Jordi meets Obama
Well done to Jordi and Chris this is certainly a level of official recognition! Quite amazing what a collaboration with a sprinkling of vision mixed in can lead to.
With a loud whir and a rush of air, a small six-rotored flying drone takes off and is carefully navigated around the small, high-tech production line.
The company is called 3D Robotics and was co-founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Chris Anderson and his Mexican computer whiz-kid partner, Jordi Munoz.
The 26-year-old Mr Munoz was one of the few local businessmen scheduled to meet President Barack Obama during his trip to Mexico this week.
The two founders met online and started producing robots in China but then realised it made better business sense to have one factory in San Diego and another just over the border in Tijuana. Wages in China have quadrupled.
“If you net in all our costs now it’s almost at price parity with Shenzhen,” Chris Anderson said. “That part of southern China has become more expensive and Mexico is staying pretty much flat.
“When you add in all those external costs – time, shipping, someday perhaps environmental costs, then they start to be very similar to China, and from an innovation perspective short supply chains are better.
“Twenty years ago Mexico was about cheap labour; today it’s about highly skilled labour that’s cost-competitive.”
