At least two Idaho manufacturers are bringing a small number of jobs back to the U.S. BY BILL ROBERTS - broberts
idahostatesman.com
Buck Knives was facing the pressure of getting its labor costs down about a dozen years ago. The company began shipping up to half its production to China.
Domestic customers � many of them fans of the company�s well-known hunting knives � weren�t happy. They wanted their product made in America.
�Hunters are rednecks, and they don�t like anything with that C word on it,� said Chuck Buck, the company chairman, whose grandfather founded the company in 1902.
So over the past several years, Buck Knives has taken steps to bring all of its hunting-knife production back and much of its other production to its plant in Post Falls in northern Idaho, where the company moved from Southern California in 2005. Previously, 30 percent of the hunting-knife output came from China.
Buck Knives is not the only Idaho company �reshoring� � the opposite of offshoring, and the buzz term for bringing jobs from abroad back to America.
Ende Machinery and Foundry, owned by Ed Endebrock and his daughter Sue Edwards, has just started to make castings for a plant Endebrock owns in Lewiston that makes hydraulic pumps for trucks and other uses.
He had been outsourcing that work to China.
The foundry will bring 20 jobs to Craigmont � a town of about 500 people south of Lewiston on the Camus Prairie � and has some townfolks thinking the business will attract even more companies in the future.
�That is why we are excited to see the foundry,� said Raina Frei, a Craigmont City Council member. �This could be huge for Craigmont.�
Buck Knives and the Craigmont foundry are part of what so far is only a minor national movement. Reshoring from China and other countries doesn�t even show up on statistical employment studies, said Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonprofit that pushes for increased manufacturing in the United States.
Reshoring is not a trend, he says: �It�s a trickle.�
NEW ECONOMICS BRING JOBS HOME
The trickle is a response to economics. China�s cheap labor and its artificially cheap currency � intended to foster industrial growth � are being offset in the U.S. by more automation, increasing freight costs, needs to be closer to resources and customers, and a surging interest in products with the label �Made in the U.S.A.�
Otis Elevator Co. recently announced that it would move several operations to a new plant in South Carolina employing 360 people. One of its plants in Nogales, Mexico � also home to 360 jobs � will be shut down. Otis wanted to move resources closer to the eastern United States, where it makes most of its sales. The company employs about 60,000 people worldwide.
BUCK KNIVES GROWS IDAHO JOBS
Buck Knives began moving jobs overseas partly in response to demand from big-box retailers for lower prices. The company couldn�t meet the retailers� price requirements without cutting labor costs, Buck said.
Eventually, half the company�s production went overseas � and a lot of customer goodwill went with it.
As the country�s economic problems have worn on, demand for U.S.-made products has started to rise as customers seem more intent on keeping money and jobs at home. A study by the Manufacturing Alliance showed a strong support for U.S.-based companies and labels. As Buck Knives has moved production back to the U.S., its sales have picked up, said Phil Duckett, chief operating officer.
Getting those jobs back home took some work.
As Buck was sending work overseas, it came to realize that a time-honored method it used for calculating costs was delivering poor information. The company also began focusing on ways to eliminate waste in its operations. It found ways to shorten down-time on machinery between production cycles and to make better use of its Post Falls plant.
The company found problems with overseas production. It wasn�t facile enough to respond to market demands. The company risked getting more product than it needed because of the lag time between ordering and market conditions when the goods finally arrived, Duckett said.
Putting more production into Idaho gives the company better control over how much product it needs to make and how quickly it can meet customer demand, Duckett said.
Buck Knives brought 240 jobs to Idaho when it abandoned California and its high costs for energy, worker�s compensation and other business expenses. During the recession, its employment dropped to about 200. It has rebounded to 265. Most of the growth comes from the reshored China jobs and development of new products.
Not long ago, overseas plants produced half of Buck Knives� output. Today they produce 25 percent.
Buck Knives wants to keep moving production from China to Post Falls over the next few years, Buck said.
�I want to get out of China as quickly as I can,� he said.
FOUNDRY LIGHTS DREAMS IN CRAIGMONT
For his part, Ed Endebrock sought to get better control of the foundry operations he had sent to China.
Like Buck, he wasn�t happy with delays. He didn�t like the lag time between shipping and receiving or the fact that his money was tied up in it. He was frosted when he sent plans for a proprietary piece of equipment from his Lewiston plant to his Chinese manufacturer to reproduce, and the newly produced part ended up in the hands of his competitor before he received it.
He started looking for a place to build his own foundry to cast the parts he needed for the Lewiston plant. He settled on Craigmont, about 45 miles away, partly because it is 15 miles from a company that makes undercarriages for John Deere and Case combines, a ready source for scrap steel for the foundry.
He got the idea to build his own foundry about the time the recession hit and other foundries started going out of business.
He traveled the country looking for foundry parts he could bring to Idaho. He cannibalized foundries in Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina. Thirteen semitrailer trucks brought materials to Craigmont.
He used his own cash and a Small Business Administration loan to get the foundry running. It started pouring a few hundred pounds of auto scrap, scrap steel and iron a day. That is now up to more than 2,000 pounds a day.
�I feel really good about it,� said Endebrock, who named the Craigmont company Ende after his father�s nickname. �We need to bring back our manufacturing base to this country. We can�t live on flipping hamburgers all our lives.�
The impact on Craigmont is still unfolding. Frei, the councilwoman, said 20 jobs is a big deal in a farming town that once had 700 people. These jobs � and others that could follow � may help hold young people, she said. The city, which has become a bedroom community for Lewiston, might become more of a city in its own right, where people not only live, but shop, too. The foundry also offers the promise of part-time work for retirees and stay-at-home moms.
Maybe one day, Frei said with a laugh, the city will be able to pull out one of its old population signs.
Bill Roberts: 377-6408
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