

The economics of building a factory in Brooklyn to be near the cool kids - kanamekun
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/13/the-economics-of-building-a-factory-in-brooklyn-to-be-near-the-cool-kids/

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_delirium
_The final decision turned on a simple calculation: MakerBot wanted its
production line close to its engineers, and its engineers wanted to live in
Brooklyn. Working out bugs in a factory halfway around the world would be
cumbersome, MakerBot executives decided._

I can definitely see that from a risk-management perspective, especially for a
small startup, and one that doesn't have its production process nailed down
solid yet. A ton of Kickstartered physical-product projects end up sinking by
trying to manufacture in China. Admittedly some just don't have the first clue
of what they're doing, but some also get done in by the large latencies, and
the remoteness/opaqueness of the manufacturing side to the engineering team
(which then leads to difficulty in debugging or iterating).

