Blog

When sourcing abroad, a few things are needed: patience, persistence, and politeness.  How great that they all start with a 'P' too, right?  The sourcing process is somewhat of a game.  You can't take everything at face value and you have to realize that in most cases, a project can work, you just have to find ways to get everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction.  But often times, you'll get resistance from factories for all sorts of reasons--cost, laziness, they don't understand the requirements, etc.  To get through this and get the results you want, you've got to be patient and play the game.  You've got to be persistent about getting what you want.  And, you have to be polite.  Whether you are American, Chinese, Mexican, or Russian, no one likes to work with a jerk!

Yesterday, we met with a garment factory in Dong Guan, an area around Shenzhen, China.  We've been talking with this company for several months now about a few projects.  On one project in particular, we've been working with the factory to get samples made of a specific material called out in the BOM (Bill of Materials) by the client.  On the first round of samples, an inferior material was sent by the factory.  In fact, they sent two samples--one of higher quality inferior material and one of lower quality inferior material!  Of course, that's just not going to fly with our client.  We went back to them in the last month or so to emphasize the importance of getting the exact material specified in the BOM, but they told us it couldn't be done.  Yesterday, we sat down with them and they told us the same thing.  Their fashion manager actually left the room to go and call a vendor to see if they could source the material and returned to tell us "no", and repeat that the material they have is almost the same (who knows whether he called someone or just went and had a cigarette).  Finally, we all leveled with each other and put it plainly that the project requires this material and they can take it or leave it.   Ahhh, progress.  They tell us they will contact someone about having samples made of the material with adequate thickness.  And this time, I think it will magically happen.  Of course, we'll be checking in on this.  But it's amazing what you can get done when face to face with a little persistence.

Another project we worked on this week involves metalworking.  We had a similar experience with the vendor (this happens all the time).  We had a requirement on a specific part--but there have been issues in going back and forth between metric and standard measurements.  The standard measurement system, inches, feet, etc., is of course being used by the client to design the product.  But, off-the-shelf parts and materials in China are being used to build the product, which are in metric measurements.  On this specific part, the tolerance for variation is very small--thus a conversion from standard to metric can throw that off if we don't get exactly what we need.  After much dialogue about the requirement of the part, why it must be exact, and "yes, we know it's a difference of a decimal place", etc., we have agreed that the vendor will complete a secondary process on the part to get it to the exact spec we need.  And believe me, we're going to check to make sure it's done. 

In both these cases, what started as "no" turned into "yes".  If we had taken the "no's" at face value when we started, we would have had to eat the time and costs we put in so far and began looking for other vendors.  Fortunately, we've found some guys that are willing to work with us as well.  The vendors continue forward on the project and we get what we need.  In the words of Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat character, "great success!"  Being patient and persistent with these guys has allowed us to make steady progress on the goals we need to hit.  And, everyone has been polite through the whole process and that's what will help us to sit down again and address the next issues that will inevitably come up.