Design for the Factory You Have: A U.S. Sourcing Reality Check for Inventors

In today's Wall Street Journal, Ruth Simon tells the story of how an experienced US manufacturer struggled to make a product 100% in USA. The lessons are that made in USA is possible, but extremely hard for the short production runs typical when launching a new product, and you should be flexible in your design requirements

WS Game Company, a 25-employee family business in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass., set out to produce a fully U.S.-made luxury Monopoly set after steep tariffs on Chinese imports disrupted its supply chain. The company sells about a million high-end classic games a year and had made all of them in China for 25 years, including its Vintage Bookshelf line sold through Restoration Hardware and others.

The project, called the Monopoly Americana Edition, was meant to launch in February ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary. It arrived in June, four months late, and the second half of the 5,000-unit order slipped to August. CEO Jonathan Silva called the effort "a colossal headache" and said it made no money for the company.

The company expected U.S. production to cost about 20% more than China after shipping. The actual premium was roughly 100%. American factories lack the specialized component makers and vertical integration common in China, so instead of asking a factory to realize its design, WS Game had to learn what U.S. suppliers could do and design backward from there. The result was a downgraded product: a paper cover and flat spine instead of fabric and a curved spine, no hand-inserted magnetic closure, plastic houses and hotels instead of wood, and standard sealed bags instead of resealable ones. The dice still came from China because no U.S. supplier would make 5,000 pairs. Card boxes were dropped entirely because they cost about $5 each in the U.S. versus pennies in China.

Cartamundi, which operates the former Milton Bradley/Hasbro plant in East Longmeadow, Mass., handled main production and assembly, retooling existing equipment to handle the book-style box. The biggest problem was the flocked plastic game tray from Pioneer Packaging of Chicopee, Mass., a firm that normally makes disposable trays for food and medical customers. Tooling cost nearly ten times what it would in China, and early trays failed to form properly, stuck in molds, cracked, or broke in shipping. Silva considered killing the project. Pioneer eventually solved the issues through new tooling, process changes, a retired employee brought back as a consultant, and hand inspection of every tray, but ate the cost and ran short of materials, delaying the second batch.

The game took about 14 months to reach market versus roughly nine in China, and retails for $80 compared with $45 for the Chinese-made version, well above the $50 target. The first 2,500 units sold out, but the delayed second batch missed July 4 and sold slowly. Company leaders said the product is inferior to its Chinese counterpart despite costing far more, and concluded that U.S. manufacturing has largely lost the capability to make this kind of product quickly.

Source: Ruth Simon, The Wall Street Journal. Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/homegets.com

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