Manufacturing and Quality Control blog

1. Go for the One-on-One

Factory visits and other supplier interactions in China virtually always come in groups. Chinese management would, in nearly all cases, prefer to have a team of their staff members meeting with the client all at once, as they will feel that this structure will naturally hold those staff members accountable to their organization’s best interests.

Importers often insist on working directly with the factories that manufacture their products. There are many reasons why: factory-direct pricing, having a direct line of communication to the factory itself, and other benefits generally associated with “cutting out the middleman.”

Chinese manufacturing and quality control may seem like it’s a world apart; something that happens so far away from the everyday lives of western importers and consumers that its nearly impossible for them to get a glimpse into these processes.

Bangladesh continues to make headlines as new revelations about the tragic Rana Plaza factory collapse come to light. This publicity is causing importers and international analysts to wonder about the pros and cons of sourcing products from a center for ultra-cheap labor such as Bangladesh in comparison to other options, notably China.

Even with the advent of websites like Alibaba.com and MadeInChina.com, sourcing products from China can be a daunting task. This is a major reason why many buyers forgo sourcing altogether and rely on agents or trading companies to do the legwork.

Recently an American business executive named Chip Starnes was literally held hostage inside his office at his company's medical supplies factory on the outskirts of Beijing. Chip's imprisonment - which spanned nearly a week - started when it was announced that some of the manufacturing processes at the plant would be moved to India and that employees involved in those processes would be laid off.

Western buyers working directly with Chinese manufacturers must overcome a number of obstacles in order to do business smoothly. These include huge time differences, varying perspectives on product quality, obvious language barriers, and also more subtle cultural gaps. Bridging this cultural divide can work wonders for western buyers.

Have you ever struggled with the question of when to buy factory direct and when to go through a vendor or trading company? Importers are often highly motivated to secure the lowest per-unit cost possible for the items they purchase from China. The old maxim of “cutting out the middleman” leads many buyers to reason that purchasing factory-direct is the only way to get the lowest cost of goods sold, and is thus the only smart option for buying from China.

If you have a novel or innovative product and you are interested in using China’s formidable manufacturing sector to bring your product to market, protecting your intellectual property is likely high on your priority list. So how do you protect your intellectual property?

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