Can I buy ceramic tiles at special prices? Is buying bricks on sale a mistake or a mistake? People often talk about such topics on the Internet, but most of them lack actual case support and have little reference value for consumers.
Recently, a consumer came forward and provided Zhongtaojun with a real case of buying bricks at a discount——
Mr. Song, who lives in Luocun, Foshan, is preparing to renovate his home. After seeing the news about the price increase of ceramic tiles on the Internet, he called a friend who had renovated some time ago. The friend told him to go to Nanzhuang Huaxia Ceramics Expo City to get a special deal on tiles. Take a look at the street.
Because he had seen the effect of a friend's ceramic tile paving before, Mr. Song had a good impression of the special-priced tiles sold on this street. After he selected the tile products he was satisfied with, he hired a car to take him home. When he arrived home to unload the goods, he discovered that a small number of tiles had broken in half during transportation. So he suspected that there was something wrong with the quality of the tiles and took the goods back to the point of sale.
Transportation causes tiles to break?
After receiving the problem reported by Mr. Song, Zhongtao Jun went to the sales point where he bought the discounted bricks to check, and learned that the sales point had agreed to return the goods to Mr. Song after inspecting the goods. However, Mr. Song had lost trust in the special-priced bricks at this point of sale and refused to accept any other products recommended by his clerk, eventually leaving empty-handed.
Mr. Song confessed to Zhongtaojun that he suspected that there was something wrong with the source of the special price bricks. He also searched the Internet specifically for this purpose and learned in detail about several purchase channels for discounted tiles. He felt that the batch of tiles he bought did not look like any of the channels mentioned online, so he had to complain about his bad luck. .
At the discount brick sales area, the merchant was full of grievances when talking about the matter to Zhong Taojun, saying that he had been purchasing goods from a certain brand for many years and this was the first time he had encountered such a situation. She insisted that there was no problem with the quality of this batch of tiles, so she suspected that Mr. Song had accidentally damaged them due to bumps in the transportation road. Zhong Taojun carefully inspected and touched the batch of damaged tiles with his hands, and found that the broken tiles were all slightly thicker in the middle and thinner at the edges. It looked like they had been squeezed and cracked in the middle during transportation.
Zhongtaojun learned that this brand is a local brand in Foshan, with a relatively small production scale, but it usually attaches great importance to product quality and reputation, and has never had any negative rumors before. Why would such a responsible manufacturer produce such a product? Merchants are also confused about this.
Is the source of supply a red brick?
Mr. Song said that merchants had hinted that the bricks they sold at special prices were equivalent to first-class products. The business categorically denied this. The clerk said that first-class tiles refer to ceramic tiles whose quality is second only to high-quality products. Not only that Mr. Song cannot buy such tiles, even if they or their relatives and friends want them, they have to try their luck. "Of course, if an ordinary customer happens to come into the store and a first-class product is not needed by internal staff, we will sell it to the customer. However, in reality, the probability of this situation is almost zero. Because this is a genuine product Good and cheap deals are hard to come by. ”
First-grade ceramic tiles are one of the most popular sources for discount tile merchants. Most of these bricks come from some large factories in Foshan. Since they attach great importance to brand reputation, they have always strictly controlled the quality of their products, and will classify products with even the slightest defect as first-class products. Problems with this product include dark cracks, color difference, yin and yang surfaces, flatness, small bumps or black spots on the surface. However, regular manufacturers will definitely indicate on the packaging whether the ceramic tiles are high-quality products or first-class products.
Despite this, due to the relatively stable quality and low price, it is difficult to tell the difference between first-class products and high-quality products with the naked eye. If you encounter a buyer who is completely ignorant of the goods, some merchants will pass off inferior products and treat first-class products as good ones. The best products are sold. If there is no special testing equipment and consumers don’t know to carefully check the labels on the boxes, they may never know that they are buying first-class products.
Obviously, Mr. Song most likely does not have this blessing, and he will never buy a first-class product at such a favorable price that cannot be easily obtained by discount brick merchants.
Of course, this batch of ceramic tiles will not be old-style clearance goods, because the color of the ceramic tiles Mr. Song bought is obviously a new style that is popular this year. The engineering samples are not the source of this batch of ceramic tiles, because the engineering samples may have color differences from different batches, but there will be no obvious quality problems. Moreover, the engineering samples are publicly displayed by the company as bidding samples, and the company will not take the quality as a test. products to destroy their own brands.
After excluding the "OEM bricks" that the merchants themselves look down on, it is highly likely that buyers will have other channels for discount bricks that are difficult to explain clearly. The problem focuses on the payment of goods against wages. This is because the purchase channels for stamped bricks are diverse. Under normal circumstances, the factory will use ceramic tiles with relatively weak designs, colors and product quality as stamped bricks, and rush them to merchants in the form of unified bricks that are basically not divided into grades. This may include "cellar bricks" of unstable quality.
Will kiln shutdown affect the quality of special bricks?
Zhong Taojun took several broken tiles returned by Mr. Song and consulted several front-line production masters. They affirmed that these were the last products before the production line stopped the kiln and the first products when the kiln was opened. They were the so-called "opening bricks" mentioned above, which are a type of stamped bricks.
Under normal circumstances, ceramic manufacturers will not easily stop production after starting kiln production, because that will bring huge losses to the company, so under normal circumstances there will be no or very few kiln head bricks, Kiln tail tiles. However, since the second half of this year, the skyrocketing prices of raw materials, coal, and natural gas have forced some small and medium-sized enterprises to suspend production and wait and see. If they can produce, they will open kilns. If they can't, some of them will close their kilns and wait for production. Even some large ceramic companies have issued notices of kiln shutdowns for maintenance. For example, Guangdong Quansheng and Jiangxi Huashuo, two major enterprises with large production capacity, have stopped kilns for maintenance since the end of November and early December; Guangdong Anji Ceramics Group expects to stop all kilns for upgrading and renovation in early December; Pioneer has started to stop kilns since the end of November, and on December 15 Stop all kiln production lines from shutting down. There was a wave of kiln closures in Gansu, Guangdong, Jiangxi and other production areas as early as October. Mid-December may be the peak period for annual kiln shutdowns in the ceramic tile industry.
Affected by factors such as sales volume, most small and medium-sized enterprises have been shut down indefinitely during the wait-and-see period. Not only have they suffered huge losses, but also the kiln head and kiln tail products that frequently appear in the production process have continuously flowed into the market. Consumers pay the bill, which at the same time brings great damage to the reputation of special price bricks and adds to the instability of the market. Merchants selling such products at discounted prices may lose the trust of consumers.
The implementation of the "coal-to-gas" policy and the crazy price increases of raw materials have had a great impact on the ceramic industry. It is still unknown when this situation will end. This also leads to more small and medium-sized enterprises being forced to frequently shut down and start production, which in turn leads to the emergence of more kiln head and kiln tail products. Only when factory production stabilizes will these defective products, which cannot be overcome with technology, disappear, and the discount brick market return to its previous normal state.
(Author: Shen Mingxin)
