Inspection & Quality Control
Do You Have a Quality Control Program?
Any experienced importer will tell you, the most common problem buying from China is the quality of the products. When buying from Chinese factories, product quality is by no means a certainty.
Put simply, you need to take quality control into your own hands. If you don’t take specific actions to protect yourself – you are gambling with your money. All goods exported by CHINA SOURCES will go through a Quality Control (QC) inspection before they are exported. We have different levels of quality control depending on our customers requirements and the products involved.
Why Quality Control is So Vital
For many reasons, Chinese manufactures can ‘screw up’ orders. The reasons might astound you:
- Maybe it’s the first time they actually made this product. Why not? They advertised it and you gave them an order!
- Or perhaps they have someone else's rejected stock lying around and they want to palm this off to you. Something more common than many imagine.
- We’ve even seen factories make a product and they didn’t know what it was used for. Sounds silly right? We actually know of a soap factory which made bottles of hand soap, yet none of the pump tops worked! No one in the factory thought it mattered because you could just unscrew the top to get the soap out.
- Quite often factories will purposely manipulate the product quality in order to save material costs and improve their own margin. That is, they substitute cheaper materials, or put in small quantities of materials to save them money – at YOUR expense. Factories are very motivated to cheapen their product quality over time.
This is why dealing with manufacturers in a developing country can cause no end of problems. And for all these reasons and so many more quality controlis an absolutely essential part of the process if you’re importing from China.
At CHINA SOURCES we offer verification and quality control solutions to suit your needs. Our range of Quality Control Inspectors are in all the major provinces in China. They can be on any factory floor within 24 hours. This way, if there are any problems we can find out early and fix them before your goods are shipped!
There are a few important rules to consider when buying from China:
What are CHINA SOURCES Quality Control Services?
All goods exported by CHINA SOURCES will go through a basic Quality Control inspection before they are exported. We have different levels of quality control depending on our member’s requirements and the products involved. CHINA SOURCES offers three levels of service.
IMPORTANT!
For orders over $15,000 USD CHINA SOURCES will carry out “Level 1” Quality Control FREE of charge.
For orders less than $15,000 USD, there’s a small surcharge of $199 USD per day spent inspecting a factory.
For orders over $30,000 we carry out “Level 2” Quality Control FREE of charge.
CHINA SOURCES Level 1 – Free for orders over $15,000
Level 1 – We send a qualified inspector to your factory for the entire day. They will perform a thorough examination which will result in a report such as this one here.
Here’s how things generally work. You pay an initial 30% deposit and the manufacturer will produce your goods. Once the goods are completed CHINA SOURCES will send a qualified inspector to the factory to assess the goods. Once they pass inspection you will pay the supplier the remaining 70%. If there are any problems they will be fixed before the rest of your payment is made.
What Does It Cost: This is FREE for orders over $15,000. Otherwise it costs $199 USD per man day.
Easy Imex Level 2 - Free for orders over $30,000
Level 2 – You will have an inspection early in the production run, then a second pre-shipment inspection after production. This early production inspection allows you to detect potential problems quickly.
What Does It Cost: This is FREE for orders over $30,000 USD. For orders over $10,000 but less than $20,000 it costs an additional $199 USD. For orders less than $10,000 it costs $398 USD.
Easy Imex Level 3 - Free for orders over $45,000
Level 3 - Quality control is extremely comprehensive. You will have Maamoun Gharsi personally take care of the process for you and he will personally inspect the factory for you. You also get the level 2 inspection (inspection early in production and before the shipment is made).
What Does It Cost:This is FREE for orders over $45,000 USD. For orders over $30,000 USD but less than $45,000 USD it costs an additional $299 USD. For orders of $15,000 - $30,000 USD it costs an additional $499 USD. We don’t recommend this for orders below $15,000 USD.
CHINA SOURCES works in conjunction with a network of technical engineers and laboratories who can take care of almost any product testing or quality control request you have.
Using Approved Samples as the Quality Benchmark
One of the best ways to set your quality standards, is to have a production sample sent from the factory to you. This means production quality must equal the approved samples you have received from the factory.
Once you approve the quality of this sample, this is written into your contract and CHINA SOURCES will make it clear to the factory they are accountable to this standard.
The quality control team can compare and test the actual production batch with your approved sample.
Usually we have samples sent to our China office first - before sending them onto you. One of the big problems in China is getting a product sample which is actually from a genuine production run - not a one time, hand crafted sample. Or worse a product simply bought elsewhere!
Any experienced importer will tell you, the most common problem buying from China is the quality of the products. When buying from Chinese factories, product quality is by no means a certainty.
Put simply, you need to take quality control into your own hands. If you don’t take specific actions to protect yourself – you are gambling with your money. All goods exported by CHINA SOURCES will go through a Quality Control (QC) inspection before they are exported. We have different levels of quality control depending on our customers requirements and the products involved.
Why Quality Control is So Vital
For many reasons, Chinese manufactures can ‘screw up’ orders. The reasons might astound you:
- Maybe it’s the first time they actually made this product. Why not? They advertised it and you gave them an order!
- Or perhaps they have someone else's rejected stock lying around and they want to palm this off to you. Something more common than many imagine.
- We’ve even seen factories make a product and they didn’t know what it was used for. Sounds silly right? We actually know of a soap factory which made bottles of hand soap, yet none of the pump tops worked! No one in the factory thought it mattered because you could just unscrew the top to get the soap out.
- Quite often factories will purposely manipulate the product quality in order to save material costs and improve their own margin. That is, they substitute cheaper materials, or put in small quantities of materials to save them money – at YOUR expense. Factories are very motivated to cheapen their product quality over time.
This is why dealing with manufacturers in a developing country can cause no end of problems. And for all these reasons and so many more quality controlis an absolutely essential part of the process if you’re importing from China.
At CHINA SOURCES we offer verification and quality control solutions to suit your needs. Our range of Quality Control Inspectors are in all the major provinces in China. They can be on any factory floor within 24 hours. This way, if there are any problems we can find out early and fix them before your goods are shipped!
There are a few important rules to consider when buying from China:
- Never trust a factory’s “in house” quality control.
- While it may seem counter-productive for factories to cut corners to save a little money when it costs so much more to fix the problems – if they think they can get away with it, they will certainly try. The factory must be aware you will audit them regularly and will follow up with any problems. They must know you have some presence there to check up on them.
- Once you approve a sample as being acceptable quality, you need to hold the factory accountable to this production quality.
- The more face time you or your representatives spend in the factory – the better quality you’ll end up with.
- Do not ever ship before you approve it! It doesn’t matter how “good” your relationship with the factory is. It doesn’t matter if you’ve shipped the same thing before. It doesn’t matter how big your order is or how many other future orders rely on this shipment. If you’ve got product in your home country (and you’ve already paid for it) it’s too late to be finding out about problems now.
What are CHINA SOURCES Quality Control Services?
All goods exported by CHINA SOURCES will go through a basic Quality Control inspection before they are exported. We have different levels of quality control depending on our member’s requirements and the products involved. CHINA SOURCES offers three levels of service.
IMPORTANT!
For orders over $15,000 USD CHINA SOURCES will carry out “Level 1” Quality Control FREE of charge.
For orders less than $15,000 USD, there’s a small surcharge of $199 USD per day spent inspecting a factory.
For orders over $30,000 we carry out “Level 2” Quality Control FREE of charge.
CHINA SOURCES Level 1 – Free for orders over $15,000
Level 1 – We send a qualified inspector to your factory for the entire day. They will perform a thorough examination which will result in a report such as this one here.
Here’s how things generally work. You pay an initial 30% deposit and the manufacturer will produce your goods. Once the goods are completed CHINA SOURCES will send a qualified inspector to the factory to assess the goods. Once they pass inspection you will pay the supplier the remaining 70%. If there are any problems they will be fixed before the rest of your payment is made.
What Does It Cost: This is FREE for orders over $15,000. Otherwise it costs $199 USD per man day.
Easy Imex Level 2 - Free for orders over $30,000
Level 2 – You will have an inspection early in the production run, then a second pre-shipment inspection after production. This early production inspection allows you to detect potential problems quickly.
What Does It Cost: This is FREE for orders over $30,000 USD. For orders over $10,000 but less than $20,000 it costs an additional $199 USD. For orders less than $10,000 it costs $398 USD.
Easy Imex Level 3 - Free for orders over $45,000
Level 3 - Quality control is extremely comprehensive. You will have Maamoun Gharsi personally take care of the process for you and he will personally inspect the factory for you. You also get the level 2 inspection (inspection early in production and before the shipment is made).
What Does It Cost:This is FREE for orders over $45,000 USD. For orders over $30,000 USD but less than $45,000 USD it costs an additional $299 USD. For orders of $15,000 - $30,000 USD it costs an additional $499 USD. We don’t recommend this for orders below $15,000 USD.
CHINA SOURCES works in conjunction with a network of technical engineers and laboratories who can take care of almost any product testing or quality control request you have.
Using Approved Samples as the Quality Benchmark
One of the best ways to set your quality standards, is to have a production sample sent from the factory to you. This means production quality must equal the approved samples you have received from the factory.
Once you approve the quality of this sample, this is written into your contract and CHINA SOURCES will make it clear to the factory they are accountable to this standard.
The quality control team can compare and test the actual production batch with your approved sample.
Usually we have samples sent to our China office first - before sending them onto you. One of the big problems in China is getting a product sample which is actually from a genuine production run - not a one time, hand crafted sample. Or worse a product simply bought elsewhere!