[Overway Overseas] The Reality of the Chinese Parts Market

Hey everyone,

Today marks the end of my second week here in Shenzhen and this week I’m aiming to give you an idea of what the second-hand parts markets look like here in town.

For those of you who didn’t see last week’s blog post, our office is right in the heart of Shenzhen. Not far away from Huaqiang Road is a metal and stone labyrinth of four foot-wide countertop shops, all independently operated. These shops hold no loyalty to anybody or anything except for price and profit. A large section of American companies (which used to include Mobile Defenders) use this market due to the availability of a wide variety of parts. Nearly any replacement part you need for nearly any device can be purchased under nearly any budget. While this can be advantageous for people in the area who know exactly what they’re buying, this is a nightmare for US suppliers.

There is a difficult disconnect between the US and Shenzhen in this industry in more than one way. Not only do you not really know exactly what you’re buying until you receive it, but returns can be messy, and ultimately the culture here is just different. The areas that these shops operate in are not properly cleaned by American industry standards; there is nothing keeping dust and dirt out of parts or shipments, and not every shop owner is trustworthy. This isn’t necessarily perceived in the same light as it is in the US. It’s just… normal, just like ignoring copyright law.

Copying intellectual property and creating your own version, or simply ripping a known logo onto your own product, isn’t really perceived as stealing in China, but rather sharing. This goes for the gadget market as well. However, there is also a rampant amount of counterfeiting and other questionable activities in the market. Mobile Defenders has a counterfeit-prevention policy in place to ensure we are only buying legitimately-branded goods. There seems to be a misconception in the US regarding “cheap Chinese knockoffs”.

In the US, our country is so price-centric that when companies are selling things which are produced and sold in China, we’re usually buying the products that grant us the largest margin. Americans created this notion ourselves due to American buyers looking for inexpensive products. In reality, China has a massive range of quality products to offer, whether you’re looking for clothes, manufacturing equipment, tools, vehicles, toys, electronics, you name it. What it comes down to is what price you’re willing to pay for these things. Phone parts are no exception. This ideology is widespread and heavily affects the secondhand parts markets in Huaqiangbei. When you receive a part from a supplier that is riddled with defects, has incorrect measurements, poor backlight performance, and so on, this is due to poor quality control in this market or a company being overly price-conscious. You get what you pay for here and it really shows in the U.S.

Reasons like this are why we have our own manufacturing and QC facilities here in Shenzhen. Every single step throughout our screen manufacturing process can be customized and changed on the fly. In this way, we know exactly what we’re buying and why it exists at the price point it does. We make these decisions with many things in mind, but the forefront of this battle is defect control. We test our parts in our our facilities here in China before they get to the U.S. so that we don’t have to wait 2-4 weeks to fix a problem when the items are delivered to our doors. Why wait when you can control the process yourself and create a truly unique and high-quality screen, while knowing it’s going to work as expected because you were there throughout the entire process?

A full video walkthrough of the manufacturing process of our screens is in the works, but we’re just getting started. Between now and Chinese New Year, we’re going to take you on a trip through all of our operations out here in China. Keep an eye out!

-EO