Still, price is not the key difference. "We don't want to compete on price because China or Vietnam is going to win," said Goepfert. "We don't want to be the cheapest guys out there. I think a lot of companies are willing to pay for on-time delivery and quality systems." He found that out firsthand when nearly half of his customers who left for lower-cost offshore nameplate-makers in the mid-1990s came back because of quality and delivery problems.