ARE THESE THE SAME STOVES?

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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)
 
I personally can't picture that any company is getting rich making wood stoves or any variant of them. Or ever will.

VC probably makes more money off of the frying pans.
 
Actually, back when they always told me they made almost nothing off the contract casting. Maybe that has changed. The deal was that the foundry had capacity and pretty much has to use it - you can't easily turn it off.....employees to pay, etc. etc. - So you want to keep all the lines running.

They had competition with the contracts for rest room hand dryers, the Stadium seats (Miami Dolphin as I remember) etc, whereas when it came to high quality enamel stoves, they used to be one of two companies (Jotul was the other).
 
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