While overseas manufacturing provides inexpensive labor, lower component pricing, and (in some cases) lower development cost, without deeply experienced employees and trusted partners the savings may be not worth it. Beyond the calculable (though often unconsidered) costs of doing business abroad—freight, travel, delays, quality issues, etc.—are the intangible costs of developing and manufacturing products with off-shore partners—delays, communication difficulties, personal time spent abroad, and more. Before assuming that Asian manufacturing is the sole solution for hardware manufacturing, we should make a critical accounting of all the costs; in low volumes, the increased costs of off-shoring can exceed the apparent savings. We’ll dig into the details of manufacturing that are often overlooked, and talk about how stateside hardware production can be the right path for your product.