I recently attended the China International Pet Show, CIPS, in Guangzhou China. Guangzhou is the home of many aquarium manufacturers, including Waveline, maker of the first widely used DC water pumps. Eddie and Daniel greeted me with open arms and instantly made me feel welcomed in a place far from home.
The first full hour of my visit I was introduced to as many of the employees as possible. We talked about the company’s early days and some of the things my eyes and my camera may have seen were not ready for public awareness. From a glance you can see that the place was in high gear, as they were preparing for the China International Pet Show (CIPS) in Shanghai.
Eddie took some time to show me a few 3D illustrations of their booth for the CIPS show. They were all so busy preparing for the show that I was surprised how they found time for my intrusion and the interview. Daniel agreed to the interview and now to part one of a series.
Tony: Hi Daniel, I would like to thank you very much for allowing me to come and visit your facility. I know that most manufactures don’t like people coming by to see what they are doing. But I also like to thank you for allowing us to interview with you and to hear a little about the company’s history. So, if you can start from the very beginning and give us an idea of how you guys got stared.
Daniel: In 2010 we had a vision of what the aquarium industry needed and we approached a few OEM factories to design us a pump. And, at that point we had an idea of using a DC power pump. We’ve asked a company to work with us, come up with a design to manufacture the DC 5000. We had the first few batch a very large success, but as the orders were coming in the quality of the product was not up to our standard and we asked the factory to put some check marks for us and we could not come to an agreement with them. In terms of quality and standardizing the product. At that point we decided to cut our ties with that factory and bought our own machines and used our own manufacturing methods following North American standards. Manufacturing what we have now is the DC 6000.
Next in the series of this interview we will discuss the importance of departmentalization of the factory and how it affects quality control.
