R U sure they aren't building chain saws there?

I found sewing machine info saying Brother....who makes Baby Lock,has their machines made mostly in Taiwan.

Still wonder where owners are supposed to find parts.Maybe that's the point? no parts. Guess we can't win.

Well, authorized dealers would be able to get the parts. The issue comes when these authorized dealers are dropped!

I re-read the statement issued by my dealer today. In it they say they were one of the top selling dealers of Viking and Pfaff in the country. Yet, they were dropped by SVP.

I guess we should keep our older machines and take care of them. I have a Pfaff 2046 and a Bernina 1090 and 1230. The Bernina's are older but they can reallyyyyy sew. I know my Pfaff dealer said he is having a tough time with the economy the way it is right now. Because the quality of the Phaff has gone down hill he is hoping customer's will switch to the Janome that he now carries. I hate seeing all these dealer's having so many problems...it's sad.

My Pfaff is about 35 yrs old and is a fabulous machine, heavy as can be.

Our local dealer here in Oregon City for Brother Janome, and Bernina (also has Pfaffs) indicates that about every 5 years a new contract is up for bid and the lowest price wins so every 5 years you may get a different country making most machines. As far as any made here in the USA, I can't think of any!

And why is this?? Could it be that the labor costs have become so high, demands so great for "more" that American companies cannot compete with the cheap labor overseas? Maybe we only have ourselves to blame for this. Now we have MANY people out of work and we need to take a good look at this and see what our part is in this.

As Candace pointed out, many machines are outsourced, so the argument that we "only" use American or we "only" buy European machines holds no water. There are some really great machines made in China, Taiwan, or where-ever that are high quality and make our quilter hearts soar.

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I don't mind Taiwan, but I won't if I can get away with it buy Chinese. I won't support their government. Nor do I care with all the hubbub of lead poisoning trust their safety standards.

And we won't be able to compete, when the government itself subsidizes so they get manufacturers over there. The only way this will stop is if we as consumers put our foot down(which will in the short term cost jobs) and say Heck no we won't pay for this..

I'm curious as to what the marketing strategy is for SVP to cancel contracts with US top selling vendors. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

I'm going to start another thread about long arm manufacturing.