MFJ closing down manufacturing facilities effective May 17th 2024

Could you live in Florida if all you earned was $15/hour? I have no idea what the cost of living is like in your location. Maybe you're not offering enough?

Getting back to MFJ, one of the side-effects of Covid-19 was that workers became more empowered, realizing how much they were actually worth. Many restaurants and small businesses are actually starting to pay workers a living wage and/or offering other perks such as medical insurance so they can retain them. I suspect that a lot of MFJ's technical workers found new, better-paying jobs elsewhere after Covid and of those who are left there just aren't enough to keep up with both repairs and new production, and Martin can't hire replacements for the wages that he's willing to pay, and that's the main reason why the production arm of the business is the only thing that's closing (for now.)

He would be wise to sell for whatever he can get, whether the business as a whole or the individual brands piecemeal Someone may not wish to produce MFJ antenna tuners, meters and such but may be very interested in Ameritron, for example. If his stipulation for sale that the business(es) remain in Sackville is to protect the workers' jobs there, he's failed: closing down production eliminates jobs just as surely as relocating the business elsewhere would have. He needs to realize that "half a loaf is better than none", get whatever he can get to fund his retirement, and let the new owner(s) keep the brands alive.

 

Sure, pay more for unskilled labor and the product cost will go up and sales will go down.

And it's not just his problem, getting workers today is hard for every employer, fact.

I have been retired 8 years and have people asking me to work for them weekly.

Not that the economy is screaming, just that skilled labor is going extinct, for many reasons.

 

And many businesses are struggling with the prospect of doing that. They end up losing money and are going out of business when they try.

You see, the problem is you simply can't pay an employee $15 /hr. to make only $6 worth of burger sales in an hour and somehow expect to remain in business. The math doesn't work. The profit margins have to far exceed the labor costs, or else it just isn't worth doing the business anymore.

I suspect MFJ suffered declining sales revenue due to COVID and struggled with making the payroll for the hourly employees. So a decision has to be made or else you go bankrupt. MFJ is not alone and this is a common theme with many other businesses in recent times.

 

Right?

 

Well said.

 

No, it would be like GM buying Kia.

 

You have the wrong picture. Assembler winding my transformers properly I pay $20/h and a month of paid vacation.

 

Agreed
MFJ paid (unskilled) assemblers $7.50 p/h
I worked there part-time for 4 years after retiring from Motorola.
I worked in testing. I nagged for four years about (the complete lack of ) QC. The place was a joke.
They didn’t care.

 

Heart Breaking News
A Sign of Things To Come
MFJ will always be a favorite of mine
My homes are stacked with your equipment
From amps ,antennas, mics, to tuners and much much more
MFJ will always be an amazing memory of Ham Radio
Thank You For Making Ham Radio An Amazing Hobby
Good Luck In Your Next Chapter of Life

 

I'll call Joe and ask him ! I do know him you never know and I once played 12 string with Neil at a Christmas party back in the 80s. What a thrill WOW !!!! 73 Phil..

 

The loss of MFJ will not, in itself, result in a death spiral for ham radio. This hobby has existed through two world wars, a depression and other circumstances both adverse and favorable. How did hams ever make it through the Great Depression? I venture that they salvaged or built much of what they had. Yes, Cushcraft and HyGain are big names in antennas but just about anything conductive can become an antenna. Maybe more hams will turn on to the fact that if they can't buy it, they can probably build it. I too thought that MFJ should consider offering kits but someone has to write detailed assembly instructions for each one. Heathkit may have taught a couple of generations of hams how to build things but QC wasn't always so great in the kit world, no matter how great the kit, the design and the instructions were. Much was dependent on the builder and some just weren't up to the task.

The fact of the matter is that businesses come and go. Narco Avionics was around for 60+ years and they shuttered years before COVID (a victim of their own refusal to keep up with current technology, among other things). Avionics didn't die just because a major player hit the rocks. Ham radio won't either. Look at the ad banners. There are other manufacturers, some who probably don't get a lot of notice but who are making some intriguing products. MFJ may leave a bit of a vacuum for a time but it won't always be that way. Other products will bubble upwards and new ones will be introduced.

Could there be a buyer? Maybe, but the idea of purchasing a business which has diversified well beyond its ability to do everything really well is not appealing. If I were bidding on the business the first thing I would be looking at is where to move it out of Starkville, how to completely overhaul the manufacturing process, how to ensure that every product is thoroughly documented and what products are most in demand. That would be an enormous project for ONE division. For the whole thing, it would be nearly impossible without an enormous infusion of cash and an army of people just to get started, not to mention facilities, logistics, engineering. You'd literally have to put the thing on hold for months to figure this stuff out and that just isn't practical.

Unless the company's divisions can be peeled off and sold to someone with the technical acumen, the financing and the knowledge to fix the issues, support what is out there in terms of replacement parts and then assemble a team to restart production on products most likely to sell, I'm not optimistic about anyone swooping in, picking up the whole shebang and kickstarting it back into profitability.

73,

Jim K. - KS9Q

 

BTW- Cushcraft antennas going out of business is a big deal. Perhaps someone will buy Ameritron. That is a lot of HF amps going away.

 

Jim, I think you nailed it. I do hope somebody picks up the antenna lines, and I suppose the amp lines have their fans too, but it's also possible that others will create similar antennas without needing the old brands. It's not like Cushcraft's antennas were covered by patents, if they ever were; most of the designs are decades old. Anyone can reproduce the wire antenna kits. The tuners will be missed, though, and it's not clear what will happen there. I suspect some of the business will move to Ali Express and the like; my suspicion is that a lot of the stuff on Ali will make people miss MFJ's quality. Maybe DXE can create its own products to fill the void without the Starkville factory.

What may have hurt MFJ is that it seemed to be doing old-school American manufacturing the same way it was done in the 1970s. I briefly worked for an electronics startup, some recent MIT grads, in 1976, after my stint at 73. It started in an old house and moved to a factory building near the campus. So I saw how stuff was made then, mostly hand-stuffed boards and then a wave soldering machine, with a fair amount of discrete soldering at the end.

You all may recall the Deming and QA movements in American industry that followed Japan's success using same. My 1975 Plymouth stank; my 1981 Toyota was tons better. GM seems to have improved too. (Not so sure about Chrysler's goods inside Stellantis f/k/a Fiat.) There isn't a lot of consumer electronic manufacturing left in the US, just military. MFJ did good for the community by keeping it here, but they apparently did not pick up on modern quality techniques and manufacturing tools. That is what may have squelched any deals. And it sounds like Martin didn't have much of a management team between him and the direct labor. Modern manufacturing is capital intensive. It needs skilled labor. There is a big push now to on-shore more manufacturing, but it won't look like the shops of the 1970s. Cheap labor isn't so valuable any more; proper deployment of machinery is.

 

Speaking Ameritron, someone should buy that division from MFJ. Due to poor 811A tube supplies and the 572B I would drop the AL-811 and AL-811H amps and sell the Ameritron ALS-500MX with a 100 amp switching power supply for 120 volts to replace the low cost AL-811H at same price. It would be no issue to move the Ameritron tooling to anywhere in the USA. If I was younger I would make an offer.

 

It would be wonderful if some other company took over MFJ and turned it around so that it wouldn't be known as mighty fine junk and made it into better quality equipment and not the shoddy stuff they have put out over the years. I had a MFJ DIFFERENTIAL T 986 TUNER that failed in 1999 and sent back 7 times to get it repaired and each time I got it back, it would not work and then the last time they supposedly repaired ( in warranty ) they wanted to charge me $142.95 plus shipping and so it sat down there. I inquired about the that tuner 15 years ago, and they said they had sold it as used. So I hope someone buys the remains of MFJ makes it into a better company.