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Sometime in 1995, Mike Fusick invited our newly formed New England Olds Club to visit his shop and he did a presentation talking about his business, how he got started, etc. One of the first things Mike addressed was the number of "rice paper cardboard boxes" on his shelves. Well, he wasn't very thrilled about the fact that nearly every one of his suppliers was overseas, but as he put it, "no one in America wanted the job". Meaning, that every manufacturer that he approached was too busy hunting for the 1,000,000 minimum quantity order, and/or they said they couldn't produce the part for the price point that Mike thought the market could bear.
So after approaching many, many American shops, he looked overseas. And there you have it. He tried, he tried, he tried with American suppliers and they declined. However, the Asians had an entirely different attitude and business philosophy. They wanted his size production runs and agreed to make the product to his standards and at the price point where he could afford to buy, inventory and turn a profit. Don't forget, when Mike makes a lens, not only does he pay for the part to be developed, and for the dies, and the GM fees, he also has to buy a minimum quantity. That minimum quantity isn't typically a couple dozen, it is in the thousands. How'd you like to be sitting on 10,000 tail light lenses that you paid cash to develop, cash to make dies for, cash to GM for nothing but royalties, and now you are stocked up for the next 15 years? Literally he has to sell certain parts for ten years before he begins to turn a profit. So the comments about the mark-up being 5000 percent is really untrue and doesn't equate to the real world.
Just be glad there was Mike Fusick because if he didn't champion Oldsmobile and stick his neck and wallet out to make all the parts that he does make, then you'd be bolting cracked lenses and chevelle grills into your 442.
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