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How Bath & Body Works Might Save U.S. Manufacturing

Think giant factories pouring out enormous vats, not of steel but rather lavender-scented, aloe-enriched, anti-frizz conditioner. Something like that.

Bed, Bath & Body Works is not normally considered one of the titans of industry… but they may be on the cutting edge of a new way of making things; one that could go a long way to return manufacturing jobs to the United States. Think giant factories pouring out enormous vats, not of steel but rather lavender-scented, aloe-enriched, anti-frizz conditioner. Something like that.

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26 replies on “How Bath & Body Works Might Save U.S. Manufacturing”

The problem is the market impact of globalism. For example —

If I can buy an item made elsewhere that’s 90% of the quality of an American made item at a third or less of the price, then that’s what I’m going to do. I’d prefer to buy American but I’m not made of money. Generally speaking I’m always going to buy the best I can afford but that doesn’t always mean I’m buying the best that’s available.

If someone can produce products overseas that fit those parameters, then their products become highly competitive. That is an example of the Capitalism some people worship religiously.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slagging on Capitalism. I’m just being realistic about it and not cherry-picking the good features while ignoring the negative real-world consequences.

In my way of thinking realistic observation conquers magical thinking every single time. (I’m also a staunch “function over form” guy. I’ll take something that’s ugly but works correctly and reliably over something that doesn’t but looks good every single time.)

The problem with ‘buying American” has become that in order to remain competitive American producers have had to lower their quality standards. So buying American is no longer an automatic guarantee of top quality. I could cite many examples of where this is so.

Thus if I have to choose between something more expensive made in the USA but of equally dubious quality as something made overseas costing a fraction of the price, I can’t afford to limit my purchasing to only goods made here in our country.

I would very much like to see this situation change but I’m not holding my breath.

There is one thing the USA can do to encourage that change. Labor costs are lower overseas and will always be so. If China goes through the market and labor demographics evolution it’s expected to, Chinese manufactured goods will be come more expensive without any increase in quality. In that case there are untapped cheap labor pools elsewhere around the globe and those will become appealing to manufacturers.

So we’re never going to be able to compete with those labor markets and still pay Americans a decent wage for their labor.

Labor isn’t the only cost involved in production of marketable goods. It’s a big one but it’s not the only one.

American has an advantage that no one else has anywhere else around the globe (except maybe Canada). While we cannot compete on labor costs we could be very, very competitive on energy costs. That would go a long way towards offsetting our labor disadvantage.

American has more energy potential, at a much lower cost, than the rest of the industrialized world. Our problem isn’t lack of energy and high energy costs. Our problem is our own government doing stupid things that negatively impact domestic energy costs.

Democrat Leftists have painted themselves into a corner on this subject. They want “green” energy, which is not yet competitive with nuclear and hydrocarbon energy. In order to enforce their will towards a preponderance of “green” energy and eventually do away with nuclear and hydrocarbon energy the only avenue open to them to make “green” energy economically competitive is to raise the price of “non-green” energy to the point where “green” energy can compete.

This is putting the cart before the horse. Which is a common failing in the Democrat Left. “Green” energy should be developed and deployed only when the cost is low enough to to compete with the already low costs of hydrocarbon and nuclear energy sources. Not the other way around.

In doing this the Democrat Left is willing to sacrifice our global trade advantage in low energy costs. They’re willing to make America a lot poorer than it has to be.

They see this as a feature not a bug. They want to ‘level the playing field” between us and energy poor countries. In their thinking an America with any advantage at all is bad. If that means making America as poor as any given Third World country on the planet, and Americans starving to death, they see that as a good thing.

So when they’re doing this sort of thing and throwing their base of “the little guy” under the bus you can be certain that their “caring” postures are false.

(I’m also a staunch “function over form” guy. I’ll take something that’s ugly but works correctly and reliably over something that doesn’t but looks good every single time.)

I think I have shared this anecdote previously, but if I did it was quite some time ago.
I had a college roommate jr and sr years who got his degree in Mech Eng. But he started out in Architecture (our school was a very highly rated Arch program). One day during a fresh intro to Arch class, the prof had brought out several different chairs of varying styles and comfort.
One was very nearly a work of art, quite lovely to look at ( I briefly dated a young lady in Arch who had the same class though not that same section and she recalled the exercise).
The prof had the students sit in the chairs and then asked their opinions.
When it got to my roommate and the “beautiful” chair. His opinion was that it sucked (he was from NJ – his normal language was not much appreciated in the south) and was the most uncomfortable chair he had ever sat in. The prof asked about the aesthetics of it and he conceded that it was lovely but why would anyone buy it since it couldn’t be used as a chair.
The prof suggested to him that he might be better off changing to Mech Eng since he clearly didn’t understand the value of beauty in design.
Oh, and the young lady and I proved the architects and engineers were not very compatible. 😉

I also have a favorite saying when it comes to tools and tooling used for manufacturing.
If you make a tool so simple that any idiot can use it, only an idiot will.
I’ll let you ponder on that one for a bit.

Good story, I like ugly chairs that are comfortable. If I bought pretty chairs that were uncomfortable I’d put them where I didn’t want people to sit for very long …

I’m not a terribly social kind of guy but all the chairs in my immediate vicinity are of the ugly but comfortable sort. Any guests I have are welcome to stay as long as they like.

As for tools … I’m a computer guy and so I’m very familiar with complicated tools that any fool would be unable to wield. The tools being digital and not physical notwithstanding.

I’m glad to hear that at least one company is doing the right thing! I don’t normally shop at Bath & Body Works, but I might make a trip now just to support them.

The company I retired from held the same manufacturing philosophy. We manufactured, sterilized and shipped product from one site and did so successfully for 21 years. Then we were bought out by Abbott and all of that went out the window. They slowly moved manufacturing off-shore and we had all kinds of issues. Product was still sterilized at and shipped from our site, but we would receive shipments on wooden pallets infested with bugs because we sent the bulk of our manufacturing to Costa Rica. Not good for coronary medical devices and we ended up scrapping hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product on a frequent basis until we got them to use plastic pallets. Secondly, all of our manufacturing instructions had to be translated into the local Spanish and although we thought that addressed the issues for training, it did not. They simply relied on word of mouth training which, again, puts the product at risk from a regulatory perspective. So the cost of product lost, improperly manufactured product, not to mention the risk of product recall and harm to the patient, globalization is fraught with issues for critical-use products. I retired 10 years ago and based on conversations with friends that are still working there, they continue to have issues.

When we managed all of it here, we not only maintained 5,000+ jobs at our facility, but at bonus time, all of the local car dealers we were surrounded by made out as well. We had robust housing, retail and restaurant businesses. Not any more. The huge mall they built is basically dead, theaters are still empty, many restaurants are gone, independent retail businesses have closed up and the car dealerships started gobbling each other up to where there are now only 2-3 owners across several brands. So in the end, their attempt at saving bucks at the manufacturing level had a huge impact when they off-shored it.

Globalization has some things going for it, but the benefit is far, far outweighed by the negatives. But the future is the unchallengeable combination of the USA, Mexico, and Canada. Mexico, in particular, can take over for nearly all that the USA is not able to economically produce and still relies on China, India, and Indochina to make.
It’s scary that the Cartels control the Mexican government to such a high extent. But the growing economic power outside of illegal drugs/human trafficking, etc. is going to eventually overtake these goons. I have such a good feeling about it from my son. His company is growing in the town of Monterey. He says that it is beautiful and clean. And there is business growth as far as the eye can see. He talks to the employees he meets and they all want to visit the great cities of the US, like San Fran and Chicago. He goes “No! No! No!” and tells them how great their own city is by comparison.
Bottom line, the future looks great for the US and immediate neighbors, and we will bring up their quality of life near ours, while not sending money to people who hate us. We have all the energy we need and we can focus here, but not necessarily alone. And that’s not a bad thing.

Scott: Almost all of the chips sold in the U.S. are manufactured in this country. Lays, Fritos, Pringles, all have manufacturing plants across the nation.
(rimshot)

My global company’s response to supply chain issues has been what they localization among the regions.
This means having duplicative mfg in NA and Asia so that Asia support Asia and North America can fully support NA.
We will still continue to procure parts from Asia but less concern about stock levels rather than making sure we can continue to produce.
This will actually move some manufacturing from China back to NA from China.

As far as the synergy of the bottle guy and the pump guy working together, I have a mostly true story from years ago (mostly as it is a long time ago and the details are fuzzy, but not that relevant)
You may have never considered the screw top on a coke bottle. The plastic bottle has a male thread while the top has matching female thread. That thread engagement needs to be sufficient to contain the carbonated beverage when it gets shook up. Not necessarily by a person. Trucks get really bumpy and ships are even worse.
A guy working on the bottle and a guy working on the top got together and redesigned the threads to be deeper and, most importantly, shorter. Since that was the thickest area of the bottle, and the top is relatively thick (one needs to grasp and twist it) the material savings was fairly significant. (in beverages, when shipping millions per year (across brands it is billions), multiple pennies are a big deal)
$0.01 over 100 million a year (back then) is $1,000,000 savings for the price of new injection molding tooling. Across all coke products, probably 100,000,000 savings per year. All because two guys looked at a simple screw interface and asked did it need to be that robust. Can we trim it up a little?

Remember the days when “they” told us “millions of telephone operators would be pushed into street walking” when they were replaced by the dial phone? Just bought a new hybrid car – NO AM radio. My last hybrid had AM, why is it not in the newer, upgraded, best ever model? Is that a business decision, or a political contrivance?

Scott, it’s not that we couldn’t get a ship across the ocean. It’s that we couldn’t get anyone to unload it, because the union dockworkers were enjoying their paid time-off too much!
We had ships stacked 50-100 deep off the CA coast for most of 2020 and 2021. They got here just fine. Then they sat.
And sat.
And sat…..

I have never forgiven the Republican Party for putting that nincompoop a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. The only good thing that could be said about him is the way his last name is pronounced.

The Democrats don’t do any better but then that’s expected from Democrats.

Kacklin’ Kammy is the very worst VP in living memory and an appalling though accurate example of an affirmative action hire.

That doesn’t let Dan Quayle or the Republican Party off the hook as far as I’m concerned

I never thought Quayle was a nincompoop (long time since I heard that word!) I am willing to go out on a limb and guess you don’t get a JD from Indiana without doing the work. I thought he was way too young for the job. And had a personality that rivals his fellow Hoosier Mike Pence. I think his youth (he was only 42 when HW got into office) and his state (IN) were the primary drivers in selecting him as HW’s VP.
At the end of his second term, RR was 78. Age was being brought up against candidates, well R ones.
HW was 65 heading into his first term (surely he thought he’d get a 2nd and likely would have if not for Perot) at which time he’d be in his 70s.
Quayle would have been 50.
Other Finalists were Bob Dole (68), Elizabeth Dole (52) and Jack Kemp (53). I thought Kemp or Elizabeth Dole were better selections. Kemp from NYS probably too close to New England for the GOP’s liking. But ex-football player and he had great camera appeal. The Doles were from Kansas. Still think they were better choices.
Quayle just didn’t grow into the job. Frankly, in the 80s and 90s (even today) we are hard pressed to know what the “job” of VP is, other than to be a next in line. They have no real duties. But his lack of personality (a plus to HW I am sure) made his gaffs particularly easy fodder.
Of all the words of tongue or pen . . .

I understand all that and still think Quayle was a nincompoop. Archaic language here being intentional. To each his own, I agree we’ll disagree on this topic.

In the realm of political power, the primary role of a VP should be to take the reins when a successful second term POTUS is forced by law to leave.

Like happened with HW and Ronnie. HW would have won if not for Perot and that’s something I’ll never forgive Perot and his populist followers for. Same goes for Trump, SSDD.

This would probably be a completely different country today if HW had won the second term he should have. If William Jefferson Clinton had never become POTUS. Slick Willy laid the foundations of our current problems.

To do that, to take over after a successful two-term Republican, the VP has to be electable. Quayle was not electable. That makes him a poor choice. Like Pence, who is a great guy and very experienced but not Presidential material. It doesn’t matter what the media did to Quayle, he gave them those opportunities where HW and Ronnie did not.

That’s how politics works. It’s not all philosophy and ideology. If you want to change anything you have to win. To win you have to not only do the right thing, you have to give your political foes a minimum of ammunition to use against you. Two sides of the same coin.

Of course, those conditions where a VP takes the oval office apply in a perfect world. The idea of a ‘non-challenging’ VP seems to have become the norm. That’s a matter of personal ambition being placed ahead of the good of the Nation.

I’m never going to like that. If the Republicans cannot meet that bar then the Republicans are just as wrong, in that regard, as Democrats.

Which is just one of the many reasons I no longer refer to myself as a Republican.

I actually think we agree more than not on this. I wanted Jack Kemp (I lived in NYC area at the time) and my folks were partial to Elizabeth Dole, and she would have been second for me.
I truly believe that one of the reasons HW and the GOP Brain trust (insert sarcasm font for the last two words) selected Quayle is that he was so non-descript. Charisma is never a word that could be used for him. Kemp had it and he would have made HW look bad in comparison. People would have wondered, aloud, why he was the #2.
No politician’s skin is thick enough for that. When is the last time we actually had a VP that you could look at and say, I can see that person as POTUS? LBJ was a disaster. Ford wasn’t even elected as VP and was never supposed to be POTUS. (amazing how people forget that Ford was selected for Nixon by the leaders of congress on both sides of the aisle).
Gore – just no. Biden when he was VP? C’mon, man. Dick Cheney?? HW – I held my nose. But not who I wanted.
Maybe Nixon or Humphrey 5 or 6 decades ago. Even prior to that one could argue it was Coolidge, who had great policies by the way.
Hell, FDR had 3 and Truman just ended up being the last one standing when FDR died. He knew nothing about what was going on.
The role of VP is nearly non-existent. If the Senate is not close, they have almost no role in the government. With the current one, that’s a good thing, surely.
But one could rightly state that almost all VP since Coolidge with a couple of exceptions have been dolts whose primary job is to keep people from wanting to kill POTUS.
That is a way too cynical statement for a sunny Saturday. But such is the state of US politics in my head right now.

“I actually think we agree more than not on this.”

Yeah, me too, we’re just coming at the same substance from slightly different angles.

I like the original way the office of the Vice President was handled. Each member of the Electoral College voted for two people for POTUS with a simple majority naming the president and the second highest number of votes becoming VP.

At least that way The People had a say in who would become president if the elected president became unable to fulfill his duties.

I’m a grumpy old Originalist. To me it appears that every time someone had a “good idea” and adjusted the Constitution away from the parameters of the original document created by the Founders things have gotten worse not better.

Yea, and that wasn’t completely Quayle’s fault. During a spelling bee type of thing with kids, the note card had Potato spelled with an e at the end.
Yes, he didn’t catch it, but who prepared the cards? I often wondered if the teacher did it on purpose.

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