Maintaining supply chain compliance is an issue retailers/importers have found more difficult to navigate in recent years with an increase in pressure from consumers for more ethical products, and the digitization of retail supply chains.
Dealing with compliance issues have long been managed by manual compliance document filing procedures, which may have provided one a greater level of control in some respects in the past, but also made it that much more difficult to stay on top of one’s supply chain with all the heavy paperwork.
The need for an update in the way that compliance was documented, implemented and achieved was evident.
This brought about the advent and introduction of an online compliance solution. Web-based filing presented an all-in-one platform that promised greater transparency, and control over one’s supply chain in real time.
However, even with this tool there are still retailers/importers today who rely on more traditional means by which to tackle ever evolving issues that can be more readily addressed with more the accurate reporting data, flexibility and speed of an online solution.
In this blog post we will take a look at the benefits of the online compliance software known as the TCF solution over traditional compliance filing procedures, in the hope of showcasing why bringing supply chain compliance into the online age is a must for your household goods business.
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Often times retailers locally and globally are unaware of the options that are available to them, and also what benefits they can have for their organization. This often leads to sticking with what you know, sticking to a solution that may not always have the best ROI for your organization.
Why is this TCF solution right for you?
TCF is an online compliance software solution that:
- streamlines your compliance and regulatory operations
- provides actionable insights into the performance of your suppliers
- allows insight into areas of risk that you may not have seen before
- is extremely cost effective and efficient
The kind of visibility that a solution like this promises goes very far to help increase your productivity, therefore having a positive impact on your ROI.
Learn more about the TCF solution API provides for household goods here!
Achieving compliance traditionally is a challenge right from the start. The constant back and forth communication with your suppliers, with a flood of emails to your inbox to constantly keep track of, to the unreliable manual entry spreadsheets. There is too much room for human error here to remain as productive as what consumers today are demanding.
The digital landscape we find ourselves in is all about keeping up with the constant demand of the retail supply chain. If your current compliance systems are holding you back with errors that can be avoided easily, then your supply chain may not be as competitive or as productive as it likely should be.
is also a dedicated IT team to ensuring the safety of the software and only API employees are allowed to make modifications to the platform.
Many of the compliance complexities that arise are in the collection and gathering of all the necessary documentation. Many manufacturers, importers and retailers today are still operating on outdated systems like spreadsheets, creating unreliable data and documentation, which creates an almost insurmountable task trying to maintain the information for each product reference. 
you insight into your compliance status whenever you need it. There are also progress charts allowing you actionable insight into timelines and your supplier progress. This solution is also able to store all your documents for up to 10 years, ensuring your documents are safely stored for any future reference. 
The quality of a product can be defined in many ways and is almost always dependent on your specific consumer and their definition of quality for your specific item. So in that light, you will need to know exactly what your consumer is looking for to create the quality your brand is looking to achieve.
When a consumer sets out to look for a quality product, they want to feel as though they have paid less than what the actual product is worth, the quality of the product far surpassing the amount they ended up paying. Fulfilling the need to exceed the consumer’s expectations, this is what true quality is all about.
If fulfilling the need to meet your consumer’s expectations is at the top of your company’s agenda, is it not essential for your brand’s products to meet a level of quality that does just that? Let me leave you pondering that for a bit.
In attempting to understand your customer’s definition of quality, it will be important to note that fulfilling consumer expectation and experience forms a part of that definition.
Let me give you an example; If a consumer orders a product that has met and passed all quality tests it needed to meet, that product for all intents and purposes is a quality item. But, if the order arrives later than promised or arrives with a missing screw or the incorrect color, the consumer may not define this product as an item of value and quality.
Striving for product quality is a stems right from the raw materials used, to the way in which it arrives to your customer, therefore every step needs to be taken into consideration.
craze of fidget spinners and, where 200, 000 of these spinners have been recalled due to it 
they want to know where its raw materials were sourced, how it was made, who made it and what its level of quality is. They ask themselves whether or not your product will be an investment in their lives.
The key here will be to know your target market, know your consumer. If you do not know what they want, you will struggle to be their go-to brand; you will lose out on their brand evangelism and praise affecting your bottom line
“Is this the type of brand and product you wish to create?”
Retailers today are under so much pressure with the current supply and demand of products, that quality and/or compliance is not always a priority.
“But, it should be!”
Bad quality and non-compliance both mean that your brand is at an unnecessarily high risk with regards to meeting regulations and your reputation. It will be worth all the hard yards that you put in from the creation and design to the manufacturing and distribution of your products. This will help mitigate unnecessary risk, saving you money and precious time.
As a quality manager who is responsible for producing toys you know that where quality is concerned the stakes are sky-high.
You need to know that toys adhere to the demands of every test they might face when being exported globally to markets with different demands.
At API, our quality inspectors and laboratories follow a comprehensive set of 8 toy quality testing steps (built through decades of experience) that helps quality managers effectively manage quality right from the outset.
This article will take a brief look at 
Raw material quality control is paramount in helping to prevent product failure and ensuring a consistent level of quality that you and your customers expect.
Making sure that players in your supply chain are continuously subjected to testing of raw materials being used in your toy production, or when they decide to switch suppliers, verifies that the materials are at the level of quality you’re paying for and that no toxic elements such as lead and cadmium finding their way into your finished product.
Complying with chemical restrictions in raw materials laid out by the EU and US chemical content regulations such as REACH, 
