For many many years now, companies have been having their products mass-manufactured in Asia, usually in and around Southern China as this is now recognised as the global manufacturing centre of the world.
The reason for this is that you get a lot more for your money in China than you do pretty much anywhere else because of the exchange rate, a single unit of their currency (Yuan) is worth far less than a single unit of ours.
So that’s the main reason people source their products from China. Well, what more reason do you need to do something other than the fact that it will save you lots of money? There a a couple of minor disadvantages, and a few more advantages to boot.
The advantages are few, but still obliterate the disadvantages in my opinion. Of course the main one, price is a big factor as I previously mentioned. There are 11.2 Chinese Yuan for every 1 British pound so you do get a lot more for your money.
The second advantage I will mention is how close you can get to the Chinese trade industry, which is of course advantageous, and thirdly you will probably end up a lot closer to your raw materials, therefore saving money on that as well.
Now to the disadvantages, one of the main ones is the cost of importing your goods back to your base country. However when you compare the money spent on importing to the money saved on manufacturing, the overall process will still work out cheaper.
As well as that, there’s the time that shipping takes. This is probably more of a disadvantage as this could result in loss of turnover if demand for your product is high enough. Also, the production might be a little sloppy to start with, but if you get a good sourcing company to sort it all out for you, they will ensure that this doesn’t happen.
So to summarise, it is clear to me that it is far more advantageous for companies to mass-manufacture their goods in Asia than to do it domestically.