

My experience outsourcing manufacturing to China  - dmd149
http://trekdek.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/my-experience-outsourcing-manufacturing-to-china-or-wtf-happened-to-my-samples/

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toddwahnish
We had a similar experience when we created our first designer toy. We were
looking for exceptional quality as our designers were incredibly talented and
we waned their work showcased in the best possible way.

First rule: stay away from Alibaba. We went this route initially, found
someone who looked like they could do it, and even found other small toy
manufacturers who had supposedly heard of the factory and recommended it. This
was important since many of the factories tend to steal and re-post product
photos from eachother.

We went with this factory, and production started fairly smooth. We let the
factory complete the sculpt (a rookie mistake on our part) and we began the
tweaking process. Their sculpt was “ok”, not on model really, and it didn’t
“feel” like our product. After a few months of sending photos back and fourth,
we asked to have a sample shipped to us so we could see it in person. When we
got them in the mail, we knew we were in trouble. Not only were the samples
“way” off model (downright ugly, actually), but they didn’t even stand! The
factory had, for some reason, rounded the bottom of the feet…

Decision time- we were already in the hole a few thousand $- it’s a lot for
us, as our entire operation at the time included myself and my fiancee. We’re
bootstrapped and pay everything out of pocket. We decided to move forward,
picking the best of the worst of the samples, and again attaching notes for
fixes (“can we get the toy to stand, please?”). That’s when everything went
really south. We never saw any fixes, never got to see the colors printed, or
the designs in final form from this factory. What we got were weekly emails
for 6 months that basically read, “so sorry for the delay, it’s almost ready-
should have them for approval next week.”

The following year came the stories of the Alibaba CEO stepping down over
fraud investigations. No surprise:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870447660457615...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476604576157771196658468.html)

Second Rule: China is the wild west, do it the right way. We started going to
trade shows like Toy Fair and others, and began asking people with real
product in the market for leads. While most kept their factories a secret, we
made progress. We discovered the HKTDC, a more legitimate group, and then
caught our break- someone who had connections and personal relationships and
connected us to a truly great, legitimate factory.

Result: <http://aartingcollection.com> – and our first designer toy on the
market.

------
hop
First, putting a want ad on Alibaba is asking for trouble - i doubt any good
playing card manufacturer is monitoring that and the one that do respond
probably don't specialize in card printing and don't have the equipment to
make them efficiently at high quality. In China, its common for someone to say
they can make something even if they can't do it well - they re hungry for
business.

You need to search Alibaba to find companies doing the manufacturing for
Bicycle or other big companies and ask them if they do custom printing. I
found a lot:
[http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=playing+cards...](http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=playing+cards&Country=&IndexArea=product_en&fsb=y)

If you say you are looking for 10k+ decks, they may do your samples for free.
I've never had printing done over here, but with metal and plastic parts, we
have engineering drawings for them with tolerancing, surface finish, etc. so
they know if the part is good or rejected. Perhaps you could make a similar
document showing placement of the die cut, lamination info, etc.

I'm traveling in China now visiting factories. DM me if you have questions or
need a translator.

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uurayan
As was said once by Tim Feriss, in China they have a saying that roughly
translates to "If you can fool them, fool them". This saying was confirmed by
a few people that I know that grew up in China.

However, the big elephant in the room is the fact that many of the factories
there just don't have a good grasp of English. You can explain exactly what
you want and they will always say they got it even if they don't get it
because they want the business.

I have one friend who has had a lot of success manufacturing in China but its
because he has someone who grew up there and can speak the language fluently
and understands the culture of negotiation. They give her the "Chinese
pricing" instead of the "American pricing".

They have the capability to make good quality stuff in China, its just that
you won't get it without some know how (and someone who can speak fluent
mandarin and doesn't have an American accent).

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hartror
> _Here are my options now:_

> ...

> _d) Market test the cards_

D, D a thousand times D. I assume you have a plan on where you are going to
sell these? Dip your toe in and see if you are barking up the wrong tree.

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mistermann
My experience was, they stole $50,000 from me.

Never pay up front, even if you've been doing business with them for years.

~~~
stbtrax
Is there any type of insurance to hedge against these types of occurrences?

~~~
dspillett
The only really affordable insurance against that, is simply not to pay a
significant amount up front.

Lawyering up isn't going to help all that much (cross border contract law and
other legal matters is at best difficult, and it is very easy for the people
involved to just vanish and the new people (if the whole company doesn't
vanish) will refuse any responsibility to you), trust simply doesn't cut it
(this is business, not a friendship, while trust is worth something you still
need to protect your arse from every angle), and you are not going to find any
insurance company that will give a good rate against that sort of risk so
hedging that was would be impractical.

No matter how safe you feel, how much you might think you can trust the other
party, and how much legal protection you think you have: be very very very
careful about what you hand over up front.

~~~
mistermann
Good advice.

There are companies that will hold money in trust for you until an agreement
is reached on completion of work, which is the arrangement I should have been
using.

~~~
dspillett
If you use an escrow service make sure you pick it, not the other side. If you
go with a suggestion made by them (or anyone else) do plenty of background
research before making any arrangements - there are some bad escrow companies
out there and dodgy businesses (and individual scammers) are certainly not
above creating a fake but official looking services.

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michaelpinto
To me printing is more of an art than a science — and as a graphic designer I
can tell you that you usually get what you pay for in terms of quality.
Another problem the author may have had is that the quantity of said order is
so tiny that a major printer wouldn't have taken the job, so you get the small
guys.

~~~
dmd149
Thanks for the comment. What are your criteria for judging the quality of a
printer (besides price)?

~~~
barkingcat
one criteria is the prepress process. Before committing to print, good quality
printers usually have a whole prepress process - from checking the correctness
of file formats (I think this is why you were missing certain things on your
deck - maybe they can't read your file, or had outdated and/or pirated
software), to generating digital proofs - the best printers have a way to let
you check the proofs before they even print up a sample. Some even let you
come in and check it on their proofing workstations at their press. That's
what you're paying for when you go for the "expensive" local printers - it's
not really expensive when you think about it - by getting it right the first
time you go to press.

As you found out, samples don't always turn out right, and it's great to be
able to "double check" their work.

As for the print run size - if you look locally, you should be able to find a
good quality press that does gang run printing - basically printing multiple
clients' projects together to save on overhead.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gang_run_prin...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gang_run_printing)

In your case, the special card stock for playing cards might make it difficult
to find someone to do this type of printing for you - but in your case, you
should be looking for a specialty card printer - maybe even printing on
plastic (not paper) - which would involve searching within a whole different
industry all together...

~~~
dmd149
wow that was incredibly useful. whats funny is I didn't even consider not
outsourcing the project. In fact, most of the costs associated with
outsourcing was shipping. I wonder if I'd be able to find a local printer that
does playing cards. As far as the plastic goes yea, that would be difficult.

You don't happen to know of any good printers in the Portland area do you?

~~~
barkingcat
Glad to help with some information, but no, I don't know the Portland area.
Perhaps other commenters will be able to give you some tips.

------
pkteison
Board game designers are often happy to talk about the experiences they had
getting their game made, and they frequently deal with decks. I would start
with <http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/design.htm> Various threads on
boardgamegeek, e.g. <http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/83696/printing-game-
cards> , suggest looking at [http://www.printerstudio.com/unique-ideas/custom-
playing-car...](http://www.printerstudio.com/unique-ideas/custom-playing-
cards.html) or <https://www.thegamecrafter.com/>

Printing specifically seems to be more common to outsource to canada than
china. Presumably for the shipping. I'm under the impression that usually you
don't do stuff in china unless you can fill a freight container. But I only
know someone who deals with this, I don't have personal experience.

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arihelgason
Alibaba is a very mixed bag.

I recommend using Panjiva.com to do some diligence on suppliers before
committing. You can see who else they're supplying in the US, historical data
(ie. are they doing more or less US business?) and even pull credit records
and other data.

It's not failsafe but you'll get a much more complete picture of a supplier
than with Alibaba.

------
wazoox
Interesting, and predictable. I had a similar experience, and ended up
outsourcing manufacturing to Germany :)

BTW I really love the TrekDeck idea, I don't know if there's a sizeable market
but the idea is really entertaining, I'd certainly buy it. Kudos.

~~~
inglondon
I have done all my printing in Germany for a few years now and can also highly
recommend it. The companies we have dealt with have been excellent in proofing
the data. They have gotten back to me because an image was fractions of a
millimetre off compared to other images in my brochure and similar minuscule
details that make the difference between a good and a great product.

The best way is to use Google Translate and find the German name of the
product you want to manufacture and search like that since a lot of sites are
in German only.

We are based in the UK so we're getting the benefits of being in the EU but
even for the US market it might be worth looking into.

~~~
TillE
Any specific companies to recommend? If I search for something like
"spielkarten hersteller", I find that linx.de has a nice list, but they're not
all necessarily wonderful.

I don't have a job in mind at the moment, but I'm always curious to explore
the possibilities.

~~~
inglondon
Through a separate list I found a couple of companies:
<http://www.spielkarten.com/> <http://philos.quasarshop.de/Home.asp?Lang=D>
<http://www.dalnegro.com/> (Italian company)

I have never dealt with playing cards specifically so I cannot give concrete
advice on this market but as with most products that I have had to source, I
have found that most people are very helpful if you either write to them or
pick up the phone and call and ask for advice. Since the playing cards market
is not that big I am sure that companies are more than willing to give advice
to entrants to this specific field.

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oraboy
You didn't write a lot in this post about your business outside of the
outsourcing experience, so my advise may be off but I am latching off "option
D" in your post and have the following comment:

For any product that's a game the two biggest business risks are:

\- Will people play and enjoy it. - For long enough to at least feel they got
their "money's worth" and recommend it to friends. In almost all cases, games
most important distribution channel is word of mouth. If it's not fun enough
for people to play it with friends it will not succeed. Which leads to the
second point

\- How will you distribute it - Even if it's awesome, if you don't have a
robust plan to get it in front of the right players and customers (may be the
same person of not, btw) at the right time it will be a challenge to reach
success.

So by all means, figure out if people like it NOW. And also use it to identify
and lock-down "channels to market" -- NOW.

It will take time. Use it to continue to evaluate the manufacturing bit (some
really good ideas on this thread) in the most frugal way possible until you
get to the quality you want. I'm sure it's doable.

------
datasink
The author was lucky that he received a bad sample. Generally how this goes is
that they'll provide an great sample, wait for the large followup order, then
ship you garbage. Many firms don't have the stomach to continue after their
first batch of defective goods arrive.

------
bxr
Your experience was that you got low quality goods? Welcome to doing business
with China my friend.

A friend who does low-tolerance machining here in the States is making a
killing and constnatly expanding his business even though he can't compete
with Chinese providers on price, he can achieve quality they don't. His
customers are used to ordering 4x as many of a product as they want from China
just so they can get 1x that actually meet specifications. And that's on the
low precision work that they actually do offer.

