It’s Murphy’s Law. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Expect the unexpected. Skate ahead of the puck. You want to be proactive, not reactive. Work out the issues with your factory so problems do not recur.

“If there is one lesson I could pass on about dealing with offshore manufactures, it would be, have plenty of patience,” counsels Window Wizard inventor Ken Thorne. “Don’t be in a hurry to rush your idea to market. Sit back and review, retest, and review over again. Be certain it is ready for market; test it and test it again. It is much easier to launch a new product the first time than to have to recall it and launch it all over again.”

Don’t forget to keep pace with the design of your packaging so it’s ready when the product comes off the line.

Do the package design at home. Do not rely on foreign creativity for anything other than value engineering and production engineering.

Do not leave transportation decisions to your factory.

Get a first-class freight forwarder who understands the fine points of cargo, e.g., negotiating the required paperwork, insurance, bonds, etc.

Import duty and import taxes are one of the most confusing subjects I have ever encountered.

Import duty is the tax you are obligated to pay to Uncle Sam for the privilege of bringing foreign-made products into the commerce of the United States. The U.S. Customs Service enforces duties.

“Safety and quality problems will put you out of business faster than lightning,” cautions Mark Hartelius, president of Hartdesign!, a Chicago-based product development-to-manufacturer company.

Now that you’ve established what product you’re going to make and the performance expectations for that product, you need to ensure it’s done correctly.

Before you start manufacturing, be sure you and your factory understand the safety standards in the country of origin, as well as here at home. Safety can be expensive. The foreign governments and your customers will have certain standards and specifications that must be met before a product will be approved for export. Quality control inspections and tests must be passed before any product is released. These services take time and come at a price.

As for quality, it is a function of performance. Establish high performance expectations, and build your quality around it. Hartelius gives this example: gears can be made out of many different materials—delrin, nylon, metal, brass, etc—each at a different price and a different performance. Your choice of material depends on performance parameters. A gear in a Spin Pop has different performance expectations than a gear in a kitchen blender. They both spin, but the expectations are not the same.

If you haven’t figured this out yet, the cliché is true: you get what you pay for. Peanuts attract monkeys. While you want the best pricing from the factory, if you force someone to bid too low, you could be in trouble. I’ve seen situations where a factory bids low and then makes up the loss by using regrind instead of new plastic to mold products or slips in paint that is laced with lead (a heavy metal) in place of a less toxic, more expensive substitute.

At the end of the day you want price, quality, service, competence, and dedication.