosophy is sell in Volume even if you only make $1 profit its $1 you more didn't have before.

With the 1.3billion people in China, labour is cheap and readily available. Each city in China has a speciality and predominately will produce similar types of product because the material or parts are easy to get. A bit like a hive and bees. The Hive is the town with its natural resources and the Bees feed off it and work with each other to produce same products. The Factories team up buy in bulk of other factories then split to materials to full fill there own orders. For example if they had a order for 300 bikes they would outsource and buy the tyre from a tyre factory at $1 each. But if they knew that their mate Tony's down the road who also has a dirt bike factory needs 500 tyres also they would combine and buy 800 tyres at .95 cents each. Now 5c saving doesn't sound like much but some of the mini bike factories export thousands of containers it all adds up. Lets say they do this for 50% of the parts and the other 50% are made in house. You taking 10's of thousands saved which make the Bosses of the factories richer.

The laws in China are less stringent than laws in the western world. They don't have unions to back them with wage disputes of health and safety issues. In fact its a joke there is no such animal called that. The head of capital is greater than the jobs available so workers are scared to dispute pays with factory bosses afraid of losing their jobs. This contributes to the low salaries thus western countries can buy the product at a cheap price.

Another cheap way factories can save a few dollars and I've seen it happen many times is when they produce a order they will substitute cheaper parts in a line. The end product will look the same with same finish. But the quality of the steel is lower grade making it weaker. For example years ago I bought a container of Mini Bikes and the frames all were exactly the same as the last order. Nothing wrong all perfect except when you jumped the bike the frame would bend. The factory had substitute Chrome Molly steel for mild steel frames without advising me. 85% of the frames bent. What a disaster. That was a major flaw in the bike however factories to save a buck will swap small parts for cheaper parts if you do not pay close attention to detail. This rubs off on the consumer and you ultimately pay the price.

Another sneaky way factories save money (some do pass the cost saving onto they're clients) is to outsource the whole order. Allot of small factories do this but don't tell there clients. They put dollar figures and profit in front of reputation and quality. They get Tony's factory down the road to make it then they stamp it with they're factory logo and box it with they're factory packaging. This is a common practice in China if you do not visit your supplier on a routine basis.




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