A lifetime in the making

Working with China.

I’m skipping a bit in the process because using China for mass producing my product has been a very common question that people ask me.

I happen to know an inventor that used China to manufactor some of his inventions so he came up with an agreement to work through him making the product in China.

I was really excited to have this connection because everything is made in China and we assume that the Chinese are eager for our business to that they will do any and everything to get our business.

The first thing that I did was gave Steven (not his real name) my drawings, the concept and samples of what the product should be made of. It took about a month to get my first prototype back which had me on pins and needles patiently awaiting.

After the thirty or so nail biting days I finally received an email with a picture attached to it from the company that was attempting to manufacture my product.

To my surprise it was looked identical to the exact same picture that I originally sent them!
I thought assumed that when the actual product arrived to my door step that everything would some how work itself out.

Once again this was another naive assumption on my part. When I received the prototype
I was so upset that I could have spit bullets because my time had been wasted and I had already invested several thousand dollars.

I continued to work with the people in China for about three months even though every time they sent me a sample it was progressively getting worse.

I finally talked with my patent attorney about the horrible quality of the product as well as my dissatisfaction and he suggested finding someone locally which turned out to be a great suggestion.

I started to check with my local chamber of commerce for manufacturers and they gave me several names which soon led to the best partnership for me.

I met with the sales rep as well as the engineer of the local manufacturer and much to my surprise within two weeks they had a workable sample.

I always heard to work with China because it’s cheaper, but I found that working with my Chinese manufacture to be very inefficient.

There are a few reasons why I now prefer to use someone that I can speak with in person:

First off, when dealing with China I had to use a “go-between” person for communication. I didn’t have the pleasure of getting in my car to visit the company that I was doing business with which made me very uneasy. Not only for final production of the product but quality control and to see how the product that I created is built.

Second the shipping from China to the U.S., is horrible and I spent too much money while the Chinese company attempted to perfect a product that we could never see eye to eye (or email to email) on.

Also the local manufacture did not charge me anything until they had a good sample. which is what I consider excellent service. Whenever I need to talk with my sales rep, engineer or the president of the company, I just pick up the phone or drive to the location.

This has eliminated a tremendous amount of stress in my life.