The Essential Entrepreneur, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 8Sourcing suppliers and manufacturing

During the 1900s, and certainly up to the 1980s, there was a strong drive towards local, or ‘sovereign’, manufacturing driven by Australia's determination to become an independent and self-sufficient nation. And developing nations were just that — developing.

Over the past 40 years, however, there has been a continuing trend to seek lower cost manufacturing overseas as those developing nations started to mature and stabilise, and with large populations of very low cost labour available they could develop a manufacturing base that provided a significant cost advantage over local manufacturing. As a result, we saw numerous industry sectors heading overseas for supply.

Over the past 20 years, though, we have been confronted with scenes of manufacturing ‘sweat shops’ — utilising what we would deem slave labour — that deeply shocked the general community. This in itself has resulted in a manufacturing movement by companies towards ethically sourced products in response to market demand. Not all products can be sourced and manufactured successfully, whether it be in Australia or other developed nations; however, effort can be put into ensuring our values and quality control processes are maintained within those supply chains in other countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic raised other critical issues with overseas supply due to volatile movements in demand and populations being locked down. This saw a huge reduction in available supply from ...