Poorly Made in China by Paul Midler

Poorly Made in China by Paul Midler

Author:Paul Midler
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118004203
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-11-30T16:00:00+00:00


Around the time that we learned that our shampoo was turning into jelly, Johnson Carter asked King Chemical if it was capable of making an underarm deodorant.

Chinese were not big on deodorant, and what was available in the local market was usually the roll-on kind anyway. What we needed for the U.S. market was a dry-stick version.

To save time, I gave the factory a stick of deodorant that I had purchased in the United States. Sister looked at it and said that, while it might take time, she was convinced that she could get it duplicated. It was a bold declaration, given that no other manufacturer in China's health and beauty care sector had managed to pull it off yet.

The prototype came in, and it looked promising. The factory had created a number of molds—five in all—and had replicated the look and feel of the casing, down to the trademark baby blue color of the original. There was even a knob on the bottom, which was turned to push the deodorant upwards.

I turned the knob and was surprised to find that the mechanism actually worked. The plastic part was not easy to make, and it required a bit of investment and time on the factory's part.

While the casing was impressive, I touched the product itself and got a surprise. The deodorant stick was not at all dry. I pressed my fingertip against the white substance and found that my finger went right into it, as if into a stick of warm butter.

The deodorant was not going to be easy to make; the factory knew this. But, rather than working on the chemical part first, they went ahead and spent probably thousands of dollars to create the casing. It was entirely backwards, but this was how manufacturers in China built their products—from the outside in.

First they made a product that looked like something that could be sold, and then they focused on the actual functioning mechanism. Outward appearances got the initial focus, and then came the product's intrinsic features. It was a production philosophy that matched the national concern for face, and in the end, it was reminiscent of Qianlong Emperor's respect for the semblance of an art object, regardless of authenticity.

It also made good business sense. It was exorbitant to put a product into production before receiving an actual order, and the manufacturer had to convince the prospective importer that it could make the product in question. Creating the outward appearance of the thing was often just enough to get the order initiated. Once funds were transferred to China, the manufacturer could then work on the part about getting the product right.

This particular practice also contributed to quality fade. After the factory had won the initial order, and after it had expended a great deal of effort figuring out how to get the product made properly, there was often not much left to do. The factory took its surplus time and sunk it back into the product, tinkering with it to see where savings could be realized.



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