No doubt VC can cast quantity and quality.
It all depends on the business model. Companies like Harman are dealer direct (not other middleman) and sell relatively high priced stoves - they can figure in the price. But I have heard tales of MANY Pennsylvania foundries that now import their parts from Asia. In other words, they own a foundry but is it not a value for them to cast! That's Freakonomics!
When I went to Dicks sporting and picked up 130 lbs of weights for $70, I was amazed - because my wholesale cost for parts at the Pa foundry for Upland stuff was about $1.00 a pound! So here I was buying cast 20 years later WITH a profit for the store - including shipping, for a little over 50 cents!
A container full of castings costs about $5000 to ship from Asia or Europe, which using my figures:
40,000 lbs - 30 cents a pound - 12,000 plus 5,000 shipping = 17,000
From the Pa foundry: $40,000 plus $1,000 freight = $41,000
All these numbers really mean nothing...because some are less, some are more, etc. - But when you consider that the final cost of a product is often roughly 4x the production cost - this means an even BIGGER difference between the two.
I'm not favoring one or the other - the customer decides that. But try to tell Wal-Mart about paying the higher figure....no way, Jose!
VC castings, BTW, ARE of the best quality that many in the industry have ever seen. No one has ever doubted that. A foundry which was designed and built for stove castings - plus, the original dedication of the founder (who left with exactly zero dollars) is what created that quality. Anyone who has not read it should check out the (long-ago) INC. article on Duncan and VC:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19890301/5564.html
(long article - but good)
"It is the story of a failed corporate metamorphosis, too, of a growth company struggling to come to grips with a declining market. And it is the story of a personal education as yet unfinished, of the transformation of Duncan Syme from a self-proclaimed "backyard hippie" with a dream into a manager with a responsibility" (ed note - this is before his ruin)
It all depends on the business model. Companies like Harman are dealer direct (not other middleman) and sell relatively high priced stoves - they can figure in the price. But I have heard tales of MANY Pennsylvania foundries that now import their parts from Asia. In other words, they own a foundry but is it not a value for them to cast! That's Freakonomics!
When I went to Dicks sporting and picked up 130 lbs of weights for $70, I was amazed - because my wholesale cost for parts at the Pa foundry for Upland stuff was about $1.00 a pound! So here I was buying cast 20 years later WITH a profit for the store - including shipping, for a little over 50 cents!
A container full of castings costs about $5000 to ship from Asia or Europe, which using my figures:
40,000 lbs - 30 cents a pound - 12,000 plus 5,000 shipping = 17,000
From the Pa foundry: $40,000 plus $1,000 freight = $41,000
All these numbers really mean nothing...because some are less, some are more, etc. - But when you consider that the final cost of a product is often roughly 4x the production cost - this means an even BIGGER difference between the two.
I'm not favoring one or the other - the customer decides that. But try to tell Wal-Mart about paying the higher figure....no way, Jose!
VC castings, BTW, ARE of the best quality that many in the industry have ever seen. No one has ever doubted that. A foundry which was designed and built for stove castings - plus, the original dedication of the founder (who left with exactly zero dollars) is what created that quality. Anyone who has not read it should check out the (long-ago) INC. article on Duncan and VC:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19890301/5564.html
(long article - but good)
"It is the story of a failed corporate metamorphosis, too, of a growth company struggling to come to grips with a declining market. And it is the story of a personal education as yet unfinished, of the transformation of Duncan Syme from a self-proclaimed "backyard hippie" with a dream into a manager with a responsibility" (ed note - this is before his ruin)
