Protect Your Property
The opportunity of low cost labor has many companies thinking about the benefits of moving manufacturing operations to China. The short term profits alone seem to be enough to provide shareholders what they like to see, less assets (such as owning North American factories), less labor costs (such as retirement plans and health benefits), and more profit. The problem is that most of these companies do not see the very real risk of global product counterfeiting and the damage that it can do to their company.
For companies doing business in China, the biggest concern is protecting proprietary technology. Some reports show that Chinese counterfeiting is a big business, costing the United States automotive parts industry by itself $3 billion annually. Stories of North American companies finding exact copies of their products have become commonplace. Offshore manufactures are loosing their core technology to intellectual property pirates, causing considerable loss in their profits and damage to their brand. For this reason, companies have found that it is better to keep their production in North America to protect proprietary technology, processes, and quality.
Save Your Factory has a series of reports that discuss this very issue. We have a written testimony to the United States Senate from Ohio State University law professor Daniel Chow that says 15% to 20% of well-known brands in China are counterfeited. Our reports show that while laws do exist in China to prevent counterfeiting intellectual property, they are not uniformly applied and arbitration often takes place outside of China, making judgments difficult to enforce.
Save Your Factory dedicates itself to providing North American manufacturers with the information they need to fully weigh the risks to offshoring. Explore our website to find out more about the risks of product piracy practices in China and alternatives to moving operations overseas.
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