The Part Nobody Talks About When We Say “Bring Manufacturing Back”

Manufacturing does exist here. And not just mid-grade assembly either — I’m talking serious industrial capability. The kind where metal is forged, engines are built, rocket nozzles are milled out of exotic alloys. North America hasn’t forgotten how to manufacture. We still do. Every time a Ford F-150 rolls off a line, or SpaceX lands a booster like it’s nothing, or John Deere welds together another combine that’ll feed half a province — that’s proof. The skill isn’t gone.

But unless you’re a Fortune 500 or have a government contract, you don’t get access to that world. The knowledge sits inside private fortresses — Ford, Lockheed Martin, John Deere, Caterpillar, SpaceX — companies with billion-dollar supply chains, specialized tooling, and facilities more advanced than most countries’ entire industrial base. You can’t call Lockheed asking for aluminum stamping. You can’t rent time on SpaceX’s CNC. Their factories produce one thing: their product, for their supply chain, at their scale.

And the weird part is… people think manufacturing is like this public utility, like “if the machines exist, surely you can just pay and use them.” But in North America, that’s not how the ecosystem is wired. It’s not a service layer. It’s private capacity.

Meanwhile, China is built for the opposite interaction. They exist to manufacture for you. A random stranger with a sketch on a napkin has a better shot getting something produced in Shenzhen than a funded startup does in Toronto. China has entire districts designed around contract manufacturing as a service. One message can turn into a quote, a prototype, revisions, full production, packaging, labeling, freight — all under one umbrella. They want the job.

Here, that model barely exists.

If you try to manufacture a product here, you become the project manager for a fragmented supply chain. Every step is a new vendor, a new PO, a new wait time. You’ll spend more time emailing than building.

And here’s one of those interesting moments people don’t think about: quoting isn’t free. Not emotionally free, not time free. In North America, a shop quoting your job has to stop what they’re doing, interpret drawings, figure out tolerances, pick material, estimate setup time, estimate scrap, estimate labor, estimate tooling wear, estimate scheduling risk. That’s real work. So if you’re not a repeat customer, or if your run size isn’t big enough, you’re basically asking them to do homework for a maybe. A lot of them just… don’t. Or they reply three weeks later with a number that feels like a prank.

Another “wow” moment: setup cost is the silent killer here. People imagine you pay per unit like it’s a vending machine. But the brutal reality is that a lot of manufacturing cost is not only the steel — it’s also the setup. Programming the CNC. Building fixtures. Setting up the press brake tooling. Dialing in weld jigs. Doing first article inspection. Doing test sprays for powder coat. If a shop spends half a day setting up to produce for a week plus, that’s fine. If they spend half a day to produce for 1 or 2 days? You’re dead on arrival. And a lot of North American shops are optimized for long-term customers and stable repeat work, not “hey can you turn this into a product line.”

And let me be specific — I learned this firsthand.

I had a product idea, with the models. Cold Rolled 11 gauge Carbon Steel. Nothing exotic. Cut into sheets, stamped, bent on a press brake, welded, powder coated, quality checked, packaged with custom inserts, then bulk shipped to me. In China, that entire list is a Tuesday. There are 100s of factories that will take your drawings, ask for dimensions, clarify tolerances if they’re in a good mood, and then return a quote in a couple days. They’ll prototype, send photos, revise if needed. They’ll do the finishing. They’ll do custom packaging. They’ll bubble wrap it. They’ll box it. They’ll palletize it. They’ll arrange freight. I could have had pricing before the weekend and first production samples in my hand in 3–4 weeks. And that’s normal.

And it’s not even because they’re “magicians.” It’s because the ecosystem is stacked in your favor. You’re not hunting for five vendors — they already have them in their orbit. They already know the powder coater. They already have a packaging supplier. They already have foam insert options. They already have standard box sizes. They already have relationships with freight forwarders. The whole thing is built like: “Send us the idea. We’ll turn it into a box you can sell.”. All these vendors are neighbours, typically across the street from each other.

Now take that same idea and drop it into the U.S. or Canada.

That’s where my headache, and realization began.

One company would laser cut and bend — but they don’t weld. The welding shop doesn’t powder coat. The powder coater doesn’t package. The custom packaging supplier only sells in massive big box store level bulk quantities unless I want to pay a ridiculous premium. Quality control? That’s on me. I’m suddenly coordinating three or four different factories for one SKU, all with different lead times, minimums, shipping instructions, invoices, business hours. If I’m lucky, half of them respond to emails — eventually. And this is for 2,000 units, not ten.

And then you get into the stuff nobody warns you about:

• Liability and “who owns the mistake.” If something is out of spec, who eats the cost? If your part cracks, who’s responsible? North American shops get nervous when they don’t know you, because one bad job can become a drama bomb.
• Documentation expectations. Some shops want drawings formatted a certain way, GD&T called out properly, tolerances realistic, finishes specified, revision control… if you mess this up, you’re not “a customer,” you’re “a headache.” The supplier in China offered to do all of this for me.
• Scheduling reality. Even if they can do the work, you’re competing against long-term customers. A shop will bump your order without blinking because you’re not the account that’s been feeding them for ten years.
• Packaging is treated like it’s beneath the process. In China, packaging is part of the quote. Here, it’s like “we don’t do that.” Which is wild because packaging is literally part of the product experience. But it’s treated as separate, like an afterthought.

Even if I forced it to work, I’d end up shipping half-finished parts across the province, maybe even across the country, multiple times. Raw → stamped → shipped to weld → shipped to coating → shipped to packaging → shipped to me. Every step adds time, cost, damage risk, and labor. And every shipment is its own mini project: booking freight, waiting for pickup windows, dealing with “we missed the dock time,” dealing with pallet requirements, dealing with “we can’t accept it because it wasn’t wrapped right,” dealing with claims when something arrives scratched.

By the end, the product would cost so much that selling it wouldn’t even make sense. Meanwhile in China? One invoice. One shipment. Done.

As a side note, another barrier to manufacturing in Canada/USA — at least in my view — are energy costs. Energy costs aren’t a footnote in manufacturing — it’s one of the core variables. When power is expensive, production and raw materials become expensive. Press brakes pull serious power. Welders drink amperage. Compressors run constantly. Curing powder coat means heating an oven big enough to park a car inside. And it’s not just the “rate,” it’s the demand — industrial electricity bills can punish you just for having big peaks. Electricity isn’t cheap anymore. Natural gas sure isn’t. So when people ask why things cost more here, that’s part of it. Energy pricing alone can kill a product before it’s born. Honestly, if the government ever asked how to boost domestic manufacturing, cheaper power would be the first thing out of my mouth. But that’s another rant.

China has density. Ecosystem. One-stop manufacturing. Even if tasks happen in different buildings, they're practically neighbors. Raw metal can become a finished packaged product without ever leaving the industrial block. In North America, the steps exist — they’re just scattered like puzzle pieces. You can build anything here, technically — you just have to build the entire production pipeline yourself.

And that’s really what it comes down to for me. Ideas rarely start at volume — they start small. A sketch, a prototype, a short run to test the market. Sometimes you just need 1000 units to see if anyone even wants the thing before you pour your life savings into tooling. You need to touch it, break it, revise it, do version two, maybe pivot entirely. That early stage — the messy, experimental stage — is where products are born. But here, that’s exactly the stage that feels out of reach. Small-batch manufacturing shouldn’t feel like a luxury, yet half the time it does. And if trying an idea is expensive, most people won’t try at all.

We have manufacturing capability. We don’t have manufacturing accessibility.
And when small-run manufacturing becomes a luxury, innovation becomes a privilege.