My experience outsourcing manufacturing to China (or WTF happened to my samples?)

Update: You can read my follow up to this post here

Ever since I read Tim Ferriss’ book “The Four Hour Work Week,” I’ve been convinced that I can outsource large chunks of my start-up. About 9 months after starting the process, I’m realizing that outsourcing itself is about trading time for cash savings. I wrote a blog post in the past about my experience outsourcing to India. Some of the issues that arose from outsourcing code involved difficulty communicating, unrealistic expectations for initiative, and an inability on my part (as a non-coder) to verify the work being done. Now having understood those issues, I decided it was still worth it to outsource the  manufacturing of TrekDek playing cards.

Why did I decide to outsource manufacturing when I’ve had a negative experience outsourcing code? The reasons are as follows:

a) The cost savings were substantial (and I’m low on cash at this point)

b) The product itself  is simple (playing cards), unlike code.

c) I could hedge the risk by ordering a product sample first

I listed what I was looking for on alibaba.com and was contacted by about 8 different playing card manufacturers, most of them in China. Some of them were clearly scams (asking for 100% payment upfront, cheesy design templates, etc). I finally narrowed it down to one manufacturer whose sales person is named Sophia (on Alibaba all the sales people pick western names for business).

My friend Gilbert did the card designs and I sent them over to Sophia. We hammered out the specs. For playing cards, these included things like card thickness and card size (poker vs bridge). In order to mitigate the risk of getting a crappy batch of cards, I ordered sample decks with a couple of different specs. I payed for the sample via paypal; it was $100. I had to fight the impulse to order all 500 decks because I was very eager to start selling these things and generate revenue. Good thing I didn’t.

I received the sample packs today. At first glance, they looked pretty good. However, upon further examination there was a bunch of things wrong with them. Here are some of the issues:

a) Many of the borders on the cards aren’t uniform. Some images are shifted right, others are shifted down, etc.

b) On one of the boxes, they did not print a few things on a few of the box faces that were supposed to be there. They were present on the other box so I don’t know what the issue was.

c) The edges of the cards were cut very roughly. Its kind of like some print books whose page edges aren’t uniform.

Now those are the things that I thought professional manufacturers should check for. I didn’t expect to come across those issues. There are a few others things that I want changed, however, they weren’t in the original specs so I don’t fault the manufacturer for that.

Here are my options now:

a) I can e-mail Sophia and order another sample with the corrections

b) Find another outsourced manufacturer

c) Order a much smaller batch of cards at a higher price from a US manufacturer

d) Market test the cards by putting them up for sale using the pics of the samples and see how much interest there is. Determine whether or not I should even produce these cards.

So far I’ve been unimpressed with the results I’m getting from outsourcing. Though outsourcing at first glance appears to be an attractive option for those with limited funds, the actual cost seems to be much higher in the end. Is outsourcing worth it? Let me know what you think.

One of the sample boxes

The back of the box. Notice how the text isnt centered and shifted too far to the right.

An example from each suit plus a joker. The actual designs and colors came out well.

Update: Read my follow up to Sophia here