Why should you do some quality control before shipping?

I remember a few years back, one of my new customer asked me why he should pay for quality control before shipping his goods. I explained him that he could lose lots of money if the goods he ordered would have quality issues or were different from what he ordered. In the end, he placed the order with the factory and didn’t do any quality control. When the goods arrived at his place, he found out that 1/5th of the cargo was missing, and about 15% of the cargo had quality issues. He ended up losing more than 10k USD in sales.

So if you ever ask yourself whether a quality control is needed, below are the reasons doing a quality control is a MUST:

1- first it’s important to know that a quality control (QC) is the act of checking the quality of a product through series of tests, which can be very simple (visual test for example) or more complex (material test for example). The QC will ensure you that most of your products were produced following your requirements;

2- even if you’ve been working with the same suppliers for years, a change of management can affect the quality of the productions and then affect the quality of your products;

3- when the raw materials or components’ prices increase and in order to give you the same price as the previous order, most of the time, factories will use cheaper materials or components. It would result in non consistent quality of your products;

4- in some cases, factories would judge your level of experience in sourcing and purchasing and if you are inexperienced they would give you low quality or different products from the one your ordered.

The result is that you must do a QC before shipping, but then you should find the right QC partner for you:

1- the first option (and I think the most expensive) would be to contact big quality control companies such as SGS, Intertek, QIMA,… they can do both visual and lab testing, but they won’t interact with the factories in case of problems;

2- the second option would be to contact a sourcing company that does quality control as well (such as Export&trending solutions LTD). If the QC procedures are not too complex, these companies can do the job and they are a cheaper option most of the time. They are also more flexible and can help you communicate with the factories if you’re facing quality or communication issues;

3- the third option would be to hire one or more QC associates that would be 100% committed to your inspections. This way, you have better control over the QC process and these persons would dedicated to your company. The down side of this solution is that you would need to hire employees full time, that means that you would have to find a way to pay them through your company or a third party company, which could result in some problems.

If you need more information on quality control, please contact us!