MFJ closing down manufacturing facilities effective May 17th 2024

I applaud Mike for his noble proposal to keep MFJ going and overhauling its inherent QC issues (and that is a *major* problem with the company). But IMO using donations, charity, Kickstarter, whatever, to raise the necessary capital to finance such a venture, without having nearly the capital to do it yourself, is a recipe for disaster. Elsewhere, I pointed out that the #1 problem and failure with running or starting any business is *under-capitalization*. You run out of money, and you’re toast.

There’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to raise enough money to successfully achieve what he proposes. And if he thinks he has, there will always be some bumps along the road that will require more capital. Then if the business eventually goes belly-up anyway, all that raised capital will go for naught, and we’re back to square one…the demise of MFJ. There's a reason no one else stepped up to buy it.

Overhauling MFJ to quality standards will be a major undertaking that’s gonna require a ton of money, planning, time, and effort. This is no knock on Mike, but personally I’d like to finally see some movement on the resurrection of Alpha and Ten-Tec before I’d consider contributing to another one of his ventures. And unless he takes Alpha out of tubes and into the solid-state era, I don’t see any long-term viability for that company.

Just my opinion…I wish him well.

 

Maybe get it set up as employee owned would be a good route.

 

I suspect you're going to need a million$$$ and a half working capital. And another million $$ and a half in reserve to get things back going, stock supplies, and get a stable Workforce. While you reorganize things, that's at the minimum the first year to pay overhead, taxes, insurance, parts and supplies for inventory, and modernization. Something's going to have to be added for warranty work, particularly while you're working on the quality control program.

Then you need high sales with higher profits.
Best of luck
73 from,
The K0UO " Rhombic Antenna Farm" miles of wire in the Air & On the AIR daily

 

SERIOUS SOLUTION

STARKVILLE IS ALREADY IN THE NATION’S BEST MANUFACTURING LOCATION! CALL JOE MAX HIGGINS OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AGENCY. JOE WAS ON 60 MINUTES (PREVIEW HERE) TELLING HOW HE STEALS BIG AND SMALL COMPANIES FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE AND BRINGS HIM TO THE STARKVILLE AREA.

https://www.gtrlink.org/staff 662.386.8369

 

Probably in an HOA and it' not allowed.

 

I don't think that fixing the QA issues needs a massive investment, but it may require a price hike that puts them out of the running. MFJ designs are pretty simple - you don't need the latest high tech production facilities. The quality issues that I've seen and heard described on boards like this are indicative of a workforce that is under paid, under trained and pressured to work too fast. MFJ is not like Yaesu or ICOM - they are down at the budget end of the market with competitors that are working from small sheds in mainland China paying Chinese wages. A motivated American workforce working at a sustainable rate is quite capable of producing a good quality product, but they will not do it on wages that allow MFJ to sell their products at prices that compete with Alibaba. Whether or not sales volumes will survive the price rise necessary to motivate that workforce is the $64000 question...

Martin (G8FXC)

 

SERIOUS SOLUTION


STARKVILLE IS ALREADY IN THE NATION’S BEST MANUFACTURING LOCATION! CALL JOE MAX HIGGINS OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AGENCY. JOE WAS ON 60 MINUTES (PREVIEW HERE) TELLING HOW HE STEALS BIG AND SMALL COMPANIES FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE AND BRINGS HIM TO THE STARKVILLE AREA.


https://www.gtrlink.org/staff 662.386.8369

 

You are so wrong. It killed CQ Mag!

 

What a load of crap!

 

More nonsense.

 

I'm sure you can get employees just as good in Mississippi as you can in Ohio - if you pay them accordingly. That's the issue. You can get employees as good in Mississippi, but for more money, but probably can't get any-old-employee nearly as inexpensively in Ohio. It's a lot of ifs but if the buy had succeeded and moved to Ohio prices would have likely gone up - though Ohio isn't exactly the exorbitant cost costs so possibly not by that much.

 

China is capable of making almost anything technical (at the consumer/hobbyist level anyway) just was well as it can be made almost any place in the world, and certainly better than the iffy QC we've seen from MFJ for a long time now. You just have to pay for it. If you contract with a Chinese manufacturer you can literally get whatever QC level you're willing to pay for. Rock bottom with maybe a 20% failure rate (or whatever, just a f'rinstance) and you get the cheapest they can do it at all and just send them all out the door. Pay more, they hire better people and train them better and do more testing etc.

The quality of many, but far from all, Chinese is products is already at least on par with much of what we saw from MFJ. I suspect that is in fact what will pick up much of the slack - US based companies contracting with Chinese manufacturers to build various pieces of "small but handy ham gear" like MFJ has been providing.

 

One more time! From W8JI

I'm going to write something that says as much as I think is proper to say. Ham radio is a very tough business. Most Hams are generally cheap, the bulk are not technical and post-1950 (maybe) most (not all) have been less and less technical. Internet has trained people to talk and find what they want to hear instead of think and learn.

MFJ was not making money since at least 2017, so let's be rational adults not blame this on politics or on personal disagreements. I watched Swan, Johnson, B&W, Collins, Drake, Dentron, Heathkit, Amp Supply, Vectronics, Viewstar, Ten-Tec, and a dozen others go out of business.

RCA went out of the tube business, so did GE, Cetron, and many others. Eimac dropped the glass power grid tubes in the 1990s.

Any business failure is simply because the business model cannot make a profit, and that is always a result of operating costs exceeding income. Those operating costs are never determined by a political party or customers. They are determined by how a business is run and what the market is.

MFJ has been quietly for sale for a while now, but the Ham radio business is very tough. One return for a loose screw can kill the profit on selling that product, that is how little the margin is. MFJ was run in one of our poorest states where operating expenses are the least, it had a some good operating practices (like making its own sheet metal) and like any business some very foolish ones (like not having enough QC, which is what killed Dentron).

Getting something balanced in a low-profit business is just incredibly tough. Any manager has a different opinion of that proper balance point, and often times it cannot be balanced.

We cannot reasonably expect 1980s products to be patched along without eventually reaching end of life. The cost of parts has also been increasing, the worst jump on tubes and stuff was around 1990 forward. Let's stop making up nonsense and just realize Ham radio is a tough business and places have for years and years been going out of business.

I expect Gigaparts to be the place that picks up all of the viable products from MFJ. Steven Pan was with MFJ from the day it started until he left a few years ago. Pan was the president and the linchpin of MFJ. If there was one single driving force behind MFJs positive parts, it was Pan. He was the glue that held it together.

Pan is helping Gigaparts since he left MFJ. They have a pot of gold with him. I fully expect Gigaparts to be a new and much improved source of MFJ-like products with higher quality.

 

Bizarre notion. I'd consider Kia the superior brand.

 

You're right on target.
I actually figured the owner of GigaParts who has European connections investors, would make some kind of run at them. Apparently MFJ is hemorrhaging quite a bit of money, just to shut the thing down has lowered the value.