"As a family owned and operated company with over 111 years of history behind our brand (and family) name in the USA, quality and customer satisfaction with our products is our number one concern for each piece of cookware we manufacture each year. It's for this reason, that in 2004, when Lodge began to augment our mainly domestically manufactured product line with a new range of products manufactured in China, we had concerns about the China-based factories ability to produce product consistently to our specification, and ship to us on schedule. After just two years of buying from overseas we realized that our fears were not unfounded. Our company received several containers of substandard goods, had some quality disputes with our Asia-based factories, and had some difficulty communicating our expectations for product safety and quality. All of this not only put our century old brand name at risk, but also required our company to charge our vendors back for return shipping costs, defective product, and labor re-work in the US. With these factors at work, stocks of some items ran low, which left us scrambling to restore our reputation with several of our major retail accounts. Everything changed in late 2007 when we began working with Mr. Andrew Reich and his team at InTouch Services. InTouch immediately began working hand-in-hand with both our factories in China and our staff in the US developing detailed QC checklists for each item, arranging product inspections throughout Asia, ensuring production was being completed according to our specifications, and ensuring our product met FDA and CPSC safety standards through lab testing. As a result of our partnership with InTouch, we no longer experience the delivery of defective product in the US, late shipments from our suppliers, or the numerous other problems that had troubled our overseas manufacturing. This company continues to prove itself invaluable to Lodge with its constant attention to quality issues in the housewares industry, and recently with its help in investigating the manufacturing of counterfeit Lodge product in China. We highly recommend InTouch to any person or company in need of these services and are confident that working with this firm will resolve quality issues with your imports and save you money."
