Macaha. Well said how so many Australians have lost their jobs & everything due to the cheap & most often nasty from other cheap countries labor & materials. I am also a victim of this from my local steelworks where I got contracted out. Not once but 3 times losing $20,000 off my yearly wage & then again another $10,000 a year till now. Oh & I nearly forgot about mine & wifes hardship after mass retrenchments took place just after buying our great Australian dream. 9 months without pay. Would have lost it if my wife wasn't working & family members pitching in for us to buy food.
Wages, conditions & entitlements have dropped heaps & I have always said to my fellow workers & management that we are heading to equal the 3rd world countries in our living & until then nothing will improve.
If I was government I would ban all imports from businesses that decide to go overseas. I bet some of them if not most of them would still be here. After all years ago I believe our cash was worth more. So if we didn't buy their products then they would lose out.
I could go on all day about this issue but I won't cause it sucks & is soo depressing. Surfing helps me to get out of all this depression that I have experienced.
So I am guilty like most if not all Australians for buying overseas products & is not easy not to. Unless government stopped most imports & made this country self sufficient. We did have the resources too.
Anyway. I bought a pop out SUP years ago to try it & see if I liked it. I wouldn't have if I had to pay heaps. But later I did pay heaps from who was an Australian but had to go over seas to manufacture to survive. So I am partially happy that my money is going to him & his family. But would rather see my money going to him, his family & the Australian workers if he was to operate here. His SUPs & all boards construction are second to none.
But I have recently bought a longboard I believe is a pop out, sort of.
Again at a cheaper price. But not the cheapest from an Australian that has been in the surf industry for years with his brothers. So happy some of my money is going to him. And he has a wealth of knowledge so I found out. And what I remember him saying is that if an Australian wanted to get a product manufactured overseas at a low cost then quality will go down. Overseas companies can manufacture anything. But the Australian seller would have to take the gamble of selling crap at a high price to keep their good name.
So why didn't I buy from a local shaper? Because I wanted a board that was robust foremost. Performance came second. I wanted my longboard to be more of a fun board anyway. But my local shapers haven't really made a name for themselves unfortunately. And I must admit I was too lazy to look into them.
Another thing that I was told is that a lot of money goes into a popout mold that produces exact copies of tried & proven boards before being mass produced. Maybe not so to those overseas companies who just produce boards as a surfboard & not as a board with a well known surfer or shaper's name.
Sorry for the long write up but tried to make it short. Love my new longboard so far. Soooo fast. And found out it's not as easy as I thought to be a longboarder. Haaaa!