There are many very cheap TPE dolls in circulation. They are cheap and outwardly acceptable. Many people wonder why these cheap dolls have a thousand-dollar price gap with well-known brands such as WMDOLL and SEDOLL. Are prices simply inflated by brand value? After reading this article carefully, you will understand the real reason for this.
To answer this question, we must start with the characteristics of TPE materials.
Pure TPE is a safe material with high elasticity and flexibility over silicone gel. During production, they are heated to temperatures between 180 and 200 degrees Celsius to form a fluid that can flow. It is then poured into a hollow mold that holds the skeleton in place. TPE contains a large amount of mineral oil, which is the main reason for its softness.
When the factory controls the hardness of TPE, it usually adjusts the proportion of Mineral oil. Mineral oil comes in several sizes, with prices sometimes more than doubling. Low-quality Mineral oil has a relatively low flash point and boiling point and is prone to coking and smelly at high temperatures. This poor quality mineral oil produces harmful substances at high temperatures, which may harm the health of users.
In order to further reduce costs, some manufacturers will even replace TPE with TPR materials. TPR is used for some small adult products which are very cheap due to low costs, such as airplane cups and torso. TPR is prone to aging, has a short life and bad smell, which has a more serious impact on the human body than inferior TPE.
Another way to save on material costs is to use recycled TPE materials, which are materials that can be reheated to a liquid state for reuse. However, some changes have taken place in the first heating of mineral oil in the material. When it is heated at high temperature again, the quality of Mineral oil has seriously declined, and the coke smell and material performance are far from the standard. These manufacturers will add essence to the recycled material to cover up the unpleasant smell. These recycled materials cost only a quarter of the price of new materials, which can effectively reduce production costs. When your doll smells like bad perfume, don’t assume that the manufacturer wants the best for you。 This is probably because you bought a doll made of TPR or recycled TPE material.
Cost difference caused by design and production.
Famous brands such as SEDOLL usually design their own molds, have their own designers, and develop new doll products as planned. Design costs can account for up to 20% of a brand’s operating expenses. Design costs include doll design, mold development, and photo shooting. Not every mold will bring sales to the brand, only a small part of the mold can produce a real best-selling product. Those less successful molds, often cannot recover the original design costs. This increases the average development cost of the brand, which is ultimately reflected in the price of the product.
Manufacturers of low-priced dolls often don’t consider design, they just copy successful products from well-known brands. When making the mold, they will not consider the precision and quality of the mold, in fact, they just buy a doll from a well-known brand as a copy of the original. However, soft TPE dolls will be deformed in the production of duplicating mold, and the final product will have a certain gap with the original shipment of the brand. Because of the low design cost and the use of poor copy molds and materials, the manufacturing cost of low-priced imitation dolls is extremely low.
Vicious price competition.
Because of the large number of imitation doll factories, there is fierce competition among them. In order to get orders, some factories have squeezed their profits to as low as $10. Because of their meager profits, these factories have to cut corners on production techniques and maintain their operations as cheaply as possible using inferior materials. These inferior products cause damage to the health of the users and have an unpleasant smell or fragrance of inferior quality. The details and quality of the products are unsatisfactory, and the service longevity of the products is much lower than the brand products.
If you understand the reasons described in this article, would you still insist on buying those cheap TPE dolls? Healthy development of the brand must have stable and safe quality, continuous research and development capabilities, which those cheap TPE dolls do not need to consider. They just need to produce something, and someone is willing to pay for it. When you buy these cheap dolls, you spend less money, but the greater cost you pay is your health.
