Yiwu QC, Yiwu Quality Control, Yiwu QC tips

Yiwu QC (Quality Control)

Too many times, you would hear how huge Yiwu market is, how rich the variety there is, and how cheap the prices are. I’m sure you also heard lots of scary stories about Yiwu suppliers (or China suppliers).

I have to stress here again: QC is VERY important for your importing business from Yiwu.

After one year of sourcing from Yiwu market, I’d like to share with you the lessons we learned from our experience.

1. Open each carton AND each pack, check as much as you can.
2. Don’t let anyone who doesn’t know your products collect your order and do QC, unless they have a physical sample in hand.
3. Put a signature / very fragile sticker on the original samples for proofreading.

Unhappy Stories

During the past year, we had several unhappy experiences with some of the suppliers.

One of our US clients came to Yiwu last December and ordered 1,200 pcs paddle brushes as a trial order. Our client was very happy with the quality of the samples, so we placed the order. After a long wait, the brushes finally arrived in our warehouse.

The supplier promised us: “No problem, there will be absolutely no problem with the quality of these brushes; your customer will be happy. You can relax!” I checked a few pcs of each carton; they looked nice. So I paid them.

But when our people were tagging these brushes, problems came one by one:

1. Some of the logos were badly printed; the outer layer of paint could easily go off after a few touches.
2. There was a detachment imperfection on the side of some brushes.
3. Two cartons arrived unsealed, with 1 piece missing from each carton.

We thought those were all the problems. Our client agreed to sell them at a discount. The supplier also agreed to cooperate by offering a discount for these problem brushes.

When more and more problem brushes got checked, I became more suspicious about their quality control. So I revisited their shop. After comparison with the original sample, I found an even bigger problem.

They switched the products. The brushes they shipped were NOT the ones we ordered! They were only similar products, but the quality was of two different levels.

We had to return all these brushes because they could not replace them. They even couldn’t agree to sell all these brushes to us at a discounted price. “We’ll probably throw one or two of them into each carton and ship them to other customers later,” as they told me.

Very sad story. Our client waited for more than 3 months… We had to source new substitutes for them again. A big waste for everyone!

Imagine what will happen if no one is there to do proper QC. You will pay all the shipping cost… Scary!

So the lesson we learned from this case is: open each carton and each pack; don’t listen to any promises from the supplier. Mistakes like wrong color, wrong printing, and wrong packing can ALWAYS happen here and there.

3 Set Of Samples

Another mistake that buyers can often make is placing the orders by themselves, but letting someone else do the QC and collect their goods later, without leaving any physical samples for the QC people.

This could be a disaster for both the buyer and the people who are going to do QC. Because in most cases, the QC people don’t know what the products exactly are! As a result, many problem products will be shipped to the buyer, then…

What we learned from these cases is to “use the same person to follow up the order,” trying to reduce these problems to their lowest level. Or have “3 set of physical samples”: one goes to the buyer, one goes to QC people, and one for the factory for production.

Hope the lessons we learned can be useful to you too, and you won’t need to learn these lessons again.

Related Links

• Yiwu QC Agent
• Back to Yiwu sourcing.