Buzzworthy Benefits of 'Reshoring' Companies

CHICAGO (TheStreet) -- For years, American companies looking to reduce costs have found savings by looking overseas.

Even those that lamented offshoring's effect on domestic employment couldn't deny its balance-sheet appeal. Once the offshoring trend hit critical mass, anyone who didn't join in was at a huge disadvantage: If all your competitors have moved their call centers to India, how could you afford not to?

But is offshoring always the best choice? A growing movement is questioning the knee-jerk assumption that sending manufacturing and service jobs overseas is the only way to stay competitive. One reason is that the costs of offshoring are rising: fuel prices are up (making shipping more expensive) and workers in developing countries are demanding steadily higher wages.

Proponents of reshoring, as it's called, say that factors other than price should also be taken into account. For Simple Wave, a California housewares company, bringing manufacturing to the U.S. from China had numerous benefits: It made the company more agile in adapting to customer needs; it allowed for better quality control; and it brought a huge amount of positive publicity within its industry.

Just as importantly, it gave employees a sense of pride. "We wanted to do the right thing, and it felt good to make that decision," says co-founder Richard Stump.

7 Companies That Keep on Growing

Simple Wave's signature product is the CaliBowl, a bowl with an inward-curving lip that prevents food from spilling out. When the company was founded in 2008, the decision was made early on to manufacture the rubber bowls in China. "We went to China because that's what everyone else did," says Stump. "It was monkey see, monkey do."

But producing a precisely designed product far from the company's home base turned out to be harder than the founders expected. The curved lip of the bowls was difficult to mold, and quality control became a concern. There were worries about lead times and inventory. When a chocolate company requested 800 CaliBowls on short notice for its store displays, it became clear that it was time to move toward a just-in-time delivery model. "We needed to be able to adapt more quickly," says Stump. "You lose a lot of opportunities if you can't deliver."