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China can provide goods at many quality levels. But if Wallmart or other company purchases cheap crap, they get cheap crap, no wonders about it. That does not

• ChuckMcM 12y ago
  This is exactly right, and I don't think enough businesses appreciate it. The notion that you can 'save money by going to China' is somewhat of a misnomer, you can get a product built at a lower price but if that cost is lower than what it costs to build in the acceptable level of quality, you will get a low quality part. What I found interesting in the one time I was part of a negotiation with a Chinese manufacturer (Quanta at the time) they really would build the gadget we needed for what ever price we asked for, except they knew that building it for less than $X would mean (probably unacceptable) corners would be cut. And perhaps more interestingly they knew many of the corners they would cut to get to the price, so when contract language was added/proposed that cut off that shortcut it forced a revisit to the price negotiations. It really was you get exactly what you pay for, but more importantly if you didn't understand what you were paying for then you ran the risk of being surprised at what you got. One of those times where I saw how little I would be able to really know about the ins and outs of that process without dedicating a lot of time and running a lot of projects through that channel.