#1 it will be much cheaper

hire inspectors to do inspection in factory costs a lot of time.

this is because the inspectors, they need to travel back and forth from their place to the factory. the time and cost spent on road can be massive.

for example, like a one-day work, for eight hours in one day, they may spend six hours on road while the inspection time is only about two to three hours. the typical cost for one day inspection is usually like a 200 us dollars includes the travel costs. but the time for inspection is only two to three hours. if you have your own forwarder to do inspection for two to three hours in their own warehouse, it may only cost you like 50 to 80 dollars.

so you can see here, it costs at least three times more to hire inspectors to do inspection in factory than to have your own forwarder to do inspection in their warehouse.

#2 it will be more effective

Done inspection in an un-familiar environment can affect the inspector’s performance.

for example, if the factory warehouse doesn’t have enough light, this will make it difficult for the inspector to see clearly. if the workers from factory are not cooperative, this will make it difficult for the inspector to inspect certain products. but if the workers are too cooperative, this can influence the inspector’s opinion. but if you do inspection in a forwarders warehouse, there will be no such problems.

also, for inspectors who have lots of experience. usually it means they worked for many years. for these people, they usually have families. you know for people who have families, they are more reluctant to travel to work. so this means the chance for you to have an experienced inspector to work for you is less. but if you can let your forwarder to do inspection in their own warehouse, they don’t have to travel, such problems can be avoided.

#3 it will be more accountable

results from the factory inspection are based on numbers and judgment, or we say guesswork. but results(some) from forwarders inspection are already based on real tests.

for example, to decide if the package is good enough to protect the products. results from factory inspection can only show you numbers like how strong the cartons are, and how well the boxes are being packed. but for forwarders they can already show you clear pictures of the box condition after they receive. this is because these boxes were already being tested on road. if there are anything wrong with the package, the boxes may already been damaged after they arrive.

this is already been tested on road.

#4 it will be easier and faster to fix problems

based on our own experience, the majority of the problems we came across are package problems. like wrong labels, or damaged labels, poor quality labels, or no labels. these problems are easy to to be fixed because they usually have such materials already in stock, or they have their facility or networks to produce a small quantity personalized packaging materials.

but for factory, this can be difficult or take long time. because this is not something they are familiar with plus they don’t have a shipping deadline to catch.

even for replacing the defective part parts or the broken pieces, it’s not a problem for forwarders either, they just let the factories send them replacements and then got them replaced.

Concerns & conclusion:

there are some concerns.

#1 is the suppliers may refuse to accept the inspection results done by forwarder. from our experience such cases are rare, because most of people still respect the facts. if a supplier doesn’t respect facts then it would be very difficult to build relationship with them.

#2 concern is, it will cause a transportation fee if a whole shipment being returned to factory. as i said earlier, majority of the problems are package problems. there are small problems which can be fixed quickly by the forwarder. they are not product problems so it’s no need to send the whole shipment back to factory. plus shipping inside China is very very cheap. so if there is a case that you have to have the whole shipment returned to the factory, but the shipping cost is very cheap.

okay, i think that’s all and i don’t think these two concerns can stop the inspection being done by a forwarder. all right, thank you very much for reading. subscribe us, i will update you soon. bye~