I've had a bit of first hand experience in the "why don't we...

I've had a bit of first hand experience in the "why don't we import/make it ourselves" field. The biggest was a certain well known large mining company. They struck up a deal with a Chinese manufacturer of a certain widely used product (I'm not sure of my legal ground so I'd rather not specify it) after having purchased it locally. The result was lot's of Chinese holidays for their staff, and after kickbacks, a product at a similar price but with the company needing to take full responsibility for it and no local support. As you pointed out Joe, the next step was all sites were locked in to one supplier who became less competitive, and also locked others out. after a period, those locked out entered into contracts with other miners and adjusted their staffing accordingly, leaving no capacity to service them when it all turned pair shaped, which of course it did.

Next comes to mind a number of resellers of one of our major locally manufactured products decided they could up their margin by doing it themselves. Expensive businesses where established and staffed to this end. The problem was, these businesses where supplying just that individual company in each case, where previously we had been supplying them all. The result was they either didn't have capacity when they needed it, or had staff inventing ways to pass the time when they didn't. The resellers where forced to buy from their in house manufacturers/importers, causing those companies to become very inefficient. Ultimately, 1 closed up shop entirely, another was bought by it's competitor in a distressed state, and the others (3) all continue to operate their facilities, but subcontract the largest portion of the work to our company in all but the quietest of times. It was a silly idea from the onset driven by greed and a thorough misunderstanding of the nature of the businesses they where trying to emulate.

PGC need to be good at what they do, that is the biggest risk for me. How are they value adding to their products, and why would you buy from them? If the answer is because they have won the Australian distributorship for the products, then I'll be selling it as quickly as practical. Nothing causes inefficiencies faster, quickly you have lazy people sitting at desks knowing you have to call them if they want a certain product, because you can't buy it anywhere else. Company wide arrogance follows, and customers become very proactive trying to avoid dealing with you. For me that's the risk. I have never dealt with PGC, and I don't know anyone who has. Manufacturers have an uncanny ability to detect this sort of thing and dealerships can be whipped away in a year. Then there's the reality check when the company (PGC in my example) realises what it was depending on for sales.

Another risk is a company that focuses on growth, without shoring up it's current strengths. A lot of talking about world domination, while ignoring the current customer base that's got them where they are.

These are my concerns and I'm pretty sure short of a trip to Melbourne to look them in the eyes and ask some leading questions there is no easy way to put them to bed.