Flamenco guitar maker moves to India

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Kate

Posts: 1827
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: Living in Granada, Andalucía

Flamenco guitar maker moves to India

Just read this and thought you may be interested.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8209-2076358,00.html

Flamenco guitar maker moves to India to cut costs and be competitive.

Anders dont leave !!!!

Kate

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Emilio Maya Temple
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 10 2006 10:15:54

Francisco

Posts: 879
Joined: Jun. 13 2005
From: SW USA

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

Not really all that surprised since this trend has been observed for quite some time in several different countries/industries. I'm still not convinced that all this 'outsourcing' is a good thing or a bad thing. Anyway, interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 10 2006 10:53:10

Miguel de Maria

Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

Cool, Kate, thanks! I have a lot of interest in outsourcing, especially to India, because I have done some reading and thinking about it lately. I am reading a book called "The World is Flat" which is about the levelling of the playing field due to the incredible post-internet bust global connectivity.

Many, many professions are in the midst of being outsourced here in the US. Obviously, Indian call center operators are ubiquitous. Accounting is too--if you are an average accountant, be aware that in a few years people will be emailing their info to INdia and get back tax returns ready to be filed. My wife got a solicitation via email for legal research. And even more startling, some radiologists are outsourcing the _reading_ of X-rays to India, via pdf or something like that.

The difficult thing to take for Westerners is that these are traditionally high-status, high-paying jobs (except for call centers of course), and they are apparently being executed with good precision by the Indians.

India has no natural resources, but it does have a lot of people, and they speak English and have a great educational system that can churn out masses of highly motivated professionals--who happen to be willing to work for 10% or less of what Americans will!

I am a little surprised that they are getting into manufacturing guitars, since they don't have any particular advantages in that area.

Ricardo concluded that free markets are always better, that we Westerners aren't going to suffer for this drain. But it sure seems that way when your job is going down the broadband pipe to India. The main problems is that these guys are so motivated, they see these jobs as glamour positions and we can barely be bothered to do them. That will be our downfall, if anything. I urged my wife to try out the legal researchers. Here in America, big firms are paying $100,000 a year for new law school graduates to do this drudge work, but the Indians will do it for $8/hour. It might be fun to see the solo practioners litigating the big firms to death (usually the big firms' tactic is to drown the soloist in briefs and motions because of their great size), because the arithmetic here is pretty simple. I love it!

I did a little research and found an Indian guitar teacher who was giving lessons at 125 rupees/hr. That's like $3.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 10 2006 13:44:15

flyeogh

Posts: 729
Joined: Oct. 13 2004

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Miguel de Maria)

Miguel I believe this global movement is a transitional thing (although the transition may take several decades). In my trade, commercial IT systems, those who have experienced off shore development have seen little evidence of reduced costs despite the low hourly rates. There are many hidden costs.

And here in the UK there are already examples of off shore call centers being repositioned back in the UK.

Where the product is the result of a simple and predefined manufacturing process (but sufficiently variant so that you cannot use robots - I believe the average wage of a robot is the same in India as in the US

) and the product is not too bulky - as with guitars - I can see the labour costs being attractive but only if the scale of the operation is sufficient.

I for one would like to see more promotion of localised products and thus variety (if for no other reason than it makes going somewhere more interesting). If transport costs are not artificially subsidised as now I think we will see a change. Hopefully that change will mean that the Indians earn more and that those who have benefited from an unbalanced world will not suffer too badly throughout the process (although there will be pain).

As for filling in tax forms – India is welcome to that trade

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nigel (el raton de Watford - now Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 10 2006 14:23:29

Gecko

Posts: 218
Joined: Jan. 2 2006
From: New Mexico

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

IIRC Dell Computers "outsourced" their help center to India a few years back. Then a year or so ago brought it back to the U.S.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 10 2006 14:54:54

Thomas Whiteley

Posts: 786
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: San Francisco Bay Area

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

quote:

Flamenco guitar maker moves to India to cut costs and be competitive.

Kate;

I guess he moved his entire staff and now pays them the prevailing rate in India. Or perhaps he fired everyone and will hire and train people in India how to make Spanish guitars.

Personally, I have never heard of Admira Guitars. The price range of what I found on the Internet indicates that these are low-end guitars.

From a web site:

Admira, made by Enrique Keller, SA. in spain. Standard classical guitar. Cedar top, laminate back and sides, cedar neck. molded plastic nut at 2", synthetic bone bridge. High gloss urethane finish.

Not my cup of tea.

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Tom
http://home.comcast.net/~flamencoguitar/flamenco.html

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 10 2006 23:41:17

Francisco

Posts: 879
Joined: Jun. 13 2005
From: SW USA

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

quote:

Admira, made by Enrique Keller, SA. in spain. Standard classical guitar. Cedar top, laminate back and sides, cedar neck. molded plastic nut at 2", synthetic bone bridge. High gloss urethane finish.

Yea, sounds like India is the perfect place for him...no offense, India.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 11 2006 1:33:49

Thomas Whiteley

Posts: 786
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: San Francisco Bay Area

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Francisco)

quote:

Yea, sounds like India is the perfect place for him...no offense, India.

The weather will be a bit different than where he is from in Spain. The advantage of relocation: You will get a free Cobra with every guitar! It will be in the guitar case the instrument is shipped in for safety reasons!

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Tom
http://home.comcast.net/~flamencoguitar/flamenco.html

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 11 2006 17:28:39

gshaviv

Posts: 272
Joined: Mar. 22 2005
From: Israel

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Thomas Whiteley)

quote:

Personally, I have never heard of Admira Guitars.

Admira makes low end student guitars. Their models start at $90 (and are probably worth as much...).

So their only game is a price game, not a quality game. For such a company moving to a place where labor is cheap (guitars being a labor intensive product) makes sense. I would say they are better off moving to places where the labor is even cheapr like Armenia.

As for the general off-shore trend, and the example of Dell moving their support back on-shore its a general industry trend. Being in the software industry myself I can tell you that we flirted a lot with opening a design center in India and failed there. We encountered a culture problem in India, urgent for them is not what it means for me, same for quality and process. On the other hand last year I opened a design center in Moscow (where wages in the IT industry are like Bangalore India) and they've become a very productive team.

Labor costs in India have gone up quite a bit in the last few years due to the enormous growth in off-shoring. Its very hard to retain employees in India, they keep jumping jobs as there's so much demand. My feeling is that the off-shore trend to India will taper off in a few years and some other center will be found elsewhere in the world where costs are still cheaper. Its flattening the world, like Mike's book said.

There are certain things which are good to outsource, like IT support. There are certain things which are difficult like core product development. I think what will happen is that countires like the US, UK etc. will have to move up the food chain to maintain their supperiority. Jobs that were once considered very professional are now becoming more routine and will be outsourced while new professional jobs will have to be found.

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Guy

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 11 2006 18:16:39

Guest

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

quote:

Anders dont leave !!!!

I will of course leave if living conditions and weather gets rough.

Why not india... Lots of culture, (like burning women) back to the roots etc.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 12 2006 7:39:49

Thomas Whiteley

Posts: 786
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: San Francisco Bay Area

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to gshaviv)

quote:

Jobs that were once considered very professional are now becoming more routine and will be outsourced while new professional jobs will have to be found.

Guy;

Some very interesting comments in your thread. I hope we do not aggravate others for “thread drift”.

My background is electronics engineering (Ampex Corporation), and for the last 15 years programming. We lost 60,000 electronics engineering jobs in 1990 in Silicon Valley. I live in Silicon Valley, where we lost 192,000 IT jobs in 2001 and have not gained them back. In fact last month we lost over 6000 IT jobs in California. We have over 33 million square feet of unoccupied R&D factory space, and over 15 million square feet of unoccupied office space in Silicon Valley.

We as a nation would rather hire a H1B rather then hire an American. You can guess why. Lower wages and the average H1B will not retire here so there is no retirement cost for a company to consider.

Since 1990 many top companies out here will hire you for six months, drain your knowledge, and the fire (lay off) you. That way they do not have to pay medical or other benefits. It is really cut throat in more ways than one.

I worked on the Apollo/LEM projects and many DOD projects like the F-111 Radar. That was from 1968-1974. When I was 15 Sputnik was launched and President Eisenhower asked the students of America to enter engineering and science to beat the USSR.

Well, there was a job market for science and engineering as well as physics and mathematics. You could leave college and quickly find a good job where you could contribute something you felt was positive.

The problem I see today is that there is little opportunity for employment in areas of what has become an international field that was the domain of only a few countries. There are few manufacturing jobs in the United States. Our balance of payments is out of whack and it is obvious why. We have to buy products from other nations. We do not make them any more.

Did you know that Silicon Valley is responsible for 25% of the nations exports? Agriculture is the number one industry in California. We grow about 50% of the nations produce.

Instantaneous gratification is the name of the game in the United States. No long-term plans exist. Japan had twenty year plans to take over electronics manufacturing from the United States. We cannot wait one quarter to get the results from Wall Street.

Nothing stays the same. I had better quit before the flamenco police complain!

_____________________________

Tom
http://home.comcast.net/~flamencoguitar/flamenco.html

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 12 2006 15:58:57

Miguel de Maria

Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003

[Deleted]

Post has been moved to the Recycle Bin at Mar. 12 2006 16:31:09

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 12 2006 16:28:13

flyeogh

Posts: 729
Joined: Oct. 13 2004

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Thomas Whiteley)

Tom you paint a bleak picture and I know that after the silicon valley boom the fallout must be massive. And with the 3rd world producing qualified resources you have a double wammy.

The problem is complex but would you not agree that if transport was not subsidised (by that I mean the cost to the environment) then it would encourage, help local manufactuers? My first guitar was an admira and excellent for the money but I 'm not going to buy a guitar made in India

Spain is full of unemployed who will work for next to nothing. And for a guitar "made in Spain" must have some value???

And finally why is it economical to fly potatoes from Egypt to the UK?? The world is MAD.

Now back to my Alegrias

How do you get yr pinkie to jump to the 4th fret while holding B7? I need an extention

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nigel (el raton de Watford - now Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 12 2006 18:34:25

Thomas Whiteley

Posts: 786
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: San Francisco Bay Area

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to flyeogh)

quote:

How do you get yr pinkie to jump to the 4th fret while holding B7? I need an extention

Nigel;

I have seen pieces of music like that. They neglected to state: Use Capo on fret…

We went to see a Tommy Emmanuel concert a few weeks ago in San Francisco. He was telling us about a Chet Atkins piece he liked to play. One day he asked Chet how he could play that piece, and the reply was, “That’s easy. I use a Capo on the second fret”! It is the little things that matter! So do not worry about growing that little finger!

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Tom
http://home.comcast.net/~flamencoguitar/flamenco.html

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 12 2006 22:12:18

gshaviv

Posts: 272
Joined: Mar. 22 2005
From: Israel

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Thomas Whiteley)

Tom,

I also live in Silicon Valley (actually I'm also in Sunnyvale). Sure we lost jobs and will never see them again. We will survive if our innovation will enable us to create new jobs which you can't outsource - today.

The same things were said when the US lost textile jobs to china and yet we managed to move up the food chain.

As far as H1B goes, yes there is an incentive to hire one, the stupid system made it so. The H1B guy can't leave his job cause if he does he has to restart his green card application. So you can get them for cheaper and they will not leave you. Incidently, this year the H1 quota was reduced to 60000, the 2006 quota was empty by October 2005... I know cause I hired an H1 recently.

quote:

flyeogh:
And for a guitar "made in Spain" must have some value???

Sure it does. I think the key is that Admira plays a game of cost, it doesn't try to produce exceptionally high quality guitars, it tries to produce cheap guitars (ok, cost effective is perhaps a nicer way of saying it). If cost is your main selling point, reducing your manufacturing costs will put you ahead in the game. But if what you are selling is quality, you can charge premium for that and then if location affects your percieved quality, you want to be in the location that provides the best perception of quality. I don't think Conde Hermanos will move their building to India any time soon, lets see what that would do to their brand name.

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Guy

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 12 2006 23:48:58

flyeogh

Posts: 729
Joined: Oct. 13 2004

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Thomas Whiteley)

quote:

Use Capo on fret…

Tom do you have a selective capo???

The capo is already on the second fret. The B7 is from high E : 0-0-2-1-2-2 and I need to stop the 5th and 6th at the relative 4th fret. Now this is a struggle but the issue is not the pinkie but when it goes to the 4th the hand rotates slightly and the fingers m and a slide up and get muffled.

Do others remember this stretch problem and is it a matter of practice everyday and your stretch gets bigger and more comfortable – or go for surgery? I guess practicing with the capo on the 5th fret, and thus the stretch is less, is not a good plan. Practicing w/o a capo seems logical (max stretch) but it gets painful.

[New Indian workshop for Conde - first model the Madras. No longer 1A, 2A .. but mild, medium, hot or for aficionados v hot - somehow I don't see it

]

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nigel (el raton de Watford - now Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 13 2006 5:46:18

Guest

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

quote:

How do you get yr pinkie to jump to the 4th fret while holding B7?

creativity in music is learning how to cheat.

I mean, flamenco is compás and tone.... who cares about where you put your pinkie

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 13 2006 7:07:16

JBASHORUN

Posts: 1839
Joined: Jan. 23 2005

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to Kate)

To me, the important thing is how well the guitars are made. I don't really care where its made, as long as it is made well, and sounds good. If I'm after a cheap "throw-away guitar", then an Indian made one is as good as any other, especially if the price is right.

If conde wanted to move production to Asia, then thats okay with me too. just as long as the people who make them over there are equally skilled and knowledgeable as the ones in Spain.

It has to be said though, that Admira aren't known for making the best guitars. So the move doesn't surprise me too much. I just hope the quality doesn't suffer even more as a result of the move... if that happens, the move may be counter-productive, and Admira might end up losing more customers.

I think a lot comes down to prejudice too. An "Indian made Flamenco guitar" is not as highly respected as a Spanish one. Just like a Mexican or Asian Fender is not as good as a USA built one. The question is whether these prejudices are justified in any way.

Jb

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 13 2006 16:58:13

flyeogh

Posts: 729
Joined: Oct. 13 2004

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to JBASHORUN)

quote:

The question is whether these prejudices are justified in any way.

The question is whether these prejudices affect sales in any way.

"Enrique Keller has been forced to move from its factory in the Basque Country in northern Spain because of competition from China and South Korea"

or was it shortterm greed and a lack of imagination.

Viva espana

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nigel (el raton de Watford - now Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 13 2006 18:12:11

JBASHORUN

Posts: 1839
Joined: Jan. 23 2005

RE: Flamenco guitar maker moves to India (in reply to flyeogh)

quote:

"Enrique Keller has been forced to move from its factory in the Basque Country in northern Spain because of competition from China and South Korea"

or was it shortterm greed and a lack of imagination.

It depends if you are primarily "a businessman" or primarily "a luthier".

If you are primarily a businessman, it is logical to minimise costs and maximise profits.

If you are primarily a luthier, it is logical to make the best guitars possible for the price.

In "the Flamenco world", I think it is more important to be the latter.

But in "the real world", one is often required to be both. which is when compremises occur.

Jb

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 14 2006 10:05:56