Over at our American Button Machines website, we recently posted a couple of new pages that offer a detailed comparison between American-made button making kits and Chinese-made button maker kits. While we are sure that some of you have noticed the links to the new pages on the ABM homepage and checked them out, we are quite certain that most of you do not spend your days hitting “Refresh” on our homepage awaiting new links.
Thus, we are going to post the content of those pages here, in a four-part series that breaks the content on the website up into four smaller chunks.
In the first part of the series that we are posting today, we are going to provide an overview and take a quick look at a few common myths about 3-in-1 button makers that are manufactured in China.
Before we begin, let’s take a quick, 1-question quiz. And don’t worry, it will not be an essay test so put your blue books away. We simply have an easy multiple choice question for you:
Which of the following terms in the list does not belong with the others?
A. The Great Wall of China
B.The 2008 Summer Olympics
C.Beijing
D.Professional, easy-to-use button making kits that are made in the USA.
The answer, of course, is D) Professional, easy-to-use button making kits that are made in the USA, which differs from the others by not being an accurate descriptive term for China.
And don’t worry if you got the answer wrong. The purpose of this post is to educate you on why buying an American-made button making kit not only supports the home team, but ensures that you are getting a better, more effective, and more cost-efficient product.
Based on questions and feedback we receive from our customers, it is clear that the debate between American-made button making products and Chinese-made button making products continues to flow throughout the market. And while we can only make judgments based on our own experience and research-based opinions, it is our view that the debate is decidedly one-sided: buy American.
We come across customers all the time who are looking for a button machine that makes more than one size button. “Can you exchange the dies to make more than one button size with your professional button machine?” they ask. The simple answer is no, you cannot exchange dies with our professional button machines. There are, however, products out there, namely the Chinese all-in-one (or sometimes called 3-in-1 button machines), that will allow you to do so.
We put this article series together to highlight the many drawbacks of the all-in-one or 3-in-1 exchangeable method that actually end up making it less efficient, less convenient, and more costly than buying separate machines for each button size you desire.
Common Myths about Chinese Button Maker Kits
First, let’s debunk a few myths that we hear propagated time and again. Each of the myths below is false, as you will learn when you continue reading.
- Myth #1: Exchangeable dies are better than single-size button machines.
- Myth #2: The manufacturing quality of Chinese-made button machines and American-made machines is similar.
- Myth #3: 3-in-1 machines are made in the U.S.A.
- Myth #4: Chinese machines can make photo and fabric-covered buttons.
- Myth #5: It is cheaper to buy a 3-in-1 machine rather than three separate machines.
We will be dealing with the exchangeable versus single-size machines in a future post later this week, along with the vast difference in manufacturing quality between our machines and Chinese-made machines. The crux of the debate lies with the general idea that all-in-one products of any type very rarely do one thing as well as products designed for a single purpose. This is especially true with respect to made-in-China button makers, which are both less effective and less efficient because of their exchangeable die design.
In regards to Myths 3 and 4 above, these are quite easy to debunk. 3-in-1 machines are not made in the U.S.A., which means that you are not supporting American manufacturing by purchasing one. In addition, a made-in-China 3-in-1 machine limits your options, as there are no sizes available that we have found which allow you to make photo or fabric-covered buttons.
Myth #5 is the big one, as most people assume that buying an all-in-one Chinese button making kit will save them money over buying a button making kit that is a series of single purpose machines. While this may be the case for other products in other industries, it does hold true in button making. In tomorrow’s post, we will provide a cost comparison between American-made machines and Chinese-made machines.
In the meantime, follow the link below to check out our line of American-made all-in-one button maker kits.
Brighid Brown – Director of Blogging and All Things Cool at ABM