• Registered: 2007-09-05
  • Posts: 25

Topic: Chumby Cost to be Made In America

I am just curious.

I have seen the videos and read the blogs of Chumbys being produced in China. I admire how fast the people were in putting it all together, their skills are truly amazing.


That said, my question is: are there plans to produce this device in the United States, and what would the price difference have been?


Thank-you for taking the time.

  • From: Singapore
  • Registered: 2006-08-26
  • Posts: 188

Re: Chumby Cost to be Made In America

At the rate that the dollar is weakening, we might have no choice but to produce chumbys in the US in a few years. :-O

In more seriousness, unfortunately there are no plans currently to bring production back to the US. The cost of assembly (not parts, but assembly labor) is greater than 10x that in China.

Perhaps as a more solid benchmark to your question, the first batch of prototype chumbys (the "FOO" and "Katamari" generations) were mostly made in the USA. I think once the final math was done, we paid something like $350-$400 per device to have them built. We were hoping for more like $300, but NRE costs were higher than expected and we paid a good bit of money for various expedited services.

Hope that helps.

7BAA 2E53 01C1 DCFF 497B  E7F0 9699 A303 78F0 D9B9

bunnie's Website

  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-29
  • Posts: 159

Re: Chumby Cost to be Made In America

We tried hard early-on to find a US manufacturer -- would've been way easier for the small runs we were doing early-on than to try to make them in China.  We finally gave up.  Just couldn't find a source that could handle both sewing *and* electronics -- plenty of either but just no one who could deal with both.  When electronics and sewing come together, that looks like the toy business, which has completely migrated to Asia.  So that's where we had to go to get chumbys made.  If anyone knows of an interesting US-based source we could look at, we'd certainly consider it but, as bunnie says, the cost differential is huge.

Steve Tomlin's Website

  • Registered: 2007-09-05
  • Posts: 25

Re: Chumby Cost to be Made In America

Bunnie and Steve; thanks for those most honest and intelligent answers.

I too thought of the weakening dollar; but you are right about the sewing, I saw one of the videos and my eyes popped at the operator's skill and speed.

I do believe by Chumby 3.0 they will be built stateside do the dollar figure and I can see a luxary or customer made line. In the future I can see a big company buying units with their brand on them.

Though a car accident made me give up my golden ticket; when the store is open I will get one and am planning to fuse it with my teletubby Dipsy so he can help me out in the shop a bit.