glass sales off 20% overall

and...........

Wholesale, retail, manufacturers?

what horse? m

I'm thinking it might be from the other end of the horse.....

Actually I wouldn't be shocked to learn that manufacturers sales of colored glass were off 50% domestically. It's been a plummeting market for years now.

-- JK Sinrod

This probably means a decline in the need to learn turbo soldering, eh?

I don't know about the other companies, but Bullseye and Uroboros are doing well still.

Facts, financial reports, or just a rumor? How can they possibly be selling as much when Chinese ripoffs are .99 cents a foot? Gotta be impacting them on SOME big level.

Speaking of Chinese.....

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by Armstrong's warehouse. They were balls to the wall getting huge orders picked and packed for several container load export shipments to Finland or Norway or Germany or somewhere over there. He told me where they were going, I just don't remember exactly.

I didn't get the impression that Armstrong was crying the blues over sharply declining sales.

Good thing you weren't doing the shipping Moon!

-- JK Sinrod

I got the impression it might be the "same" container load(s) that our erstwhile Canadian "tycoon" was touting a while back. I mean, how many sea-going containers of stained glass could the Scandanavian area absorb in a few months?

That's what they tell me when I go in to pick up glass. I could be misinformed, but they keep expanding so I'm guessing not.

Ya know what's really funny? Even the Chinese aren't using Chinese glass on their cheapie homeshopping club lamps! Wait.... now that I think about it that make sit even scarier. $99 bucks retail for a lamp with 400 pieces of glass AND the base included!

There is something hell of funky going on with Chinese economics. I just bought a $6 shovel. The hardware store probably paid about $3.00, and they most likely bought it from a distributor rather than directly, so the distributor probably paid $1.50. I am having a hard time understanding how that shovel got here from China for less than that.

Here's the classic joke for you. "I just bought this radio from a store that's selling them for cost". How do they make any money selling at cost?"Volume....

-- JK Sinrod

LOL!

There is something hell of funky going on with Chinese economics. I just bought a $6 shovel. The hardware store probably paid about $3.00, and they most likely bought it from a distributor rather than directly, so

the distributor probably paid $1.50. I am having a hard time understanding how that shovel got here from China for less than that. =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Here's how. You paid $6. The hardware store paid $3 (maybe) If the distributor paid $1.50 (probably more like $2 as they work on a lower margin). The Chinese shipped 250,000 shovels over here on one order which gives them half a million bucks and it probably cost them 50=A2 to make the shovel. Whose making the most money? Oh yeah...when you divide the shipping between 250,000 shovels it doesn't add but a few cents to each shovel. Now, rakes are another story......(BAG)

Here's the part that's really got me. A decent per-ton shipping price is just under $200 for something really compact and heavy (glass, tile, etc). It's more for less compact items, such as, say, shovels, but I'm not sure how much more so I will go with $200/ton. The shovel weighs about 4 lbs. That's 500 shovels per ton, at .40 a shovel. I haven't even tried to figure out how import tariffs, small as they are, figure into this equation.

The raw materials that go into making a shovel are worth more than .50 US.

Low wages + Chinese gov't fixed exchange rate.

If the Yuan was traded on the open market (as is just about every other currency in the world), prices of Chinese goods would go up. As it is, the Chinese gov't keeps the value artificially low at ~8 Yuan to the dollar.