QCA | BDA Inc

Quality Certification Alliance (QCA) is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit accrediting organization for industry suppliers. QCA certification helps protect your brand and reputation by offering compliance with the highest product standards in the market.

The Quality Certification Alliance mission is to significantly raise the standard in providing consistently safe, high-quality, socially compliant, and environmentally conscientious merchandise to clients and their constituents. Each member must submit itself to a third-party audit and disclose full transparency of its operations.

The scope of compliance measured includes product safety, supply chain security, process quality, social compliance and environmental stewardship. While testing measures may vary by product category, the general process associated with development and manufacture of an article for promotional purposes does not. Recognizing industry accountability to assure clients and end-users that product in their hands meets applicable measures of compliance, QCA accreditation tests for the presence of, and completeness of:

Compliance programs
The effectiveness of those programs in detecting noncompliance
The effectiveness in deterring noncompliance

QCA accreditation tests for compliance with local and national laws, as well as the laws of the country that may be importing the item for consumption.

To receive QCA accreditation, BDA successfully completed a rigorous phased certification process. The time horizon for the certification process varies from company to company and can take as little as six months or as long as 18 months to complete. QCA employs a methodology of implied compliance (self-certification), self-assessment, testing and third-party validation in the process of accrediting its members' efforts.

Original manufacturers are required to acknowledge compliance obligations to member companies in writing. The original manufacturers are then required to document compliance activities undertaken in their facilities over the course of the manufacturing process. Member companies test those assertions through appropriate means. Third-party validation is required to achieve QCA's highest level of accreditation. Training and corrective action feedback are essential characteristics and components of this process. BDA became the first QCA-accredited distributor in early 2009.

Denise Fenton, executive director of compliance for QCA, has worked in international manufacture-for-export for more than 20 years, focusing on establishing management systems that provide visibility to process compliance. She spent 12 years with Walmart, managing the design and implementation of the Walmart Factory Compliance system (2000-06), and has worked for organizations in Taiwan, Sri Lanka and China.

Brent Stone, executive director of operations for QCA, has 25 years of in-depth supply chain management experience with extensive experience in process design, development, improvement and management. Prior to joining QCA, Brent spent eight years as a divisional VP of procurement for a leading promotional products industry distributor, where he was responsible for building and maintaining the supply chain.