LCOUNCIL法总专访 | 老爸评测靖玮：电商企业法务团队的价值塑造

本期嘉宾

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法总专访

   Exclusive Interview

With consumers' growing concern over product quality, the assessment industry is emerging and growing rapidly. What are some of the notable industry trends and characteristics you have observed in this process? Could you please share your insights?

Evaluation is a very new industry. According to the definition given by the Consumer Council, "third-party evaluation" usually refers to organisations or individuals who have not obtained national inspection and testing qualifications or official accreditation and recognition, and who, through their own evaluation or by quoting and comparing the results of professional tests, analysing and researching the data, and expressing their subjective feelings of using the products, make horizontal or vertical comparisons and evaluations of their products in terms of quality, functionality, design, composition, service and price/performance ratio, and so on, Cost-effective and other aspects of horizontal or vertical comparison and evaluation.

According to a research report released by the Consumer Council this year, nearly 80% of consumers will watch "third-party evaluation" works before shopping. However, due to the short period of development of the industry, some third-party evaluation organisations are of mixed standards, and are plagued with problems and chaos. For example, there are problems with evaluation standards, mostly subjective evaluations that lack evaluation standards; consumers also reflect that there have been quality problems with goods purchased through watching "third-party evaluations"; there are also problems with suspected "false evaluations" and so on.

Unscientific, non-objective and unfair can be said to be the root cause of many problems, such evaluation not only misleads consumers, but also seriously interferes with the market order, and also corrupts the ecological environment of third-party evaluation.

From our point of view, the reason why domestic third-party evaluation is full of problems is that no matter whether it is a qualitative and quantitative comparative experiment or a personal intuitive feeling, it belongs to the evaluation in the broad sense. People can express their references and suggestions through product trial or purchase experience, and neither qualification nor standard is required, so the threshold is extremely low. On the other hand, the mechanism for monitoring, restraining and punishing these third-party evaluations is not perfect.

Over the years, Dad's Evaluation has been adhering to the principle of "no fairness, no evaluation". Within Dad's assessment, we insist on taking testing as the basic point and foothold, and always pay attention to the scientificity and rigour of the voice. In order to ensure the fairness and impartiality of the evaluation activities, we adhere to three principles: firstly, we do not accept advertisement sponsorship or write softwares for horizontal evaluation and popularisation of consumer products, so as to maintain the neutrality of evaluation; secondly, we buy samples through the open market sales channels, so as to ensure the order and justice; thirdly, we bear the testing cost independently and entrust the testing to the third-party labs with complete qualifications, so as to ensure the reliability of the results. In our opinion, if objectivity and fairness are the soul of third-party evaluation, science is the life of third-party evaluation.

China's third-party assessment industry started late, is still in the stage of barbaric growth, problems are inevitable, but in the final analysis, third-party assessment can flourish, because consumers need, the market needs, the community also needs.

Could you please describe what the specific role and position of the legal department is? Can you share your experience?

The full name of the Legal Department is the Legal and Internal Control Department, so in addition to the company's basic legal affairs, the Legal Department is also responsible for the company's internal control and compliance affairs. This is divided into two major sections: content review and product review.

Experience: Strengthen cross-departmental collaboration and communication. The business line of our industry is very long, from the confirmation of a product content selection to the content output is often as little as one month to as much as half a year, the time span and departmental span are very large, so a smooth communication mechanism is very important.

In July this year, we exposed a red snail cream, because the children's cream actually had drug ingredients illegally added to it. From the discovery to the exposure, the Legal Department actually followed the whole incident to anticipate and avoid legal risks.

With the rapid development of the assessment industry, the construction of corporate compliance system has become an important issue in the industry. How do you think companies in the assessment industry should establish and improve their compliance system? Could you please share your insights and initiatives?

Compliance is even more important for companies in the evaluation industry, not only to standardise the evaluation process, but also to help our evaluation to avoid risks and be responsible for the output evaluation results. We have established co-operation with the notary public since a long time ago, and in the process of doing evaluation, buying samples, receiving samples, inspecting samples and sending samples to the laboratory are all completed under the notary public's authentication. The notary will also follow up the whole process of factory audit, which helps us to avoid risks. Although this part of the cost is very high, but we are still constantly strengthening and improving the construction of the compliance system.

In this year's 315 exposure of children's e-cigarettes on the hot search, in this incident, we purchased e-cigarettes from a second-hand e-commerce and other channels, the purchase process was notarised in the whole chain, to ensure that our evaluation is done fairly and impartially.

Can you share some of your insights or lessons learned about compliance management?

First of all, we need to assess the current development status of the business and formulate an overall compliance plan based on it, so as to avoid being too strict to hinder the development of the business, and also to avoid being too lax to lead to the creation of loopholes. When we do compliance management and promotion, we must maintain very close communication with the business, understand the current difficulties of the business, and even predict the difficulties of the business, think about the problems encountered by the business, and then formulate a compliance plan accordingly, we should try to make the plan work with the business at the moment, rather than becoming an unnecessary pressure on the business.

In addition, not only closely linked with the business, legal and PR, GR department can support each other and collaborate with each other, the views of the same, try to do a thorough consideration, not a single-legged solo.