The demand of table vase distributor increased at a high rate among a home decoration distribution company operating in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as they extended their distribution network to florists, lifestyle retailers and cafe chain stores in Western Europe. Upon the identification of a good production partner, they settled on Mosteb, which is a professional table vase production facility, to create a tailored table vase to be distributed in bulk.
Client Background
The distributor went to Mosteb so that he could develop an attractive all-purpose small table vase that can be displayed in both retail shelves and in a table vase. The last design was a little round glass body, slightly tapered at the neck, a little diamond-cuteness on the lower half, and a slightly thickened base.
The diamond-cut design was chosen as it was meant to maximize light reflections in restaurants and cafes as well as making the vase aesthetically presentable to display in the retail shops. The thin neck enabled one stem or small bunch to stand straight without a lot of floral supporting material.
They have selected Mosteb due to our experience as a table vase factory which has a good mould development capacity, and constant bulk manufacturing quality and the possibility to serve distributors who need to have the same designs in high volume and repeat purchases.
Challenges
- Inability to be the same when produced in several production batches: The client was a distributor that provided the retail channels with a variety of channels and required each consignment to have the same appearance. Nevertheless, their former suppliers had slight differences in the depth of patterns and proportions of vases in batches, hence, the mixed inventory appeared inconsistent in stores.
- The high rates of breakage and poor packaging made the logistics pressure: Decorative vases are manufactured in small sizes and shipped to warehouses and retailers in large quantity. The distributor had suffered the breakage of the pallets delivered to them because of lack of protection of the packaging and this meant further handling expenses and lost time.
Cause Analysis
Our engineering and quality control departments analyzed the past samples of the distributor and determined the following primary problems:
- There was no strict control over the mold precision leading to slight variations in pattern definition and dimensions.
- The design of the packaging was not based on the compression forces during pallet stacking and cross-border movement.
In order to deal with this, we researched on the structural design of the vase, mold tolerances and packaging durability under simulated transportation conditions.
Solution
- Came up with a fined tuned mold that has a higher dimensional tolerance so that there are no differences in the proportion of the vase in every batch.
- Standardized the depth of the pattern of diamond cut in order to ensure visual consistency in mass production.
- Enhanced base of the vase to make it more durable without interfering with the beauty of the design.
- Plastic reinforced carton packaging using separate protective partitions to minimize bottle-to-bottle contacts.
- Introduced multi-stage quality controls at the time of production and prior to delivery.
Result
The personalized table vases were able to be delivered with similar looks and there was a high reduction in the breakage rates during delivery. The distributor noted that warehousing functioning was smoother and the satisfaction of retailers increased because of the stable quality of the products. This resulted in Mosteb becoming their long term supplier of table vases on wholesale basis.
