Decided to leave this post here as it got too long for any particular individual thread....reference it, flame it or ignore it, whichever suits you best
I've seen one particular post recently claiming that Chinese factories don't produce quality product for non-Chinese owners because of racism. Its gained traction on this site and seems to be being reposted on various threads and generally commented upon as a given. And its specifically coming up in Sideshow threads to somehow explain their lack of quality compared to Hot Toys.
I work for one of the worlds largest companies and have been heavily involved on outsourcing projects with Chinese production centers. The idea that it is because of racism isn't true.
You get what you pay for and generally when driving everything as cheap as possible, overseas factories will look for ways to cut costs as you go along. This could involve getting inexperienced under payed staff, swapping out materials for lesser qualities ones, and rushing production lines....amongst other things.
Chinese companies can SOMETIMES be better at managing it because they expect all these things, are ready for it, compensate for it and stay on top of the factories constantly, drive them and won't accept excuses. (assuming they care to....)
The difference is western owned and run factories - if they're not setup correctly and aware of it - are generally going to be taken advantage of. It happens in every industry.
And if it were true that Chinese companies are always better at managing Chinese factories or that they received a better product simply due to nationlism, then Chinese companies would be known for higher quality production which is definitely not the case in most industries.
The only thing that is true is Hot Toys is a smaller company, produce a higher quality product, while specializing in one particular format, generally for a much higher price. (all things that can result in higher quality in any industry)
We have no idea what the factory setups between Sideshow and Hot Toys looks like, no idea of the size/scale, production lines, processes and most importantly, we have no idea how much the workers are paid. Perhaps Hot Toys who generally have much higher prices, actually have a better managed and rewarded factory
The idea that you need an American to fly over there and be stationed there to do it is just silly. Just like any worker on Earth in any country, you can pay a few experienced Chinese workers there a lot more to act as a quality assurance and management team to ensure things are done to whatever standard you set. Do people think said workers will turn down a large payrise and refuse to operate as a quality team over the rest of the factory? Performance metrics and bonuses can drive anyone's behavior in any direction you want..... we're not talking the airline industry and the need for experienced engineers.....
We have no idea what their current quality assurance/control processes look like, how many people are doing it or what they are paid.
And to look at another company, if nationalism argument were true, why does Enterbay actually have the worst QC of the major companies? Is anyone currently commenting about Sideshow actually aware of Enterbay and their 'Passion (lol) for (lack of) Perfection' ?
Regarding Sideshow, it is because they don't need to do better. They are a large company (for the collectible market) pumping out product on mass and have such a large and broad scale of output across different formats that as long as it sells, they aren't going to put the extra effort and cost in since we'll all buy the products anyway.
Will Sideshow apparently moving into higher end prices and pieces (Hoth Luke/Han, XWing Luke, ToD Indy) result in much better quality? Who knows?
We do know for a fact that it didn't in the 1/2 scale legendary format statues. They were literally billed initially as being a much higher quality product for the price (which itself is insulting to the 1/4 statue buyers to get told that...) but as they began to be rolled out, the same sloppy QC and lack of effort has been seen (see the 1/2 scale Wolverine and Darth Maul threads).
So who knows how their new higher end 1/6 scale figures will fare....
Flame on!
I've seen one particular post recently claiming that Chinese factories don't produce quality product for non-Chinese owners because of racism. Its gained traction on this site and seems to be being reposted on various threads and generally commented upon as a given. And its specifically coming up in Sideshow threads to somehow explain their lack of quality compared to Hot Toys.
I work for one of the worlds largest companies and have been heavily involved on outsourcing projects with Chinese production centers. The idea that it is because of racism isn't true.
You get what you pay for and generally when driving everything as cheap as possible, overseas factories will look for ways to cut costs as you go along. This could involve getting inexperienced under payed staff, swapping out materials for lesser qualities ones, and rushing production lines....amongst other things.
Chinese companies can SOMETIMES be better at managing it because they expect all these things, are ready for it, compensate for it and stay on top of the factories constantly, drive them and won't accept excuses. (assuming they care to....)
The difference is western owned and run factories - if they're not setup correctly and aware of it - are generally going to be taken advantage of. It happens in every industry.
And if it were true that Chinese companies are always better at managing Chinese factories or that they received a better product simply due to nationlism, then Chinese companies would be known for higher quality production which is definitely not the case in most industries.
The only thing that is true is Hot Toys is a smaller company, produce a higher quality product, while specializing in one particular format, generally for a much higher price. (all things that can result in higher quality in any industry)
We have no idea what the factory setups between Sideshow and Hot Toys looks like, no idea of the size/scale, production lines, processes and most importantly, we have no idea how much the workers are paid. Perhaps Hot Toys who generally have much higher prices, actually have a better managed and rewarded factory
The idea that you need an American to fly over there and be stationed there to do it is just silly. Just like any worker on Earth in any country, you can pay a few experienced Chinese workers there a lot more to act as a quality assurance and management team to ensure things are done to whatever standard you set. Do people think said workers will turn down a large payrise and refuse to operate as a quality team over the rest of the factory? Performance metrics and bonuses can drive anyone's behavior in any direction you want..... we're not talking the airline industry and the need for experienced engineers.....
We have no idea what their current quality assurance/control processes look like, how many people are doing it or what they are paid.
And to look at another company, if nationalism argument were true, why does Enterbay actually have the worst QC of the major companies? Is anyone currently commenting about Sideshow actually aware of Enterbay and their 'Passion (lol) for (lack of) Perfection' ?
Regarding Sideshow, it is because they don't need to do better. They are a large company (for the collectible market) pumping out product on mass and have such a large and broad scale of output across different formats that as long as it sells, they aren't going to put the extra effort and cost in since we'll all buy the products anyway.
Will Sideshow apparently moving into higher end prices and pieces (Hoth Luke/Han, XWing Luke, ToD Indy) result in much better quality? Who knows?
We do know for a fact that it didn't in the 1/2 scale legendary format statues. They were literally billed initially as being a much higher quality product for the price (which itself is insulting to the 1/4 statue buyers to get told that...) but as they began to be rolled out, the same sloppy QC and lack of effort has been seen (see the 1/2 scale Wolverine and Darth Maul threads).
So who knows how their new higher end 1/6 scale figures will fare....
Flame on!
