The website is a user-friendly proxy for youtube - if it has trouble loading the video, there's a link to the youtube page (or just edit the url).
You may have read things like Why Amazon Can't Make A Kindle In the USA, but what about a hand tool with no electronics, just a few materials, large tolerances, and a simple assembly process? The same problem of manufacturing engineering being exported for greater integration with manufacturing labor applies to that, too - according to this, American "tool and die" capabilities for small-scale manufacturing are gutted. (I suspect the this video overstates the problem, because the biggest obstacle came when the non-manufacturing engineer with a small budget wanted to contract out a specific need - molds for plastic injection molding, which the molder would have sourced from the PRC - and two other engineers lent their expertise for two different ways of manufacturing plastic injection molds, and he found a mold-maker, after he needed to change the material of a part, but it's still a big deal that there aren't more American vendors advertising these capabilities.) And the video didn't even touch the materials supply chain...
(The completed grill scrubber was priced at $75 and the initial batch sold out within hours, in case you were wondering.)
If you haven't read things like that Forbes series, you might not fully appreciate that it's very easy to have a false perception of what the manufacturing capabilities of other countries are, due to selection bias in exports; there's often a wide variety in the quality of goods produced in a given country and only a narrow range of quality that's economical for you to import. One famous example is the brand images of German cars in America, which only imports expensive German cars. Less famously, there's been a secular trend of American imports of Japanese musical instruments going from the bottom to the top of the Japanese (followed by other Asian countries') production ranges and many American musicians assume each decade's imports were a representative sample. But, since manufacturing labels reflect final assembly, increasingly complicated supply chains are mostly invisible to the consumer. It'd be interesting to know what this partnership would have done differently, if they had expanded their searches to Mexican and Canadian suppliers as an acceptable alternative to American suppliers (as a larger-scale business intent on "friend/near-shoring" would), but the value of purism vs general applicability is a "six of one, half a dozen of the other" type thing.
As someone who's pro-industrial policy and also anti-CCP, I think think the supply chain problem is one of those issues with a lot of misplaced attention, wherein globalization gets projected onto various political narratives, to the detriment of analyzing capability.
(Hopefully that's enough of a conversation-starter, without crossing into CW!)
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Notes -
It looks like a crappy scrubber to me, but if I were so inclined I could make a functionally equivalent thing from local materials in my basement (located in North America) for something like $2.00 USD BOM cost (zero to me since I'd have everything needed sitting around down there somewhere). Yes the chainmail links would take some time, but I don't think it would be a very hard 8 hour day? If I were on minimum wage this would be better than buying the thing from this guy!
So the problem is not "it's hard to make things in America", it's "it's hard to make stupid drop-ship style crap in America and sell at a profit without some kind of gimmick" -- like, IDK -- making annoying videos about how hard it is to make things in America.
You can't because they specifically need welded chainmail links and the other samples they tested fell apart. Pretty sure you don't have that lying around, and they also said that the chainmail was the biggest part of their BOM.
Of course it was also harder to make it in America than China even for the standard stuff. For China you just send the cad files to some Alibaba sellers and poof you'll have a pallet full of parts in a month. The video specifically said that finding someone who could design and make the molds in America was hard, and since the molds are a one-time capital investment they don't really affect the BOM much. For all these parts the BOM of the US made stuff isn't much higher than China, but the difficulty and hassle is much more. That's the entire point of the video.
Actually I can -- I have wire, and I have a welder. Both are literally in my basement right now.
Anyways it doesn't sound like their chainmail was even made in America, so I guess I could buy some from the same coolies making theirs in India if I were pressed for time.
Or I could buy some lockwashers and weld them up -- this would probably cost five bucks or so.
They are making something seem like a big deal when it isn't -- they just don't have the market to set up a proper factory, so they are using the limited production run + marketing + high price model to make a buck. Similar to the dropshippers pimping crap on Amazon.
Oh so you didn't even watch the whole video
Why would I want to watch an extended advertisement from a couple of retarded hipsters?
I went to their website and looked at their shitty scrubber.
Buy the product, not the story.
Embarrassing comment. If the video didn't exist and the transcript had been posted here it would have been AACQed, and you would have upvoted it.
I... don't think I would? Not sorry, not embarrassed.
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Destin is not a retarded hipster. He's got one of the best channels on Youtube, and is genuine, earnest, and personable. I just checked, and he's been posting on Youtube for 18 years.
Do you want to learn about how carburetors work? What about Prince Rupert's Drops? What about firing a baseball out of a cannon at the speed of sound? Or maybe a rocket powered golf club? Or a bicycle that steers backwards?
He makes interesting videos, and you're embarrassing yourself with your attitude.
Most popular youtubers are in some ways retarded hipsters -- it's not the end of the world. They also have a tendency to leverage their popularity (and their slack-jawed faux-excitement about formerly basic knowledge like carburetors and potato guns) into the marketing of crappy products -- it's nice that this guy is (trying to) make his crappy products in America, but that doesn't make his hour-long ad interesting. (and means you should take what he says with a grain of salt -- he is literally selling you something.
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