How is the owner going to hide that they don't have any high-tech automated machinery from building inspectors, delivery people, and so on? How will he hide that workers don't go in or out, that he doesn't pay them good (or any) wages? What will his taxes look like? Where do the workers live? Do they have families? And if he's bragging about his high-tech innovations, the local community will be interested in tours, as will the media. What is the quality of the goods: would people looking at them think their quality and consistency is that of robot-made?... It sounds like it would be cheaper in the long run to buy the equipment.
Does it *have* to be a high-tech factory? Couldn't it be a scam? "We will revitalize the local economy by selling over the internet organic, cruelty-free quilts/blankets/wedding dresses hand-made by adorable grandmothers with love and care." I have heard of many cases like that (on Esty, for example) where goods marketed as unique and hand-made were in fact mass-manufactured in factories.
The workers would be housed on the factory grounds. (I think this is not-uncommon for sweatshop operations in the US that smuggle people into the country and then have them work to repay their fare.) I was thinking “high-tech factory” as a cover story to explain why hardly anyone (except the boss and a couple flunkies/enforcers) ever shows up at the building for work, but another effective cover story would work just as well.
The boss would be very careful about paying taxes, for the same reason that a good drug courier is very careful about obeying the speed limit.
It does look like “behold the new high-tech factory that will bring jobs to our community” won’t work as a cover story; it would have to be “just another nondescript building in the industrial zone that some guy bought and rehabbed last year”. So with that change of focus, the things I most want to know are:
If the boss is concerned about secrecy and the workers live on-site, what are reasonable numbers for how many co-conspirators and how many workers would be involved in the operation?
If the workers are semi-skilled but still have an incentive to keep their heads down, what could a factory on this scale sell? (My in-laws run a machine shop in a suburb of Boston-a company might hire them to build a prototype of some metal widget and then contract with a larger-scale factory if that widget design goes into production. So that’s the first concept that came to my mind, but it might not be the best.)
1. Depends entirely on what they're making, presumably. Obviously, the more people you have, the harder it is to keep a secret. He'd probably have to have a few foremen, at least.
2. You probably want something that costs little to produce but has a high retail value. Knockoffs of electronic goods or designer items could work well.
If he's telling everyone it'll revitalize the economy, then there'll be a lot of locals applying for jobs; in areas like that, it'll draw attention if no locals get hired at all. If the area is really badly off, he might be able to cover his tracks a bit if he hires locals as guards and so forth only if they sign an NDA -- agree not to tell anyone about the sweatshop, get a decent job. People have agreed to worse for the sake of keeping a job
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Does it *have* to be a high-tech factory? Couldn't it be a scam? "We will revitalize the local economy by selling over the internet organic, cruelty-free quilts/blankets/wedding dresses hand-made by adorable grandmothers with love and care." I have heard of many cases like that (on Esty, for example) where goods marketed as unique and hand-made were in fact mass-manufactured in factories.
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The workers would be housed on the factory grounds. (I think this is not-uncommon for sweatshop operations in the US that smuggle people into the country and then have them work to repay their fare.) I was thinking “high-tech factory” as a cover story to explain why hardly anyone (except the boss and a couple flunkies/enforcers) ever shows up at the building for work, but another effective cover story would work just as well.
The boss would be very careful about paying taxes, for the same reason that a good drug courier is very careful about obeying the speed limit.
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It does look like “behold the new high-tech factory that will bring jobs to our community” won’t work as a cover story; it would have to be “just another nondescript building in the industrial zone that some guy bought and rehabbed last year”. So with that change of focus, the things I most want to know are:
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2. You probably want something that costs little to produce but has a high retail value. Knockoffs of electronic goods or designer items could work well.
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