This tool makes a small dent on the surface for ease of drilling. A tap with a nail will also do the job. But if you are drilling all day long, this tool saves you from fetching the hammer and finding a nail every time.
It also saves lives. If your car plunges into the water, the best way to escape is to break the window and swim out. (You won’t be able to open the door.) How would you find a sharp object to deliver a quick blow on that piece of glass? Concerned for my family, I sought out this apparatus: eBay, local hardware stores, etc. I found a vendor quoting a price about 5% of the average selling price on eBay. Two conditions: minimum order of 500 and he is in China. Hmm…
In addition, I have a dizzy variety of customization choices: color of the punch, inscription (branding) on it, the style of packaging (none, plastic with stock-paper back, all plastic casing, etc.), insersion of a printed material or not, shipping options (boxes of 10 or whatever easy for them), etc.
For a minute or two, I dreamed of starting a business selling Automatic Center Punches. Buy here, sell there, make a bunch. All done with a simple phone. My own brand too. What should be my company’s name? Hmm…
Snap back. And I found Wall Street Journal explaining why manufacturing industry is not coming back to the US; the economy, infrastructure, and willingness to customize for a small order are forever gone. They are here in Asia, particularly China.
For decades, enterprises tried to scale up to capture the economy of scale. The art moved from vertical integration to supply-chain management. But the world has shifted to the demand side. Customers, individuals and companies alike, want it just right, just fit, just for them, one of the kinds, with style and personality. This is the era of massive customization, nano-segmentation, or whatever the new MBA buzzword for the same concept.
The equilibrium, or the optimal balance, point of this supply- and demand-side tug-of-war seems to be in China. It exists in the form of clustering: hundreds or thousands of small suppliers close to each other for the same industry. They, all anonymously together, funnel to a far fewer brands that distribute to the final paying customers. It is a complex economic organism. Nobody knows how they came together. But they used to be in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Now they are in ShengZhen, SuZhou, and pretty much the entire south-eastern China.
Is this how the world is becoming? I agree with that Wall Street Journal reporter, the US has lost it already.
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