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Who Is Responsible For The Junk Coming From China?
September 10, 2007

You may have read my previous blog on the recalls from China and how the market has driven manufacturers to make products overseas.  Though the market is consumer driven, the consumer can hardly be the one held accountable.  The easy thing to do is to blame the Chinese for sending us junk... junk we order, but junk none the less.  Tom Mitchell, the South China correspondent for the Financial Times in Hong Kong says in a Market Place Report, "there's an argument to be made by some that this is not only China's fault. Some responsibility does have to lie, they would argue, with the manufacturers who are contracting this stuff and they would say it's part of their responsibility to keep an eye on products that they're manufacturing."  

In the same report Christopher Devereux, managing director of ChinaSavvy, says, "there are a lot of Western products that are being made in China of which the actual people on the manufacturing floor haven't got a clue how the product is used so you must have very good specifications of what you expect of the product and you must have the ability to do testing and random checks all the way through."  

Both gentlemen make the point that it is American distributors' responsibility to perform quality control checks on any product coming from over seas.  This statement, I believe, applies to all companies getting any products from overseas.  That means ALL of you!  When you are getting toys, strollers, bedding, furniture or any other merchandise from another country it is ultimately YOUR RESPONSIBILITY as a manufacturer to insure that you are not shipping anything to us that has not been quality-control checked.  This doesn't mean you have to open every piece that comes in but it does mean that you need to do random inspections to insure that satisfactory products are being shipped under your brand name.  After all, it is YOUR name that is on the package. 

Posted by Kelly Nelson on September 10, 2007 | Comments (0)