Miniso sets up a Quality Guarantee Fund of $14.5 million

On October 27th, 2020, Miniso held a press conference on commodity quality in Guangzhou. At the press conference, founder Ye Guofu announced that he had personally contributed 100 million yuan, which equals to 14.5 million USD to set up a “Miniso 100 million Quality Guarantee Fund”. The guarantee money is used to pay compensation to consumers immediately in the event of commodity quality problems.

In addition to setting up a guarantee fund, Miniso announced the construction of a quality control mechanism with the cooperation of national quality inspection agencies, authoritative third-party quality inspection agencies and internal quality control teams to continuously implement quality management for suppliers and products.

Data show that in the seven years since the opening of the first store in 2013, Miniso has successfully settled in 80 countries and regions around the world, with more than 4,200 stores. According to the Frost&Sullivan report, Miniso’s GMV reached 19 billion yuan in 2019, making it the largest private-brand integrated retailer in the world.

On the other hand, Miniso is a notoriously cheap retail brand, and its quality has always been questioned. On September 23 this year, the Shanghai Drug Administration of China issued a notice on the quality of spot checks, announcing that trichloromethane in one of Miniso’s nail polishes exceeded the standard. In June this year, also in Shanghai, in a spot check by the Market Supervision Administration, melamine in a certain type of tableware in Miniso exceeded the standard. In May this year, the Nanjing Market Regulatory Bureau also found that a batch of metal earrings and bracelets from MiniSo exceeded the standard for the release of nickel and the harmful element cadmium.

Ye Guofu’s announcement of the establishment of the guarantee fund may be a response to a series of recent quality problems. As for Miniso specific how to pay for quality issues, what is the standard of compensation, and what is the difference between the guarantee payment and the usual compensation in accordance with the law, it may not be particularly worth looking forward to. Because, even if customers do encounter quality problems when shopping at a fairly cheap Miniso, such as the events mentioned above, few consumers will actually apply for compensation for such a small amount of money, mainly because it takes too much time and energy to pay.