Penn cleans house
 

My buddy that works for the Penn repair department told me yesterday that the company has fired the President and CEO, the National Service Manager, and the Vice President of Manufacturing. He say's morale is very low. He also said that he doubts that there will ever be a made in America spinning reel made by Penn again. That was the factory that all but closed down a month ago, they made the spinning reel's there. He also said that they are slow but sure making even the replacement parts in China too. Too bad because that was a big selling point for Penn, the made in America tag. Stiff competion requires the use of the cheapest labor I guess. The way he see's it eventually all the manufacturing will be done overseas. :hs: Paul

Penn
 

Every salt water reel I have is a Penn! I consider Penn an American icon just like Harley Davidson, what are they doing?????

Making money. :smash:

made in usa....a fading logo. china- next industrial superpower, they will shape the globes economy :smash:

bummer. but that is the result of living in a POST- INDUSTRIAL NATION. No such thing as out sourcing.

FREE ENTERPRISE RULES !

Every salt water reel I have is a Penn! I consider Penn an American icon just like Harley Davidson, what are they doing?????

Trying to survive... It's a dog eat dog world out there. Whether we like it or not, China's where it's at til further notice. Sadly, we're gutting our own work force in the process.

Penn's first problem is they are out of touch with the consumer.
They IMO just placed the nail in the coffin.
Once again they have underestimated the consumer.
In the past when Penn was top of the line reels they refused address the problem issues with their reels. When they did respond it was out of desperation because of lost market share. How many years of the consumer telling them that Penn’s bails flip does it take for them to listen? Well apparently they still do not get it because we are going on 20 years and nothing has been done other than telling the consumer they have the reel handle in the wrong position while casting.
They addressed the issues on the 5500SS and after 3 changes and 15 years they still did not get it right. So they discontinue the reel and come out with a new version called the SSg .
Well lets talk about their newest.
It finally got a infinite Anti-Reverse. All other companies have had it for over 5 years. Even on their cheapest $20 reels! They have not addressed the spool taper. And with every one running braid today they did not even put an oversized line roller on the series of reels. So their newest reel is already outdated.

If Penn would just listen.
For at least 4 years I have committed to a large quaint of reels. I call it the improved 704 /706
Give me this reel with a infinite Anti-Reverse , newer improved Bail spring ,drilled out rotor like a VS, Anodized finish not painted, oversized Line Roller Bearing. Does not have to be sealed .Hell with only 3 moving internal parts a kid could clean it in 5 min.
They could sell this reel in the $200 range
What does Penn do??
They move a problem reel that most guys were on the edge of using to a fixed rediculious price
From $85 to $129. and move its production overseas. Thus guaranteeing it’s extension.

The only way people are going to go back to Penn is if they get the same reel as they have been getting for 10 years and drop the price to $50 in level with all the other imported reels.
There is no reason for the consumer to support Penn now that they have moved their spinning reels overseas.

The steps that should have been taken are .
Clean house starting with the Management and then moving to the design and research and development. Replace them with a new team that will directly listen to the consumer and address the issues with their reels. And most of all remain in the USA

Mike, don't hold back...please tell us what you're thinking :grins:

As someone who was just shopping for a new reel I couldn't agree more. There are very few options available for the surfcaster, and the one diehard has recently sold it's soul.

-spence

I would but this is a family board :wall:
But then what do I know been only listening the the consumer complain over their reels fro 20 years.

mike,

three four years ago penn sends two prototype slammers to Bill Pew (Fishers) out here. I bet you got a couple or more.

Bill gives the medium one to me (which would become the 460) and the smaller one to Captain Tom M. and tells both of us to NEVER rinse and give it back in November.

The friggin thing was the greatest reel I had ever used and worked perfectly all season. I dunked, sanded it, puked on it and it still worked great. It broke my heart to give it back but the season was over.

So the next year I buy the 360, 460 and they are so so. The drag is good, if you maintain it but the components overall work so so.

I wish I had that proto still it was the best reel ever. number 80 hand inked on it.... :crying: :crying: :crying:

20 years of selling penn reels they have never brought in proto types nor asked my opinion of their reels.
The only time I have ever seen the peolpe from penn other that the local rep is when they were having a photo shoot with Atlantic boats. For new at the time international reels. Some one shipped their rods up and they were damaged in shipment.They had me stay late about 4 hours after closing and repair all the rods.

I remember as a kid(not too long ago) when items were all made in Japan and that was considered cheap/low quality. Things have changed with Japanese products since then. Resume now with China, but a big problem with China is that they do not respect any type of patents. They have hundreds and hundreds of law suits against companies that replicate cars, and other products. Worse yet, is that the Chinese government has done nothing about all of this.

When I have the chance to buy similar products, whether made in USA or another country and China, even if I have to pay more, I will always buy the American or other country's part. China's tactics are a disgrace!

I have to agree, if Penn made a better version of the 704 or 6 that was priced around 200 or 250 bucks, VS would be in big trouble. annodized, sealed drag... i'd buy one.

then they really do suck.

i came through your shop once a couple of years ago. it was impressive. incredible looking rods, great conversation going on (I must have hit a lucky moment :rotf3: ) everything organized. all the good stuff....

Bill sold out last Fall. He's done. no one picked up his shop. i wish i was more experienced...

this is gonna be the best season ever....

sorry guys but if a quality reel comes from overseas I will buy it. However, if there is a quality reel within the same price range as the overseas reel I will buy the american reel.

i hope Penn is seeing this post from Mikecc!! Let it rip big fella!!!

Is Penn changing the design on the 704Z and 706Z? I went to their website and they have the 706Z weighing at 25.5 ozs and the gear ratio at 4.6. I remember the weight being 21 ozs and I think the gear ratio was 3.7 or 3.8. They have the 704Z listed at 22 ozs, before the 704Z was heavier than the 706Z?

So who is goign to sell all the honey lamis and Penn reels to the tourists? And will the tourists finally stop flipping the reels over and backwinding when they see some of us with conventionals :whackin:

Interesting to hear that about Bill. Very nice guy and I wish him luck (though I've often wondered if he has poured too much lead over the years without a mask)...

What does that leave for a decent shop on the island? The gas station?


Penn - they have screwed the pooch. Anyone have any method for them to come on and engage some of their customers? No, I'm not holding my breath

I noticed the same thing. Maybe if we are lucky they will improve the anti-reverse and limit all that play.

After a lot of research and shopping around (and around and around) I went with Shimano. Hard to beat the features and quality for the price. And it was on SALE, something I never saw from Penn. I looked long and hard at the Penns, believe me, I wanted one. But I couldn't justify the cost vs. value for my hard earned green. You're right- they did it to themselves. Another example of arrogant management not listening to anybody. I'm sure some of the people at Penn have been trying to tell their bosses for years what the score is. Same problem where I work. I'm beginning to think the problem isn't necessarily Chinese business practices, its poor American leadership in the manufacturing sector.

I agree with you in that if Penn could just "update" the 704 and 706 to improve things such as the line roller(706) and the significant handle play, I would have no need to buy a VS, Saltiga or any other reel for that matter. But, they choose not to embrace change nor listen to their customers, the anglers. Sure I still use my Penns, but I like the fact that other companies who DO listen to the customer, and they will get my business.

Penn
 

As usual MikeCC fills us in on all the pertinent inside guff with a manufacturer. That is one of the things that make this list what it is. Where else after reading and listeneing too our buddies could we go to get this information and make an informed decision? No where. Mike has told us many things about Penn before but today we learn some more.

I sent a Penn 9500 back for premature bail floppage and when I called the factory to check someone in the office wanted to know how much or long I have been fishing. I supposed that is a fair question though in retrospect. The direct cause of all of the manufacturing and replacement parts coming out of China no doubt is managements confusion over how important the consumer and retailer opinon is.

Just remember the NAFTA bill was signed into legislation by Bill, spread the wealth, Clinton, not Goerge %$%$%$%$. NAFTA accelerated the rush to outsource like nothing else ever.

You hit the nail on the head. Several years ago there was an article in Fine Woodworking where they went to Taiwan and toured factories that made woodworking equipment. US buyers bought the cheapest equipment that was available. Price is not the only thing that counts.

In today's economy, I can see how things are being made elsewhere, but something that really has to be done is regarding China's government that allows companies to infringe patents. Honda alone has several patent lawsuits against Chinese companies that are literally producing Honda vehicles such as the Civic, with a Honda logo and everything, when in fact they are pure knock-offs. That is scary.

China should at least be made to play by the same rules that other foreign countries do.

How are you gonna make China play by the same rules when they have a complete different set of priorities?Things like the environment,safety,patents they don't mean squat to a country like China.
Most of these people don't have drinking water, electricity, infrastructure, health care, etc. Do you think they care about patent infringement?
So, you say the U.S. should not import goods from a country like this? We should not be trade partners with a country that doesn't play by the rules, right?
Who's gonna push this? The irony is that the big U.S. manufacturers are the one's migrating to China.Their rushing over there to build their plants and take advantage of the cheap labor market.And, they have the lobby $ behind them to make damn sure the gates stay open.Meanwhile, wall street's loving the ROI, the company's are making money, and the gov't is telling you this is good for the economy.
Wait til it all comes crashing down.

What you say is true. I'm not saying we shouldn't import anything, I', just saying I wish something would be done about what is going on. Too bad the Chinese govt. is in cohoots with the companies. That really makes it a toughy!

BB - who is going to but the products when we get into the same unemployment situations like in Europe?

Van Staal.

Simple solution.

End this free-market nonsense as practiced by Buhs and Clinton because it is selling our very foundation in the name of corporate profits.

I really don't think our standard of living will be impacted that dramatically if we can't buy .69 cent potato peelers and 15 dollar DVD players.

There's a balance point there somewhere.

-spence

John - That's exactly my point. Maybe the corporate big shots don't realize, or maybe they just don't care because this process will take a while. But, the fact is that everytime they migrate an operation to China they are firing their BEST CUSTOMERS.
When Billybob loses his good paying job in the brass mill and gets a job at Walmart, he ain't buying no Plasma TV's - neither is Wonhunglo, who's working at the new brass mill in Xianjang cause he's only making 25 yuan a month!
Walmart's gonna have to layoff Billybob, cause their sales are down.All these wonderful service jobs disappear because there's no manufacturing base to support them.
Unemployment rises as the tax base shrinks and we have a crises on our hands.
The incumbent will get blamed, a new party voted in, but it's too late - the damage is done.
And the CEO retires to Cancun :peessed:

Is the price of gas going up or is the value of the dollar going down?
This might be happening faster than you think.

Plasma TV in China
 

Wunhunglo doesn't have electricity in his mud hut floor abode, so getting a plasma TV is not high on his to-do list. Don't forget these people still kill their female born children without government repudiaton. :(

no one saw the news I guess...china just built a [something like] 250 million gal.oil tank and refinery..an nothing to put in it...their looking to fill those tanks with the same oil we're after....oil going to the highest bidder?

had a talk with a shop owner yesterday about reel's...he's not happy with penn. he said look at these cheap reel's I get from oversea's,,can't get part's for them...penn goes oversea's, think I'll get part's for them? he has his dought's....the co's just want you to buy a new one when the one you have now goes south.....they don't give a rat's behind about getting the one you have fixed.. there's no profit in that.

Wal Mart is the single biggest importer of Products manufactured in China according to a 60 minutes program recently aired. $18Bil (thats billion)in 2004 or approx 70% of their goods are manufactured in china, and they expect this to grow at 20% yearly. They are a big part of the problem. They squeeze manufacturers til its unprofitable for the manufacturer to deal with them, then they suggest to that manufacturer, "hey. why dont you consider manufacturing overseas(asia) to reduce yourt costs". Think about that next time you shop at Wal Mart.

I was at The Gap the other day and I was looking for socks. Surprisingly all the socks they had were either made in the USA or in Canada. I felt good about that and bought a couple more pairs.

BillBob - I know, that's what I meant.

Sadly funny, "the world needs ditch diggers" is true, but our economy needs a swath of people representing the entire spectrum of the job market from the bottom to the top, and we need the jobs that support them. So a few years back Wall Street ups the stock of a company for cutting costs by laying off a few thousand here and a few there, and then other companies follow suit. (Yeh, I'm picking unrelated situations here)... But now some of those workers are working again, sometimes in the same field and sometimes in new careers, often at a lower pay and position than before as there is somewhat of a glut, yet they no longer count against the unemployment becuase the 80K job has been replaced with a 50K job. And the 50 with a 30 yada,yada,yada...

People are getting retrained at the governments expense (read ours) to learn new skills, ie computers, or various corners of the service industry because their job was moved overseas.

In my field of IT, the loss of jobs to the dot.com boom (partially the fault of STOOOPID investers not knowing what WTF they were doing), the offshoring of positions (plenty of interesting articles saying how well that is working :rollem: ) and I was competing for positions with my certs, skills, and 9 years on the job against someone with a masters and 15 years that may be severly overqualified but that's where the market was. Now I'm not buying a lot of stuff too. (Anyone looking for a network geek?)

So we have this wasting away of our industry and manufacturing base as the jobs go overseas. That person that spun metal is now landscaping or painting if they are lucky or Walmarting if they are not. The buying power remaining requires thay shop at Walmart further fueling the cycle. Wall Street raves about WM's success.

Housing costs in New England as well as other areas have skyrocketed. I moved to RI a few years ago but could never move back to mass now if I wanted. In the Boston area, pretty much between Providence and Nashua NH you need to spend 450-500K and up for a decent 3-4br in the average comunities. How much does Joe and Sally just got married need to have in combined income to turn that kind of nut? 120K household income? More? And Joe CEO has managed a company half into the ground but gets a big dollar bonus?

We have big effing problems in this great country.

Our schools suck for the most part.

We can't graduate ONE THIRD of our kids even though 20-30 percent of those that do probably should not in the first place.

The parents that should be reading to their kids when young are pulling three jobs to keep above water.

We're buying so much imported product that our dollars are all overseas, mostly in Asia.

The dollar is devauling. Sure, now our products are more attractive but what do we have left to trade with? Boeings? Sure, China will take some Boeings from us. The first 10 and then they start license production... Oil is going theu the roof from demand overseas and to the weak dollar.

Corporations are setting up shop in the Carribean so to evade taxes and pumping more money, then offshoring the jobs to save more money.

We are losing our technical edge.

We have lost our manufacturing edge.

How many service jobs will there be replace the industrial economy that we had?

China keeps ignoring patents and builds or rev-engineers when they want. They are building SIGNIFICANT military forces in their neck of the woods that while we may more and better, our stuff is not all in there neck of the woods. They control the access to the Panama Canal

We were the cat's nuts before. We are losing it people.

Time to send the Union Organizers Overseas....

exactly :humpty:

Certain free market issues are already starting to show up in India relative to It suppport etc... Competition for qualified people, (can't be found) and wage scales and benefit packages are skyrocketing, etc... Sound familiar? Humpty may not be too far off as an analogy. Bottom line, all's fair in Love and War. We're at War economically speaking right now. Ask any Joe on the street. Question is, does anyone in Washington know it????

does anyone believe that free market is natural and healthy ?

does anyone remember Korea ? Mexico ? The Free market (through industry) has hopped and skipped it's way around the 3rd world looking for labor to exploit or moves on when the countries standard of living gets to high

IMO, unfortunately that seems to be the norm in the animal kingdom. kill or be killed i guess....

it means we feel slighted because our quest for profit has superceeded our quest for excellence