On the “Made in …” UK or China, or Italy thing, my view is that provided there was no penalty in build quality, I would pay a premium for Made in UK. Why? Couple of things. First, it is a sop to my environmental awareness and would leave me feeling a little less guilty about the environmental cost of shipping a heavy item halfway round the planet.
Also, up to a point, I would pay a premium for the slightly nationalistic benefits of helping to create and/or keep people in jobs in the UK rather than in China (or Italy, for that matter). Between Made in China or Made in Italy (as, say, Eureka) I don’t have much of a preference other than for environmentally, though …. China does still produce a lot of cheap garbage. Look on Amazon. But they are also capable of very high-end manufacturing indeed so no, I don’t see Chinese manufacture as necessarily implying low quality. Not by a very large margin.
How much of a premium would I pay? Dunno.£100-ish, yeah probably. Double the price? Very much doubt it. The way I look at it is that I would pay for the reduced environmental impact, but also that if that price difference made a massive difference to me, I probably wouldn’t be buying a £500 grinder in the first place.It is discretionary spend. It isn’t that important to me to have one if the price difference was critical. But that it a subjective decision that’s right for me, and I certainly wouldn’t criticise someone else for reaching a different conclusion, because my criteria are based on my circumstances, not theirs.
I seriously considered getting an Oro while I was waiting for the Niche to arrive. Then later, one would end up in the kitchen with the espresso machine, and the other in my home office with a Clever dripper. I got as far as ringing a supplier whose website said they were available to order, only to get an unpleasant experience on the phone, and it turned out their website was wrong and they weren’t in stock anyway. By the time they came in, the Niche was pretty close to due date for arrival anyway. Looking back now, I’m rather glad I didn’t take a blind punt on the Oro.
