Non-motoring > Subcontract Manufacturing at Your Peril Legal Questions
Thread Author: zippy Replies: 3
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New Thu 17 Aug 17 09:51 
 Subcontract Manufacturing at Your Peril - zippy
A client of ours subcontracts the manufacture of smallish high-end retail items costing about £1k.

They are the exclusive seller, the goods are not sold via distributors.

Couple of weeks back one of their customers wanted to return a batch of new goods as they had over stocked.

No problem, customer goodwill and all that, save that our client had never sold that particular item to them in the first place.

These were not fakes in the normal sense. The subcontracting manufacture had taken it on themselves to make significant extras and sell them direct to the shops, including all of the relevant security features!

The problem they now face is that they can't find capacity with another manufacturer for months and don't trust this one any more.

Owner flew out to investigate further and was greeted by officials who threatened him and his team.

Legal action on the subcontinent takes years and being in the right is no guarantee of successes and the manufacturer will just keep on making the product anyway.

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New Thu 17 Aug 17 12:08 
 Subcontract Manufacturing at Your Peril - Hard Cheese
A client of mine had a similar experience with a subcontractor making armoured hard drive housings in China.
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New Thu 17 Aug 17 21:27 
 Subcontract Manufacturing at Your Peril - MD
Different but the same. One particular supplier to me (Electrician) sought to cut me out and deal direct. Big mistake. It's just theft by another name.
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New Fri 18 Aug 17 11:19 
 Subcontract Manufacturing at Your Peril - Mark
Seen this now a couple of times

The first one was a W.Mids client who had an item returned under warranty, whilst it looked like their product it was branded differently and had additional functionality added, they moved production but as far as they know the original manufacturer is still churning them out.

The second instance was when I was asked by a client to attend a trade fair in Shenzhen to see how the manufacturer was promoting their product. I attended with a colleague and by the end of the day we had found the product on 8 different stands with minor cosmetic and branding alterations. 7 of the brands were being sold on the internal market. Client went to see the manufacturer and as above was met at the airport by officials and told to go home and stop making trouble.

We now advise clients that going there for individual component manufacture is probably OK but never for final assembly of finished products especially something of high value or with good IP.

As always

Mark
Last edited by: Mark on Fri 18 Aug 17 at 11:21
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