Thread: A Talk of Steel.

I have a Boker Chinese knife. From what I've read, the blade and all of the parts are all made in Germany but the final assembly takes place in China. Considering that the entire thing is held together with screws, I figured the worst that might happen is that I may need to tighten one at some point. I guess my point is that just because it states that its a Chinese version doesn't necessarily mean that it was actually made there. It could just be the assembly.

Yea, now that is where you have to be careful, the made in part. I have read that Leica at one time or another had parts made in other countries, Canada being one, and those parts were shipped to Germany for assembly. The finished product was marked made in Germany. When you buy a car these days many of the component parts come from various countries but only the country of assembly gets the made in sticker.

Bob

Originally Posted by OCDshaver

I have a Boker Chinese knife. From what I've read, the blade and all of the parts are all made in Germany but the final assembly takes place in China. Considering that the entire thing is held together with screws, I figured the worst that might happen is that I may need to tighten one at some point. I guess my point is that just because it states that its a Chinese version doesn't necessarily mean that it was actually made there. It could just be the assembly.

Ye. Global trade being what it is, you can get very funny constructions because from a tax pov, there is a difference in parts vs end product. A guy I know personally owns a clothing company together with a couple of others. They buy individual pants legs, ship them to poland or ukraine (I remember it's a former eastern bloc country). There they just stitch them together instead of doing that in where the pieces are coming from.

This way, they pay very little taxes because the eastern bloc country is in it mainly for the employment. For my friend, shipping back and forth is a lot cheaper than finishing the entire product in the west.

I remember people complaining about quality control when norton started making their combo stones in Mexico instead of the US. But if you read the documentation, you could see that the individual halves were already made in different places. they were just glued together in the US to make it 'and American product'.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Ye. Global trade being what it is, you can get very funny constructions because from a tax pov, there is a difference in parts vs end product. A guy I know personally owns a clothing company together with a couple of others. They buy individual pants legs, ship them to poland or ukraine (I remember it's a former eastern bloc country). There they just stitch them together instead of doing that in where the pieces are coming from.

This way, they pay very little taxes because the eastern bloc country is in it mainly for the employment. For my friend, shipping back and forth is a lot cheaper than finishing the entire product in the west.

Exactly. Imagine if you saw a razor from Pakistan (something no one here wants to touch) but found that the blade was made in Germany but simple scaled in Pakistan. You might have a go at it knowing that business end of that razor should be of good quality. In my case the knife itself was of low cost. Combined with what I had read about where the parts were made and how it was constructed, it was an easy decision.