Chess Retailing and Buying from a Third World Country
It’s no secret that the vast majority of decent chess sets are made in a small area of India. The country that claims to have invented the game has the ‘privilege’ of supplying the world with it’s excellent designs. Whether it’s Pleasant Times, JS Arts, Ivory Works, Checkmate (and many others), the demand for excellence at a price that purchasing countries can afford is met through people working for a lower salary than the developed world. If USA or European salaries were required for a typical chess set sold in the same countries, that chess set would be at least five times as much.
But dealing with a country that just doesn’t have the same way of thinking carries many problems, especially when it comes to that over-used, under-served word that may well be a contender for the most common word on eCommerce web sites: Quality. Despite suppliers claiming high quality, the plain fact is that shipments contain blemishes, missing items, inconsistent finishes, the list goes on. Is this why Camaratta set up his own manufacturing outfit in India? Why is consitent, high quality such a problem? Try thinking of it in western salary terms. You work for three days straight on a chessboard, everything is fine, until a blemish is caused or realized. It’s a tough call. The end customer will probably notice it and will probably want a discount or want to return it. You might get away with it if it’s Christmas and the chess retailer is so busy that he lapses in his QC and if it’s a gift from a customer to someone he or she may not see for another year. And after all - you’ve been working on it for three days which represents a substantial part of your much needed salary.
So, ya can’t blame them - but neither can you allow the practice to continue. What to do? Training the supplier that you won’t accept blemishes is a start. Making them feel the pain is another policy too (by credit/replacement demands). Suppliers hate this! They want to get on with volume work instead of the fiddley task of making a single rosewood Queen that was blemished - and if it’s a carved knight it’s particularly painful. Hopefully the message gets through.
In a meeting with one of our suppliers, I was reminded however of a truth that easily escapes a chess retailer. Out of a large shipment, it is often true that maybe just 1% or so is blemished. Even we Westerners make mistakes - right? So there is a tolerance. What have you found works well in dealing with this problem? Leave a comment and your site gets a link if the comment is worthwhile.