[EarlKing]

What I find particularly galling is that he failed to learn perhaps the most important lesson: Maybe he wouldn't have these kind of problems if he hadn't outsourced his manufacturing to China but kept in on-shore instead.

[ungreased0675]

I did wonder how many less issues would have popped up if the lamp wasn’t manufactured in China. Was a little surprised it wasn’t addressed.

[y-curious]

The product would be perfect and he would lose $10 with every sale.

[shadowpho]

It’s because building 500 units would be a non starter for many of them

[throw3836372]

You should check out Michael Lynch's blog series about building TinyPilot.

He tried to source from America companies first, but the products were actually worse and much more expensive than his Chinese vendors.

He has one blog post which details the quality differences, and the Chinese vendors were much better than the American ones. The American ones also took longer and we're less communicative to him than the Chinese vendors.

[nemomarx]

Last Trump term, a small business making PC cases locally in california went out of business because of steel tariffs. I'm not sure that local manufacturing in small batches is much safer given there's aluminum and other material tariffs this time too?

[EarlKing]

Cost was not the only issue addressed by OP.