You are making an assumption that it wasn’t deliberately leaked. That the thread was left here and discussion allowed has me wondering about the timing and purpose of this supposed leak.
Paul, I suspect you are on secondment from Whitehall
See my post above on this. Naim made the announcement to their dealers and distributors a matter of minutes before this thread was started. I therefore confirmed it and felt the thread should be allowed to continue, so I added some detail of what I knew and was appropriate to share here.
It was lucky timing by me it seems.
I seen it on another forum and as I imagined it to be common knowledge popped it on here.
I’m not sure whether to get too excited by this announcement or not.
What intrests me more, and i suspect most on this thread, is what happens next.
Where does this fit into the Naim long term strategy? Is this just a short term stop gap, or a more full time move to manufacture outside of the UK?
History will tell us the answer.
Thats the $64k question.
Lets think… When the Bean Counters see that manufacturing in Slovakia is significantly cheaper, what will they do…?
Answers, on a post card…
As I said earlier in the thread - this only ever goes one way. Now I see this is going to low cost country sourcing my guess is that long term, Salisbury will be the high end gear - maybe 500 and statement and the rest will be from low cost source. We’ll see.
Some brands related to the world of HIFI made in Slovakia
Canor
We have been developing and manufacturing high-end audio products for almost 30 years. CANOR is a tube specialist, the prototype of our first serially produced TP101 integrated tube amplifier was presented at the exhibition in Brno (Czech Republic) in April 1995.
NEO Audio racks
Adam Vox
A loudspeaker manufacturer in Slovakia operative since 2004.
Pro-ject
And Pro-ject make electronics products in Slovakia (the turntables are made in Czech Republic).
Someone compared this the Mexican made guitars (which will be Fender… ).
I would add Indonesian made guitars to this. Cheaper than Mexican, but more expensive than Chinese. Japanese guitars are in there, too - probably above Mexican.
May be thats it… “Where was it made…? Slovakia… Nah… I’d rather have a UK made one, sorry…”
We wll see, but it will take a few years…
I think it was very courteous and proper that Richard Dane came out to confirm this information.
We couldn’t possibly be expected to be so naive that we think every single item is made in house that’s not realistic.
Products have to be built and tested to a standard so consistency should be just that.
Perhaps bigger production might save all the moaning and groaning that was here last year about about Solstice delays and over demand for DR upgrading for example along with classic products servicing.
I’d much rather have a fully supported warranty and service than worry about who or where it was built.
The extreme can be taken to I only want my amp built by “ insert name “
I bought into Naim for this very support unlike another equipment manufacturer that told me to put my amps in the bin when a fault occurred.
Or Chord, or Exposure, or Linn or EAR, Cyrus etc. Lots of quality hifi companies building product in the UK without the need to move manufacturing abroad. Very poor management decision although one wonders how much interference in this decision has come from the PE backers. Knowing how PE generally operate I’d make an educated guess!
One wonders what Julian Vereker would have made of this…… especially as in his time he was chairman of the Federation of British Audio.
If Naim underwrote 5 years, there would be no reason for distributors not to offer it, instead of the 2 years factory warranty they do offer.
We receive the 5 year warranty registration card but are denied the ability to activate it.
I do not think Naim would be where it is now, if Julian was still in charge.
But - we have to remember that the situation following JV’s untimely death, was a key trigger for what then happened… sadly.
It’s a simple fact that labour rates in Slovakia are probably around half of what they are here. How do I know, well I helped in the design of a new high speed magazine binding machine a few years back and that was the preferred choice as they are pretty good engineers and well skilled.
I would likely see this as the tip of the iceberg, yes maybe the lower end to begin with but eventually all but the very high end produced in a shiny government subsidised factory (they do that too …I know they do).
Anyway the reason I might pay £3600 for a Supernait as opposed to maybe half that for a Chino-japanese Yamaha of similar specification is down to it being of UK manufacture (thus I am willing to pay a premium) and the back-up should it go wrong. Does this mean Naim products made there will be cheaper?? I very much doubt it but it just puts them pretty much with the rest of the herd!
I wonder if Focal are planning to similarly move some loudspeaker production to the same factory? This all depends on if this is a smokescreen for UK redundancies in the workforce (we are way cheaper to lay off UK workers than in France or Germany).
As for space…factories are cheap, seriously building a way bigger facility to say double the production size would not cost a lot and would likely be offset from the sale of the existing premises (if they own the freehold).
Basically guys it’s bollocks…they want to screw it together cheaper and probably still charge a premium!
I hope the senior management read this forum and this thread and I’m particularly interested in the question of Focal production too.
Ironically I work for a large German company (Siemens) that have recently announced the building of a huge new state of the art factory to increase the production of our MR scanner superconducting magnets, recognising the high level of UK expertise and skilled workforce. Lovely to see and shows given investment the UK can be a hugely attractive place to design and make things especially high technology.
Yes there is an import duty for “repair”.
Your explanation whilst plausible seems very fortuitous timing-wise. I am now wondering if you engineered this, mainly because you wanted a change from hours spent reading through/moderating the New Classic thread
I was thinking about adding a Hicap to my Supernait… I think I will put that on hold now! Might just flog all my naim gear and throw my lot in with Chord instead.
Repair is a service item… so there’s duty on service items?
I searched the UK tariff web site and I couldn’t find a commodity code for ‘repairs’. The item itself should have zero duty when going back for repair since duty was already (if applicable) charged on original entry.