Quality fade is all around us, but many businesses and consumers don’t always know how to recognise this concept or know what they should call it.
Around the world, we’ve all been exposed to situations such as recalls for unsafe food products, cars with safety problems, dangerous toys, electronics and gadgets that break within days. Not to mention the buttons that fall off clothes on the first day or the zip that breaks in 48 hours after purchase.
This is ‘quality fade’, which describes a supplier systematically downgrading the quality of the products that a foreign buyer has contracted them to manufacture, in order to boost their profit margins. Quality fade and the escalating business greed that drives it has become a significant issue for importers sourcing products from highly competitive low cost manufacturing countries, which notably include Vietnam and China.
Mawson Global experts regularly work with foreign companies who recognise they need support and assistance in establishing relationships with quality manufacturing partners in emerging and industrial countries. Many of our clients have encountered deliberate quality fade problems in previous business dealings, with the excellence of early product runs and customer satisfaction frustratingly replaced by quality problems, customer complaints and lower sales over time.
Sometimes quality fade issues are just annoying nuisance, but for other products such as foodstuffs or vehicles, profit-driven cuts pose a real risk to consumers’ health and safety on the other side of the world.
Unscrupulous factory owners will continue cutting quality and cost corners until confronted or exposed. This is a common problem in China, with shrewd suppliers proffering plausible enough excuses if questioned, aware from experience that many international buyers will shrug off a small problem, believing it was simply a mistake.
We can introduce you to trusted suppliers who are serious about quality, helping you to develop a reliable long term manufacturing partnership. We provide advice on negotiations to achieve clear outcomes based on agreed specifications, structuring contracts before production starts that protect both parties; and on quality control steps which include setting up inspection procedures and standards.
We will advise you to save yourself future trouble and money by independently checking the factory before entering a working relationship. Always work within formal contracts to avoid potential issues that often arise from more informal arrangements, which are found to be unenforceable in the manufacturer’s country. We recommend using a third party auditor regularly, or if you start to be aware of quality fade issues with a supplier.
Your contract with a manufacturer must specify that they take responsibility for product quality control, including catching defective products before they leave the factory premises and accepting liability for handling any quality problems post-sale.
Over time, it is critical that foreign buyers maintain a close watch on product quality, to avoid the headaches of quality fade problems that increasingly impact your resources and bottom line.
