hungup on outsourcing

I was just reading an article in Fortune magazine on a wire hanger manufacturer in Monticello, Wisconsin. The company was founded in 1917 in Peoria, Ill by a guy named Laidlaw. Until recently, it was one of the last companies making metal coat hangers in America. The jobs were unusually good paying for people without a high school degree and included health insurance for a family for $192 per month. It was something...something pretty good...

The company will or has packed up its machinery for shipment to China. The company was employee-owned but decided to outsource. The article goes on to say:

"Why Laidlaw's American employee-owners would think wise to invest $2.8 million to shift production overseas is not clear, but it get even weirder. In 2002 some of Laidlaw's domestic competitors petitioned the US government to impose a tariff on Chinese imports. Laidlaw wrote checks to lobbyists totally $441,000 to try to block it. President Bush killed the measure. Whatever your feeling about free trade, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Laidlaw's employee-owners became agents of their own demise."

I feel bad for the employees. It just seems sad...

It seems the surge of resistance against outsourcing has passed. But the trend is continuing.

I suppose we have accepted there is no use in swimming against these currents in the changing swells of global economics. You just get tired. Putting up resistance to forces that are bound and determined to make change is fruitless.

Trying to stop the tides is a good analogy. You can't stop the tides, but then again why would you want to? To continue with the analogy, if your house is built too close to the shoreline, move your house. Better yet, make your house float. Stay flexible. Be resourceful. Enjoy the challenge. Look ahead. Your house doesn't have to float forever, just long enough for the tides to change or for you to find a new house...

Outsourcing isn't going to last forever. Rather than fight it, make it work for you. On both ends. ON the outgoing economic tide that is pulling capital and labor away from American shores...and when the time comes...the incoming tide that will return many of the efforts we are now sending to China...

Outsource what you can of your own during the out tide. For a while, before joining peace corps, I was joking about outsourcing my family. It was a great rebuke to the republican/free market support for outsources, while at the same time promoting and standing behind good old fashioned American family values. Find a nice Indian woman to make a nice mom to my kids and raise my kids in India. Mail money over. Everyone wins. I import my American family experience via pictures, emails and cell calls. I joked but, to a certain extent you can outsource aspects of your life...

For instance, try and land a contracting position here in the states. Something which requires intellectual capital. But that needs a American to tap into the funding spigot. You act as the conduit. The eyes and the ears. The data gatherer. Send the 'data' for processing overseas.

Next time you speak with an Indian customer service rep, give him your own sales pitch. You already know he can speak English. Ask him or her,

"Hey, i have a personal business. What's your email. I'll send you some 'test' data and see how you analyze it."

Start a consulting business and find your own Indian outsourcing partner. It's combining globalism and 'localism'. You and an Indian working side-by-side. Both benefiting and cutting out the middleman. The middle man in this case is the multi-national corporation. Make life work for you. Make outsourcing work for you!

Eventually, during the incoming tide. Many jobs and resources that left the country will return. When cheap Chinese labor dries up. When Chinese standards of living rise dramatically, be open to opportunities that reemerge domestically.

Additionally, think of how you spend your money. Think of how multi-national corporations think. Apply the same logic to your own life. If consumers employed the same tactics as corporations, we would be a force with which to be reckoned. If we employed the same cost saving efficiency protocols a company such as Toyota employed, think of how much money you could save.

Right now, business has a singular focus. To efficiently tap the consumer, you and me, for all that it can. It mounts an all out assault for our resources. Business benefits from our inefficiencies because we are distracted by things like...say...living a life...

I think it is jut a matter of time before the 'efficient consumer' movement emerges. There is and has been no organizational, all-encompassing push for consumer efficiency.

One could make the argument that consumers just naturally are efficient. Always looking for the best deal. Which is true. But that is like saying companies just naturally are always looking to make a profit and do it naturally. However, look at the changes that has happened in the last 50 years in the business world. Business has gotten smart. Implemented technology. And new organizational models. The consumer has sat still. To use another analogy, business is utilizing modern weapons while we, the consumer, are still fighting a war of attrition. Witness the evolution of the MBA.

Perhaps, consumer efficiency and tactics will evolve. Perhaps their will be an MBA for consumer efficiency. A Masters in Consumer Efficiency, an MCE, which will combine an MBA and consumer advocacy non-profit interests?

Until then, the ability to look for opportunities and for empowerment rests with you. It is sad that the employees of the hanger company seemed to sink their own ship. I do not understand what happened to them or their intentions completely, but it is nice to think that maybe we can learn from their fate and maybe...well, maybe...outsource some lifeboat construction.