Sunday, February 12, 2017

Manufacturing in China: The Business Risks, Part 2

China manufacturing contractMy first post in this two part series focus on a post entitled The 7 Major Risks You Run With Your China Manufacturers, by China manufacturing expert Renaud Anjouran. In that post, Renaud outlined the business risks foreign companies face when having Chinese factories manufacture their products. I noted how Renaud’s list nicely accords with what our China lawyers tell our clients who retain my law frim to draft their Chinese manufacturing contracts. See China Manufacturing Agreements: Binding Contract or Contract Terms. I noted how our manufacturing clients usually want to focus on a) intellectual property protection/prevention of counterfeiting, ownership of molds and tooling and after sales warranty service. In other words, the sorts of things legal agreements are really good at resolving. But oftentimes, core business issues like price, quantity, delivery date, quality and resolution of quality issues, subcontracting and shipping are of at least equal importance.

The source of the problems for Western companies that manufacture in China is the pervasive use of the purchase order approach to purchasing contract manufactured product from China. In China Manufacturing Agreements: Binding Contract or Contract Terms, I wrote how there are two basic ways to structure a China contract manufacturing agreement.

Option One is to enter into a legally binding contract (in Chinese!) that addresses all of the basic manufacturing issues. The agreement on price binds both the Chinese factory and the foreign buyer, and even if costs change, the parties remain obligated to pay and sell the product at the agreed-upon price, no matter which party benefits or loses from the changes. This sort of contract is common in much of the world, but less so in China. China, however, the entire risk tends to be loaded on one side or the other. The same applies to the other key business terms in China manufacturing agreements, such as the terms for payment, quantity, delivery date and quality. Foreign buyers who do not want to be bound or who cannot be bound due to lack of resources will follow Option Two. Under Option Two, the contract terms and conditions are binding on the parties only after a purchase order is presented by the foreign party and then accepted by the Chinese party. It is this lack of a binding agreement that is the primary cause of the seven manufacturing risks Renaud discusses in his post.

The obvious path to contract certainty  is to enter into an Option 1 manufacturing contract that formally commits both parties to the basic business terms for a specific period of time. However, the lure of China for many foreign buyers is that Chinese factories are willing to do small runs on a purchase order basis. The purchase order system is oftentimes THE reason why the foreign company is having its product developed and made in China. For this reason, our primary task as lawyers is to develop contract manufacturing agreements that deal up front with the risks that come from using the purchase order approach. Our job as China attorneys then is to make sure that our foreign buyer clients understand the risks and then to work on mitigating those risks in a practical way.

I explain below and in Part 3 of this series how our China manufacturing lawyers do that with each of the seven risks Renaud identified.

Risk 1: Lack of “Motivation.” The major risk we see stems from the foreign buyer loading the development costs onto the Chinese side with no incentive for the Chinese side to follow through on development. Renaud calls this risk “loss of motivation” and we see this all the time. The foreign side relies on the Chinese factory to do the product development, normally loading the cost on the Chinese factory. After two years, the development is not completed and the market has moved on, leaving the foreign side high and dry with no marketable product. The Chinese side assures the foreign buyer that they are “working on it,” but in fact the product development project is a low priority as compared to their ongoing manufacturing that pays their bills and so they are “working on it” only when times are slack. It is also common for Chinese factories to agree to take on a development project when they do not actually have the capability to do the work. In this situation, the delay results from the Chinese side being pushed up against the limits of what it can actually do.

The best way to address this lack of motivation risk basic method is to enter into a legally binding product development agreement with the Chinese factory that includes the following:

  • Milestones: hard dates for development of prototypes or samples.
  • Allocation of costs. If all costs are loaded on the Chinese side, the chance of success is dramatically reduced.
  • A real incentive for the Chinese side to succeed. This incentive can be payments for the Chinese factory hitting its milestones or it can be a commitment to purchase reasonable (but predetermined) quantities of the developed product at a fair price.

Few foreign buyers follow this approach, with the predictable results described by Renaud.

Risk Two: Quality Failure at the Production Stage. The Chinese side agrees to manufacture the product at the “China Price.” Initial samples are acceptable in terms of quality, but once production starts, the quality is consistently bad. When pressed, the Chinese side says: “We gave you the China Price and you knew that at that price

Manufacturing in China: The Business Risks, Part 2

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