A friend of ours had some car trouble and purchased a part online for a quarter the price. Thinking he had scored a deal, he had his mechanic install it only to have it fail a week later. After several hours spent navigating the company’s customer service portal, he managed to convince them to send another part in exchange for the broken one. It took four weeks to arrive since it was being shipped from overseas. Three days after the new part was installed (and more car rental and auto shop fees) it failed again; so our friend went back at it — waiting on the phone, haggling with customer service, mumbling curse words under his breath, until another part arrived…a month later. When all was said and done that “less expensive” part ended up costing our friend nearly three times more.

CustomFab USA has seen similar attempts by customers wanting to keep costs down by outsourcing production overseas. And while it might initially appear the final price tag is lower than manufacturing domestically, there are important variables to consider when comparing the costs.

PRODUCTION

Having a domestic manufacturing plant that adheres to state and federal guidelines ...