The forehead gun and its components are full of scams, and the empty-gloved white wolf needs constant vigilance

On March 9, the sudden new crown pneumonia epidemic made the “unpopular” forehead thermometer a hot “sweet pastry”. With the increasing demand for epidemic prevention and resumption of work, the price of the forehead thermometer from the finished product to the main components has increased several times or even dozens of times, the market is out of stock, and new “players” continue to join.

The investigation found that behind the boom and chaos in the forehead gun market, in addition to insufficient production capacity and an unstable supply chain, some hoarding and fraudulent behaviors for forehead guns and their components have also exacerbated the contradiction between supply and demand and anxiety. The industry calls for increased supervision and a comprehensive review of the current situation of the production capacity of the forehead gun supply chain, especially to increase the monitoring of the flow of key components to ensure that the real production enterprises can get the goods, and at the same time to intensify the crackdown and regulate market access. Promoting the forehead gun industry to return to normal.

8800 yuan to buy a waste paper box forehead thermometer scam is full of tricks

In order to resume work, a company in Chengdu ordered 22 infrared forehead thermometers online for 8,800 yuan, but received a waste paper box with waste products.

According to the police verification, the suspect Qu Moumou lied on the social platform that he had the forehead thermometer in stock, and deceived the trust of the procurement personnel of the enterprise. After receiving the payment, Qu Moumou went directly to the waste collection station and spent 30 yuan to buy a waste paper box to put the waste products on. After sending the photo of the express tracking number, the buyer was blocked. Qu Moumou did not have any sales experience of forehead thermometers, but because he was cheated of nearly 10,000 yuan when he bought masks and forehead thermometers online not long ago, he was unconvinced and wanted to cheat by similar methods to make up for his losses. He also performed the same scam on five other victims, ranging from a few hundred to a thousand dollars.

According to industry insiders, the online scam of forehead guns has formed a chain of “empty gloves and white wolves”: first release low-priced spot information on social platforms, collect the full payment, and then not ship for various reasons. In order to prevent buyers from reporting, they adopted the methods of refunding low-priced orders and accepting high-priced orders to gain time difference and continuously push up prices. Those who can find the source of goods send out high-priced orders and immediately make a fortune, and those who can’t find the source of goods are like Qu Moumou, blackmailing and disappearing.

A company in Chengdu has fallen into this “routine” more than once. “I don’t know where I ordered this time. The seller only said that it was made by a private person from the factory, and refused to disclose the purchase channel. The delivery date of March 1, which the seller promised last time, is yellow again, but in order to resume work, we It’s just a gamble.” A company official said helplessly.

Sichuan Youkede Medical Equipment Co., Ltd. is currently the largest manufacturer of infrared forehead thermometers in Sichuan. Luo Jinlong, the general manager, is angry and helpless, “Now there are unidentified people squatting at the entrance of the company almost every day, we have to strengthen security, any irrelevant People are not allowed to enter. Some people even hold the so-called ‘red-headed document’ and say they are helping the government coordinate supplies.” In just one month, Luo Jinlong saw how hot the forehead gun, which was originally an “unpopular” industry, is now. : “The most one day I received more than 20 complaint calls, all saying that I saw someone selling our goods on the Internet, but the person who received the money disappeared. In fact, we have no inventory at all, and the products are sold out when they are offline. already.”

In addition, Luo Jinlong also received many calls, requesting to use the infrared sensor of the main component of the forehead thermometer to replace his company’s finished forehead thermometer, but he refused all of them. Not only that, the company has signed dozens of contracts so far, and the other party swears that the payment will be made the next day, but if the contract is taken away, there will be no text. “Some people can pretend that they have stock with this information, and then go out with empty gloves. The contract value of a 100,000-piece forehead thermometer is more than 20 million. I don’t know how many people will be deceived.

It is understood that the infrared forehead thermometer has a small market scale in my country, with an annual production capacity of about 20 million pieces, of which the domestic demand is about 8 million to 10 million pieces, which belongs to the sub-sector of medical devices. According to the data from the enterprise survey, before the outbreak of the epidemic, there were only 49 enterprises above designated size that produced and sold warm guns in China. According to Dongxing Securities’ research on factories and security companies in Shenzhen, Kunshan and other places, the market demand for various infrared thermometers is increasing day by day, and it has reached the point of shortage of materials and materials.

Jiangsu Kunshan Reying Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. is the largest Taiwanese-funded enterprise in the local production of forehead thermometers. Ding Jiling, the company’s administrative manager, said that limited by employees and raw materials, the current production capacity is slowly climbing, and the daily production of about 3,000 units is all offline. The delivery will be uniformly configured by the government and delivered to villages and towns, communities, stations, docks, schools and hospitals in Kunshan and other areas of Suzhou.

The forehead thermometers produced by Guangzhou Beerkang Medical Equipment Co., Ltd. account for 30% of the domestic market share. Zhou Fang, the marketing manager, introduced that Guangdong Province had previously included infrared temperature detector manufacturers into the scope of emergency protection. It began to resume production and added new production lines, and the daily production capacity was increased from the initial 3,500 pieces to about 20,000 pieces. Du Zhigang, the production director of Berkang Company, introduced that as a metering product, behind a forehead thermometer is the collaboration of about 100 suppliers. At present, the resumption rate of upstream enterprises has exceeded 80%, but the 20% that has not resumed work is the key to affecting production capacity.

The price increase of the infrared sensor (probe), which is the key component of the forehead thermometer, has already exceeded the forehead thermometer itself. A forehead thermometer manufacturer reluctantly said: “The price of a domestic probe I ordered half a month ago was only more than 4 yuan, but the upstream manufacturers have been slow to deliver. It is uncertain how much it can send. This is still the price directly connected by the manufacturer. As far as I know, the domestic probes of the same type outside have even been fired at a sky-high price of 100 yuan a piece.” Manufacturers with larger capacity have been confirmed. “There is no way to produce forehead thermometers without a probe. The normal price is 3 yuan to 4 yuan per piece, but now the quotation in some places has increased by nearly 20 times. Affected by the above factors, the factory’s daily output is about 20,000 pieces. .If the key component problem can be solved, the production capacity can be increased by 5 times.”

“Originally, our daily production capacity was designed to reach 20,000 to 30,000 pieces, but due to the failure of normal supply of probes, it fluctuated between 2,000 and 10,000 pieces per day. Previously, we ordered 500,000 pieces of probes to a probe manufacturer in East China. The order was promised to be 200,000 in February, but it ended up being 50,000. The factory has been out of stock these days, so I have to run around to find probes.” Luo Jinlong was also helpless.

The supply of the main control chip, another main component of the forehead thermometer, is also not optimistic. Hangzhou Jinghua Microelectronics Co., Ltd. is one of the main suppliers in the industry. Liang Guiwu, sales director, said: “In February, the company’s infrared temperature measurement main control chip shipments It has exceeded the volume of the half year of last year, and the current order has also exceeded the output of the whole year of last year. The production capacity of the main control chip is limited by the supply of upstream fabs. I know that many fabs have no inventory before the Spring Festival, and downstream chip manufacturers Production will naturally not go up.” Luo Weishao, general manager of Jinghua Micro, also said: “Although the supply of products is in short supply and the price of upstream raw materials is also rising, we cannot make such ‘national distress’, insist on stabilizing prices and maintain healthy market development. Contribute to the overall situation of epidemic prevention.”

Some companies in the industry said that the most important thing at present is to speed up the normal operation of the forehead gun supply chain, strengthen the monitoring and supervision of the flow of raw materials and major components, especially the need to crack down on hoarding, malicious price hikes and online roasting.

It is understood that on March 5, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced on its official website a number of cases of price violations during the epidemic prevention period. For example, on February 3, Yuncheng, Shanxi seized a company that purchased infrared thermometers with a price of only 45 yuan and 85 yuan. , infrared detectors were sold at high prices of 590 yuan and 800 yuan, and the company was fined 500,000 yuan. The market supervision department said that the next step will be to pay close attention to the prices of masks, forehead thermometers, disinfectants and other anti-epidemic supplies, and resolutely investigate and punish relevant price violations in accordance with the law.

According to the statistics of Qichacha Professional Edition, since 2020, as of March 3, a total of 83 related companies operating in the thermometer business have been added in my country, accounting for 22.2% of the total, especially from February 25 to February 28. Today, in just 4 days, 42 new related companies operating in the thermometer business have been added in my country, and the growth rate is astonishing. According to media reports, some “players” unrelated to medical care have also begun to participate, and even companies that have never produced forehead thermometers have completed the phenomenon of “sample to inspection” in only 10 days.

Some mainstream manufacturers in the industry suggest that we need to pay attention to the phenomenon of blind “cross-border production” driven by interests. “It takes at least half a year for a batch of forehead thermometers to go from raw material selection to production to testing. Forehead thermometers require strict design of mechanical structure, Electronic circuits, and software algorithms, as well as laboratory data and clinical data confirmation. If Without the support of clinical data, it may be inaccurate.” Relevant experts of Belcom believe that.

The company said that the company’s main product, the dual-probe forehead thermometer with LED screen and voice function, was produced after 10 years of accumulation and 4 years of special research and development, and the newer Model is still undergoing clinical trials. . A qualified forehead temperature gun requires extremely high accuracy, and the temperature measurement error must be controlled within 0.2°C to 0.3°C, which cannot be achieved by temporary conversion. “Now some people greet me through various relationships and ask me to authorize some unqualified manufacturers to produce and pay me, but all of them are rejected by me. This phenomenon is worrying.” Luo Jinlong said.

Some people in the industry suggest that the current filing system allows some companies to enter the production of forehead thermometers in a short period of time and at a low threshold, but the quality is uneven, which makes it difficult to meet the actual market demand. Instead, it seizes some resources and virtually raises the price of raw materials. . With the passage of the most scarce period of anti-epidemic materials, the registration threshold should be tightened to achieve product registration approval. Only by providing qualified products to the market can the contradiction between supply and demand be truly alleviated.