Chinese Online Beauty Retailer Jumei Upping Product Quality Control Standards

Jumei International Holding Limited, a leading online retailer of beauty products in China, announced it is setting new benchmarks in product quality control in regard to China's online beauty industry. Beginning July 2014, Jumei will start publishing monthly product audits of supplier and third-party merchants on its website, as well as significantly expand the sample size of spectrum analysis testing.

The new measures are aimed at reinforcing the Jumei’s reputation for product quality and reliability with Chinese consumers. It improves upon the retailer’s previous system, which was based on monthly random checks of 12% of third-party beauty product merchants using outside testing laboratories. Using this new system, Jumei has been able to identify merchants that were unable to pass quality checks and actively terminate their contracts before any products were shipped to customers.

Jumei started expanding the scope of random sample testing in June 2014, when the company's Beijing consulting laboratory increased the sample size for testing from 12% of third-party merchants to more than 67%, covering 17% of beauty product marketplace SKUs. The June tests discovered no instances of counterfeiting or other product discrepancies.

Jumei has worked to raise product quality standards not only for its own business, but also for the entire Chinese beauty products industry. In July 2013, it helped establish the Authentic Beauty Product Alliance (ABPA), a nationwide alliance against fake and counterfeit products in the Chinese beauty industry. China's online retail industry has an unfortunate history of lax controls, which have undermined consumer confidence. ABPA, which includes China Quality Long March, allows customers to trace products to their source on the ABPA website and on websites of participating brands, using tracking codes printed on ABPA stickers. As of March 31, 2014, ABPA had 74 members, and accounted for 64% of Jumei's merchandise sales GMV.

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