China in the future

[jmillheiser]

my employer seems to have no issues with importing from china.

I work for Lowe's at one of their Regional Distributions Centers.

It is a 1.3 million sq ft warehouse and the single largest buidling in the state of wyoming.

They are growing so fast that we are operating 30% over capacity and our warehouse has been over capacity for over a year.

the vast majority of our product comes straight from china in those nice pretty shipping containers.

Lowe's is doing to Home Depot what Home Depot did to independent Hardware stores.

To give you some idea of the scale we operate at. Our warehouse moves approximately 3 million dollars of merchendise through the facility a day. Thats almost a billion dollars a year just from our facility. And Lowe's has 11 such Regional Distribution Centers with 2 more under construction and 4 more in the planning stages.

When you figure that 75% of our product is from china thats a lot of money going back to china just from one company that is about a tenth the size of wal mart

[basshole]

But you can't get any service in a Lowe's store. They refuse to staff the store to support the customer base. And with so few employees, it's real easy to rip them off too. My Bro-in-law worked at the one in our town for awhile and he would watch customers on camera with security rip off tool boxes and mitre saws all kinds of expensive products and security would just sit and watch and say "huh...would ya look at that".....and do absolutely nothing.

[oldnslo]

That IS one way to get lots of inventory turns.....not the best way, but...

[jmillheiser]

The Lowe's store here in cheyenne is the same way.

Apparantly this is the exception and not the rule however

[Wizzard]

Every year we do a remodeling project on our place and have gone to Lowe's for several of those years . This last summer I went in early in the morning for cooler pads and there were 4 (mind you ) checkers and 4 registers in one booth with only one working . I asked the other checkers if they were checkers I already knew they were because their name tags indicated such . They were just standing around and BS'ing . I was told that I had to wait for the young girl that was on the phone with 3 customers ahead of me while the rest of them did absolutely nothing . And these were mature adults .
I waited about a minute with no progress in site , sat my pads down and told them I didn't need this kind of crapola in not so nice a term and walked out .
Now I feel about Lowe's like most of you feel about Wally World and wouldn't go back on a bet .
I left that morning and went down to OSH and was greeted politely , had several offers of help , got what I needed and was on my way in less then 10 minutes .

[basshole]

Well it's pretty obvious that companies have gotten used to the idea of "self service". As introduce many moons ago with gas stations. They realize that mojority of us will "do it ourselves" if some employee isn't willing to do it. I think they bank on that and if they have to lose a sale or two over it then so be it. They want the consumer to assume all responsibilty and liability for their inability or lack of desire to inform the consumer. I see it now in grocery stores here in CA where they now have self service check out lanes. I always make sure to ask them if I use the self serve aisle, do I get paid union wages??? freaks em out everytime

[9000white]

yeah and when they replace that lazy trash with robots they will be the ones with the saddest stories about lost jobs.

[rubthebuddha]

I just got done reading a great tour article in this months Motor Cyclist regarding a trip through China. I don't know if anyone else had a chance to read it, but it was very interesting. Not so much for the motorcycle part of the story (because I just can't see being on the road with the ruleless driving in that country myself) but more about where China is going in the future.

I think the western world better be ready for this up and coming economy. I've said it before, but the writer of the article said it better. To paraphrase - teach your kids Chinese, invest in things China will need, and be ready because all those people want the same cars, bikes and refrigerators we have. They are building more schools and advancing their growth. For example the writer mentions they have a Maglev train to and from the airport. We said we would have that from LA to Vegas 10 years ago, yet we don't even have a useful high-speed rail system here.

I don't want to predict our demise, and I don't claim to understand the whole of world economics, but it doesn't take a genius to see - we keep buying more and more from the Chinese - the most successful business in the US, Wal-Mart, has no issue with buying from China, and killing US companies that can't compete with Chinese prices - and because we value our own saving over our loyalty to our country, I'd say the conclusion is quite obvious and unstoppable.

It makes me think of the Matrix cartoon from the Anamatrix where the machines were shunned from the society of man, but yet they were much better than us at manufacturing. They stayed in their own country, and made things for mankind. So we kept buying from them, until we realized they held all the cards. We tried to stop the machines, but it was too late.

I had a hard enough time learning pig Latin!

If you want to invest in what China is going to need invest in oil. Once the Chinese trade their Schwinns in for cars the battle will be on. I don't know what they have as far as oil production, but they won't have enough and they'll need to get it from somewhere.

[jfeaz]

why would you think that china's economic rise would mean that our economy is "doomed?"

nothing could be further from the truth. china is still in the manufacturing and agricultural phase, but their economy will become service-oriented just like ours.

the U.S. is simply declining in manufacturing, but that's being replaced by other sectors, like banking, real estate, securities, and software. you can't just look at the source of our products and assume the u.s. economy is tanking. it is still growing faster than china's, albeit not as much faster as 20 years ago.

china's market development can only help us. right now, we outsource so much manufacturing to china because labor is so much cheaper. but as they transfer away from socialist economic policies to market ones, their cost of labor will go up as personal wealth increases and they will eventually be outsourcing work to us, much like japan and korea currently do, because labor is actually cheaper here.

so, either we get cheap goods or lots of jobs. stop worrying!

[rubthebuddha]

We have Lowe's and Home Depot here. Also Ace Hardware who used to be the top dog before those two showed up. There are no mom and pop hardware stores anywhere around that I know of.

As far as Wal-mart, I used to be a hardcore Wal-mart basher, but once you take emotional arguments out of it you realize that all they are is a very succesful company. This country is all about capitalism, not about saving mom and pop stores. Wal-mart is the prime target because they are the biggest and baddest. There's lots of other big box stores that are doing the same thing and people aren't bashing them.

Having said that, I've only shopped there twice in my life and don't plan on it again because when you look at them as a whole the do really suck the big one.