Factory Experience II

A few blog readers that are interested in possibly owning a Hampton have been in touch with me. I was speaking on the phone yesterday with one and he said "are you really as happy with everything as it seems, reading your blog?"

I have to say that I kind of downplay how stoked we are. I don't want to seem like a "fanboy." But things are GOOD! I think today I'll give you a few more glimpses of what it is like being at the factory in Shanghai.

The factory is a very modern building with all the necessary departments, offices, conference rooms and so on.

That building in the back is Hampton's "dorm." Workers can stay here for free, and meals are provided. 

Just to give you a little perspective on the size of the buildings. That's Robert Fiala, the managing partner of HYG Seattle.

One of the advantages of being at the factory is designing various elements in real time. This is one of the standard masts offered, but it only has room for one radar. As we have two, we got to decide exactly how it would be made. Left to right, factory owner Jeff Chen, Scott Hauck of Seattle, the guy that makes the masts (!), and foreman Lu Wenquan.

When we got to the boat, they had already finished out the area under the kitchen sink. We plan to put a garbage can there, so we did a quick redesign with old fashioned binder paper.

For all the important stuff, CAD drawings are created. Lu is a CAD master! We would often talk about some modification, and literally minutes later we had a new printout.

This shot is kind of random, but as I was going through my images for this post, I realized I never mentioned the cedar lined closets before. Awesome.

There is a mix of modern and old tools around the factory. This one is a beauty.

Giving the turtle ohana some love. All the granite and marble was sealed and polished at the factory. Yaay, one less thing for us to do.

Checking out the beautiful veneers made at the factory.

One of the first things we did during the April visit was go through every line in the specifications contract and our change notices (only 3!). Scott Hauck suggested this. It's great having someone like him looking out for our best interests. We indeed found a few items that had been missed, which the factory quickly rectified.

We found the Chinese to be very agreeable, gentle, and quick to laugh. They all got a kick out of my t-shirt. What's it say? Hey, it's not my fault if you can't read Mandarin! 

There's a lot more I could say about the factory experience. I hope some of you can experience it yourself. As always many thanks to Jeff Chen and everyone at the HYG factory.