Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/18

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Features or basics
From: "Lee, Jonathan" <Jonathan.Lee@hrcc.on.ca>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 14:30:55 -0400

Mark wrote


They had the dies!
Why not use 'em?
Markwr
and there was some spare brass lurking in the corners.
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It's not quite that simple.  It's not like they could pull a few  guys out
of the Wetzlar unmployment office, give them some old dies and say "here are
the plans from 1920, build us a camera". You have to find suppliers (we are
talking 100s of parts here, all of which will be subcontracted), find a
modern finish, test and ensure quality, write manuals, train assemblers,
test asseembly quality, revise manufacturing, print a service manaual, train
at least one guy to do service, get boxes printed, write marketing and sales
material, on and on.  Not to mention the time spent by the Leica head
honchos in top level decision making that goes into getting any project
going...Having the dies for some of the parts, even if they are still
compatible will modern metalworking machinery is not going to save you a lot
of $$$. 

My family has done some manufacturing in my time (plastics mainly) and if
they are doing this for 200-300 bodies a year, they are not going to make a
lot of money at $2500 MSLP, if they are making any money at all.  

Jonathan Lee

Replies: Reply from lucien <director@ubi.edu> (Re: [Leica] Features or basics)