... yep, then they realized how ridiculous it was
Not necessarily. People's offshore predjucies are showing. You would be amazed at how the economics of labor savings on certain skill sets offsets shipping costs in large volumes. This is what I do for a living, manufacturing engineering. While I personally think the economics are a fallacy, (the overhead support costs are rarely factored in, only the purchase price of the sub assembly) it has increasingly become the conventional wisdom. The higher the volumes, the more the numbers work out.
You would be amazed at the amount of traveling parts of cars, appliances and electronics make before ending up in a finished consumer item.
Exactly what Gretsch is doing on each of their product lines (except for the entry level that they are not afraid to admit) seems to be shrouded in mystery. Understandable for any company selling things that they are trying to maintain a quality reputation for given the hue and cry if some internet expert discovers that they are indeed not being handcrafted by elves in a secluded cottage somewhere in the Northeast United States (or a Bavarian forest) and decides to save everyone from themselves by announcing to the world that their cherished quality product has been transfered to some "3rd world" factory full of child slave labor.
FWIW, I have been to, surveyed, and audited several factories in mainland China, Hong Kong, the coastal zone of Shenzen, Malayasia, Singapore and Indonesia. It took a few times to get over the expectation of finding downtroden laborers being whipped to produce more and more. The reality is that they are mostly 20 somethings faced with the option of staying on the family farm, bent over in a rice paddy or behind the family ox, or: working in a nice clean factory, living in nice new dorm buildings with others like them, wearing clean new western clothes, having cell phones and ipods and PS3's in their rooms, a choice or resturants in the company compound, ect... Kind of like what happened during the industrial revolution in the US. These youngsters are having a great time. And they know that there are many back on the farm who are far less fortunate. So rather than being downtrodden, they are living the "get ahead" dream. But they also know that if they screw up, don't make things right, there is a line standing outside the company gate of folks just waiting for their chance to live that life.
And, anyone selling product into the EU (which most of these factories are) has to meet the same ISO environmental standards as a factory in California. So the image of it being cheaper because they are poluting everything is also a fallacy.
It comes down to cost of living transferring into labor rate, and the costs of the bricks and mortar. And many times you can ship things all over the planet to either get a specialist skill here and cheaper labor for mundane things there. Some formerly low cost areas like Singapore have increased their standard of living that they don't count as low cost centers anymore. But they do have a large base of talent, are are close to other low cost centers. So it becomes worthwhile to do some simple things in Vietnam or Indonesia, and then ship them to Singapore for higher skilled work. And then ship them to Japan for enough local labor content to write "Made in Japan" on the box, and then ship them to distributors and stores all over the world who want 'made in Japan' quality.
There are so many threads on different forums with varying opinions of what Gretsch is doing with the Renowns. What I wrote was a distallation of Gretsch videos, promotional material, and the forum posts that seemed to be from the most informed sources and make the most sense (given that I don't have any preconceptions about the "stupidity" of shipping things back and forth across the Pacific.