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As a retailer, product quality and safety are paramount. In fact, failure to provide safe, dependable products puts your customers – along with your brand reputation and revenues – at risk. 

Although your business may take many steps to ensure its products are safe and of the highest quality, there's no telling when a minor issue might slip through the cracks. And if this occurs, the risk certainly exists that a faulty product could reach your customers. 

Preventing product quality and safety issues is a top priority for your business. As such, your company constantly seeks top-notch tools it can use to further protect its customers against product quality and safety dangers. 

Furthermore, your business strives to learn from past mistakes, including those that affected other companies that failed to meet customers' product quality and safety expectations. 

For instance, Baja Motorsports' recent civil penalty exemplifies what could happen to your business if it lacks the skills and know-how to prevent product quality and safety problems. 

Baja was penalized $4.3 million by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in October 2014 after it allegedly failed to report defects and an unreasonable risk of serious injury related to 11 models of mini bikes and go-carts.

CPSC claimed that the gas cap on defective Baja vehicles could leak or detach from the fuel tank, resulting in fire and burn dangers. Furthermore, the commission noted the motor of Baja vehicles could stick "due to an improperly positioned fuel line and throttle cable, posing a sudden acceleration hazard."

Baja now has many factors consider in relation to its product quality and safety standards, including:

• Brand reputation – How can Baja recover after putting its customers at risk due to its release of defective products? The company may need to consider investing extra resources to improve its brand reputation going forward.
• Revenues – How can Baja prevent revenue losses due to its defective products? The company may need to consider additional product recalls that could be costly and time-consuming, and as such, damage its revenues.
• Compliance – CPSC standards are in place for a reason: to ensure consumers are protected at all times. Baja’s failure to comply with CPSC guidelines may force the company to revamp its product quality and safety assessment processes.

In addition, Baja may consider new technologies that could help it identify and respond to product quality and safety issues quickly. 

And with PolyVista Alerts+, Baja and other companies will be better equipped to do just that. 

What is PolyVista Alerts+?

PolyVista Alerts+ represents a game-changing technology for retailers because it empowers them to proactively monitor product quality and safety concerns. 

This tool serves as a comprehensive alerting and management system designed to help retailers eliminate product quality and safety concerns. It enables you to better protect your customers from dangerous products, safeguard the reputation of your brand and ensure you can comply with corporate and/or government regulations and policies consistently. 

PolyVista Alerts+ also offers an easy-to-navigate interface that allows you to set up alerts based on keywords and phrases. Thus, you'll be able to ensure all safety issues in consumer complaints, product and warranty returns or other critical analyses of products are caught, reported and escalated to the right people. 

Furthermore, this alerting system offers customized parameters, user permissions and a workflow feature that helps users view and manage historical alerts. That way, in the event of an audit, the application generates detailed audit trails for each different alert or product.

PolyVista Alerts+ may change the way retailers track and evaluate product quality and safety problems both now and in the future. As a result, this tool could make it easier for retailers to produce safe, dependable products faster than ever before. 

Summary

A defective product can cause serious problems for a retailer and its customers. Fortunately, PolyVista Alerts+ provides business managers with a high-tech tool they can use to minimize the risk of product quality and safety issues. 

PolyVista Alerts+ enables business managers to devote the necessary time and resources to examine the quality and safety of a product at any time. Therefore, this tool could provide retailers with the ability to improve their products and comply with federal product quality and safety requirements consistently.