Forious & Furuisi Faucets Review & Rating Updated: February 27, 2025 Our panel of consu­mers and industry pro­fes­sion­als has rec­ognized Forious/Furuisi fau­cets as a Best Val­ue in ecnommy fau­cets made or assembled in Asia. Read the Best Fau­­cet Val­ue Re­port for more in­for­ma­tion.

Imported

China

Wenzhou Furuisi Building Materials Co.,Ltd.

trading as

Forious^®

No. 3-9

Donggong Haicheng St.

Economic & Technological Development Zone

Longwan District

Wenzhou City

Zhejiang Province

China 325055

888-206-2162

service@forious.com

Rating

Business Type

For more information on the five faucet company business types, see Faucet Companies

Product Range

Kitchen and Bath Faucets

Certifications

IAPMO Listing Certificates

• Basic Faucet Standard
• Lead Free Standard
• Drinking Water safety Standard

Brands

Forious, Furuisi

Street Price

$38 - $170

Warranty Score

Cartridge

Lifetime¹

Finishes

Lifetime

Mechanical Parts

Lifetime

Proof of Purchase

No

Transferable

Yes

Meets U.S. Warranty
Law Requirements

No²

Warranty Footnotes:

1. The entire For­i­ous warranty: "FORIOUS warrants this pluming product to be free of defects in material and workmanship during normal residential use for lifetime of the product."

2. The warranty does not comply with federal law and is not a legal warranty in the U.S. So our score of one star is a weak one star.

• Learn more about faucet warranties.
• Download/Read/Print our Model Limited Lifetime Warranty.
• Learn how to enforce your faucet warranty at The Warranty Game: Enforcing Your Product Warranty

This Company In Brief

Wen­zhou Fur­uisi Build­ing Mat­eri­als Co. is a Chin­ese manufacturer that sells economy fau­cets in the U.S. under the For­i­ous and Fur­ui­si brands.

It sells only through internet venues, limited to those that host third-party sellers such as Ama­zon, Overstock, Walmart, and Way­fair, as well as big box lumber stores like Home De­pot and Lowe's.

The faucets are good quality products that include good components. However, some faucets include proprietary valve cartridges that cannot be replaced. Con­se­quent­ly, if the valve leaks, the entire faucet would have to be discarded.

Forious products are sold only on the internet through websites that host third-party sellers. The most prominent of these is Ama­zon. But, the company also sells through Walmart, Wayfair, and big box lumber stores that host independent sellers such as Lowe's and the Home Depot.

Sales through Lowe's and Home Depot are online only. Forious products are not sold by plumbing supply houses or in brick-and-mortar stores.

In addition to selling the faucets under the Forious banner, the company also sells the same faucets at Lowe's and Wayfair under the Fur­uisi brand along with showers, vanities, fixtures such as toilets and bathtubs, vent fans, heaters, and accessories like towel racks and robe hooks.

Selling as Fur­uisi is a relatively new venture for the company in North America. Its three "Fur­uisi" trademark applications are still pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as of the date of this report.

The Company

Wenzhou Fu­ru­i­si Build­ing Ma­ter­i­als Co. was founded in 2004 to manufacture what the company calls "appliances" for the home.

These include decorative plumbing products such as faucets and showers along with the accessories that often accompany faucets: towel bars and rings, robe hooks, toilet paper holders, and so on.

The company trades under a variety of names, including:

• Wen­zhou For­i­ous Build­ing Mat­er­i­als Co., Ltd.,

• Wen­zhou Fu­ru­i­si Ji­an­cai Co., Ltd., and

• Wen­zhou Fu­ru­i­si Ji­an­cai You­xi­an Co., Ltd.

The company's North Amer­i­can sales venture has been remarkably successful.

On Ama­zon alone, it has sold over 10,000 products to date.

In part, that success has been due to the good quality and exceptionally low prices of its products. The most expensive Forious kitchen faucet sells for under $170.00.

It is also due to some rather high-powered endorsements.

• Forbes magazine has named Forious faucets among the best kitchen faucets sold in America in 2022.

• Bob Villa on his home improvement website also endorsed the brand.

Forious clearly has ambitions beyond selling faucets in the U.S.

Its various trademark filings indicate that it is looking to expand its kitchen and bath accessories lines to include all manner of bathroom accessories, small hand tools, industrial machinery, furniture, soft goods such as linens and towels, locks, and building materials.

Forious, Inc.

Fu­ru­i­si has formed a U.S. subsidiary, Forious Inc., chartered in Washington state in 2019. The activity of this subsidiary, however, appears to be limited to providing post-sale support.

We don't know where it is.

North American Address

Its stated address, 3690 Glendale Ave., Los Angeles, CA, 90017, does not exist. The address …

• does not appear in Los Angeles County real estate records,
• is "unknown" to the U.S. Postal Service,
• cannot be located by either Google Maps or Mapquest, and
• is reported by Melissa Lookups as "invalid."

Forious, Inc., however, has to list some real U.S. addresses to retain its corporate status. Its "legal" U. S. business address as listed in its Washington state corporation filing is

10611 Harwin Dr., Suite B, Houston, TX, 77036.

This address, however, is an , one of three worldwide offices of Witmart, Inc.

Among other services, Witmart provides mail drops and telephone answering for foreign, primarily Chinese, businesses at its locations in Houston, Toronto, and Chongqing (China).

Forious Inc.'s registered address for matters such as service of legal papers is the address at which the corporation's is located. It must be within the state of incorporation. For Forious, the address is…

c/o Northwest Registered Agent, LLC, 522 W. Riverside Ave., Suite N, Spokane, WA 99201-0580.

Where required to provide an actual operating address, to apply for Uniform Product Codes, for example, Forious, Inc. lists Fur­ui­si's address in China.

We have asked the company by email to provide a mailing and physical address. The company has not responded.

North American Warehouse

The company's primary warehousing in North America is provided by the retail outlets through which the company sells Forious products: Ama­zon, Wayfair, Walmart, and so on.

Most of these websites provide fulfillment services that receive bulk shipments from China, inventory and store the products in one or more warehouses, pick and pack retail orders as they are received, and ship products to retail customers.

These services are very efficient. Typical fulfillment operations can provide all these services for about what you or I would pay for shipping alone.

Amazon's giant fulfillment warehouses are regularly in the news due to worker unrest, but the centers handling goods sold by other Forious internet retailers are almost as massive.

Cas­tle­gate Log­is­tics, for example, the captive fulfillment company servicing Way­fair and its subsidiary companies: All­Mod­ern, Birch_^LN, Joss & Main, and Per­i­gold, has sixteen large warehouses spaced throughout the U.S.

Hosting websites, however, do not handle replacement parts. Other arrangements must be made to handle their warehousing and fulfillment.

The company claims to have its own warehouse for that purpose.

We believe it more likely, however, that it contracts with an existing fulfillment service, so we searched for a likely candidate and found a Cas­tle­gate warehouse in Cranbury, New Jersey that handles fulfillment for Fu­ru­i­si.

For a foreign company trading in the U.S., this approach to post-sale parts delivery is much more efficient than trying to maintain its own warehouse.

All its needs in the U.S. are one or more customer service agents to handle warranty claims and replacement parts requests from customers, then order the necessary parts and faucets from the fulfillment service which takes care of the packaging and delivery for a fee.

However it does it, Fu­ru­i­si has ensured that there is adequate customer support available by email and telephone during North Amer­i­can business hours, and replacement parts are quickly shipped from the U.S. The whole process generally takes ten days or less from first contact to delivery.

Construction & Materials

Forious kitchen faucets sold in the U.S. are made from stainless steel. The lavatory faucets are constructed of brass that has been tested and independently confirmed to be lead-free to North American standards.

Stainless Steel

Forious kitchen faucets are made of SAE 304 stainless steel.

This alloy, commonly called "food-grade" stainless, is by far the most common stainless used to make kitchen utensils, silverware, cookware, and fau­cets. It includes at least 18% chromium and between 8% and 10% nickel.

The nickel gives the steel a crystalline structure that increases its strength. The chromium helps the steel resist corrosion.

Steel is much harder than brass. It can be made in thinner profiles that use less material and still have more than adequate strength.

Brass

Forious lavatory fau­cets are made of brass. Brass is the preferred material for faucets for two reasons:

• Brass is strong but easy to work with. It casts, forges, and machines with relative ease.

• Brass is naturally antimicrobial. The copper in brass kills bacteria, retarding the build-up of potentially hazardous microbes inside a fau­cet.

But, brass has one serious drawback. Unlike stainless steel, it may contain lead.

Traditional (alpha) brass is a blend of copper and zinc with a small amount of lead (1.5% - 3.5%) added to make the material more malleable, less brittle, and easier to fabricate.

However, lead is now all but banned in North America in any drinking water component due to its toxicity to humans, particularly children.

According to the En­vir­on­ment­al Prot­ec­tion Agen­cy (EPA), lead, even in small amounts, causes slowed growth, learning disorders, hearing loss, anemia, hyperactivity, and behavior issues.

Before 2014, a fau­cet could contain as much as 8% lead and still call itself lead-free.

Now the maximum lead content of those parts of a fau­cet that touch water is 0.25% (1/4 of 1%), basically just a bare trace. In fact, there may be more lead in the air you breathe than there is in a modern fau­cet that has been certified lead-free.

To comply with the restrictions on lead, today's faucet brass replaces lead with other additives to reduce brittleness without adding toxicity. The most common is bismuth.

Bismuth is similar to lead – right next to lead on the periodic table of elements – but it is not harmful to humans.

It is, however, very expensive. It is 300 times rarer than lead, even rarer than silver, which is the reason that bismuth-brass alloys are considerably more expensive than leaded brass.

This increased cost has encouraged many fau­cet manufacturers to use substitute materials in their fau­cets where possible.

Zinc & Zinc/Aluminum Alloys

The more common substitute is zinc or a zinc-aluminum (ZA) alloy. One of the most common is called ZAMAK, a composition containing 4% aluminum.

Zinc is not as strong as brass and does not resist water pressure as well as brass. But, its use in non-pressurized parts of a brass fau­cet such as handles, base and wall plates, and is common even among manufacturers of luxury fau­cets.

It does no harm when used in these components and may save consumers a few dollars.

Plastic

Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Po­ly­ox­y­meth­y­lene (POM) are low-cost, easily manufactured, non-toxic, impact-resistant plastics commonly used as substitute materials for brass.

These plastics can be safely used in incidental fau­cet parts like base plates and have been largely trouble-free in aerators and as casings for ceramic cartridges, but otherwise, their use is suspect, especially if under constant water pressure.

Among those suspect uses is their use in the spray heads of kitchen fau­cets.

Manufacturers give three reasons for their use of plastic:

• Plastic does not get uncomfortably hot in use like metal wands;

• Plastic is not as heavy and is more comfortable to hold for long periods; and

• Plastic is a lot cheaper than brass or stainless steel – even cheaper than zinc.

Forious kitchen fau­cet sprays are plastic.

However, plastic degrades over time from exposure to ultraviolet and chlorine in tap water and is not dimensionally stable. It expands and contracts with temperature changes, making tight tolerances challenging to maintain.

These characteristics make plastic wands suspect for long-term use in faucets – products that most consumers consider lifetime products.

Better wands are made of metal, insulated against excessive heat transmittal.

The Sure Cure for Too-Hot Spray Wands: The simple cure for spray wands that get too hot is to reduce the temperature of the water. Dishes do not need to be rinsed in scalding hot water.

Faucet Components

The essential components used in Forious fau­cets are ceramic valve cartridges and aerators. Both are necessary for the faucet to function properly. Valve cartridges are especially critical. If the cartridge fails, the faucet is out of business until it is replaced.

Ceramic Valve Cartridges

Forious faucets are equipped with modern ceramic valve cartridges manufactured by Wenzhou Hairui Ceramic Valve Co., Ltd. Hairui is not a major player in the faucet valve business but makes a respectable valve that has received generally favorable reports.

Two-handle and single-handle faucets with the handle-on-top are fitted with universal standard valve cartridges developed by the Italian company, Gal­a­tron Plast S.p.a. starting around 1980. Simple in design, easy to manufacture, and very reliable, the Gal­a­tron designs have become over time the de fac­to standard for most of the fau­cet industry.

These can be removed and replaced with cartridges available from most manufacturers of ceramic valves.

The valve cartridges in single-handle, side-mounted kitchen faucets however, are a patented proprietary design, one of the 26 patents on inventions by Chunhe Qiu and Qingkui An owned by the company. Furuisi calls this valve its F-valve. According to the company, the ceramic discs in the valve are infused with diamond dust and

"will last up to 5 million uses, far exceeding the industry standard … designed and patented by Forious engineers."

We found several U. S. patents assigned to Fur­ui­si for valve core assemblies. However, the patent applications do not mention diamond dust infusion.

Cramic cartridge disks impregnated with diamond dust are a innovation, introduced in 2008. Delta calls these its "Diamond Seal Technology" (DST) cartridges.

The diamond dust has two benefits. It constantly smooths the ceramic discs, ensuring that they always mesh perfectly, and scrubs away any limescale or other minerals that may accumulate on the disk, prolonging its useful life in the 80% of the U.S. and Canada that have mineral-rich "hard" water.

DST valves have been tested to 5 million on/off cycles by an independent laboratory. The standard North American certification testing requires life-cycle testing that puts the faucet through 500,000 on/off cycles to see if it will leak. It also includes a burst test that subjects the valve to ten times ordinary household water pressure to see if it will deform.

Forious F-valve cartridges have passed both tests, so we don't doubt they are adequate for up to 500,000 cycles.

However, our inspection of the valves did not reveal any evidence of diamond dust infusion. So, before we believe 5 million on/off cycles, we would have to see some impartial third-party test results.

Our multiple requests to the company for a copy of any such test results have received no response.

F-valves used in single-handle faucets with side-mounted cartridges are not removable. This includes most of the company's kitchen faucets.

We are not at all certain what the thinking was behind a non-removable cartridge unless it somehow simplifies manufacturing.

The only solution for a leaking valve in these faucets is to replace the entire faucet.

If a valve fails during the warranty period, that's exactly what Fur­ui­si does. After that, however, you are on your own.

Aerators and Spray Assemblies

The engineered aerator was invented by engineers in Switzerland in 1954. After hundreds of experiments, KWC developed an optimum aerator pattern that produced a splashless fau­cet stream that has become the standard in the industry.

The KWC aerator was so successful that it was spun off as its own company in 1959. Now known as Neoperl Group AG, it has subsidiaries throughout Europe and in the U.S.

According to Forious, the aerators used in some Forious kitchen fau­cets are made by Neoperl.

We did not examine every one of the dozen or so basic faucet models and cannot affirm that every model includes a Neoperl aerator. But in the faucets we did examine, all included a Neoperl aerator.

We could not identify the source of the spray mechanism used in pull-down-spray kitchen faucets. From examination, we can say with some confidence that they are all plastic and very simple devices.

They do not have any positive docking features such as Mag­na­Tite^®docking on Delta faucets or Moen's Ref­lex^® docking system. The spray head is held in place by friction and a weight attached to the spray hose. It works well, but not as well as positive-docking mechanisms.

Faucet Design and Styling

Forious fau­cets are a mix of contemporary and traditional designs. Some of the designs sold by Fur­ui­si are patented faucet designs. A patented design cannot lawfully be used by any other company without permission.

Design patents are not that hard to get. Even a minor variation on an existing design is usually sufficiently original enough to get a patent.

Apart from these patented designs, Forious faucets are close copies of existing designs with just enough variation to avoid infringing on some other company's design patent.

Chinese companies are seldom hotbeds of design innovation. The goal of Chinese manufacturers is to sell as many fau­cets as possible, which means keeping their designs well within the mainstream to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.

A style that sells well in these major markets will often be imitated by Asian factories (with minor changes to avoid patent infringement). The lag time is usually 3 to 5 years, so by the time a design appears in a Chinese fau­cet, it is no longer new.

Forious's designs are pleasant and often smartly styled, but well within the design mainstream.

Forious Faucet Finishes

Forious offers six finishes on its faucets: Black, Brushed Nickel, Chrome, (Gunmetal) Gray, Gold, and Oil-Rubbed Bronze.

A few fau­cets are available in in which a base finish is paired with an accent finish. Split finishes include Black/Chrome, Black/Nickel, and Black/Gold.

Forious has not disclosed the processes used to produce its finishes. From inspection and non-invasive testing, however, we can often determine the likely process.

Chrome is usually electroplated. Black and Gray finishes are probably powder coatings. Gold may be a powder coating, but is more likely applied using physical vapor deposition (PVD).

Forious Brushed Nickel is a special case.

For lavatory faucets, it is either an electroplated or physical vapor deposition finish over the brass material of the faucet.

Kitchen faucets are made of stainless steel which looks like nickel, so why plate them with nickel? It's actually the smart thing to do. Stainless steel readily shows fingerprints, nickel plating doesn't. All "fingerprint resistant" stainless steel has been coated with something. Of the materials that it can be coated with, nickel is probably the best choice.

Electroplating

Electroplating involves immersing the fau­cet and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the fau­cet.

The process is potentially hazardous to the operator and the environment. It involves toxic and corrosive chemicals that must be disposed of safely. No other coating technology even comes close to the dangers involved in electroplating.

The top coat may be polished or brushed. Chrome, a relatively hard metal, is usually polished to a high shine. Nickel, a softer metal, is usually brushed to help hide the inevitable minor scratches.

Physical Vapor Deposition

Physical vapor deposition or PVD is one of the latest space-age metal-coating technology, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice.

Although the technology was discovered in the 19th century, it was not used in industry until the 1950s and, even then, only rarely due to its great expense. Its first use was inside nuclear reactors where very tough coatings are mandatory.

Today, PVD technology is everywhere and the equipment required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.

The process itself is almost out of science fiction.

Load a chamber with unfinished fau­cet components, remove all the air, and add back a carefully calculated mix of nitrogen or argon and reactive gases.

Add a rod of the metal to be used for the coating. Heat that rod to a temperature so high that the metal dissolves into individual atoms. The atoms mix with the various reactive gases to get the color and finish effects you want and are then deposited in a very thin layer – 2 to 5 microns – on the fau­cets.

A micron is one-millionth of a meter or 1/26,000 of an inch. The average human hair is 83 microns thick. The smallest the human eye with excellent vision can see without magnification is about 5 microns.

Despite being just microns thick, a PVD coating is extremely dense and, in consequence, very hard and durable. By some estimates, it is up to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome.

From long experience, we know that PVD is nearly impossible to accidentally scratch or mar, never fades or changes color, and resists all forms of soiling.

It can usually be maintained with just an occasional wipe from a damp cloth to remove water spots. (And some PVD finishes are given a final chemical coating that resists water spots, so even the damp wipe is made largely unnecessary. A dry buff will do.)

Compliance with U.S. Laws & Regulations

Furuisi does not comply with laws and regulations governing faucet warranties ( See more below) or minimum labeling requirements for faucets sold or offered for sale in the U.S.

For example, some Forious faucets do not…

"… bear a permanent legible marking to identify the manufacturer. This marking shall be the trade name, trademark, or other mark known to identify the manufacturer. Such marking shall be located where it can be seen after installation." (16 CFR § 305.24(a)(2)

Nor does the packaging in which the faucets are sold contain labeling that discloses

" the [maximum] flow rate in gallons per minute (gpm). The flow rate value shall be the actual flow rate. Each flow rate disclosure shall also be given in liters per minute (L/min).(16 CFR § 305.24(a)(4)

Powder Coating

Powder coating is usually described as semi-durable, not as robust as electroplated or PVD finishes, about as durable as the finish on your car, and requiring more care to maintain a like-new appearance.

It is essentially a dry paint in powder form applied using a special low-velocity spray gun that disperses the powder while giving it a positive electrical charge. The particles are drawn to the item to be finished which has been given a negative charge.

Once the powder is applied, the item being coated is baked in an oven which melts and bonds the powder and changes the structure of the coating into long, cross-linked molecular chains.

These chains give the coating its durability, reducing the risk of scratches, chipping, abrasions, and other wear issues.

Finish Care Instructions: Always read and follow the fau­cet seller's care instructions. Careful cleaning and maintenance not only preserve the good looks of your fau­cet but also your finish warranty.

Faucet Warranty

The company offers a lifetime warranty on its faucets that is admirably brief and extremely generous. Here is the entire warranty:

"FORIOUS warrants this pluming product to be free of defects in material and workmanship during normal residential use for [the] lifetime of the product. This Warranty only applies to plumbing prodcuts purchased and installed in USA/Europe/Japan/Canada/Mexico."

Warranty Compliance with U.S. Law

Unfortunately, the abbreviated statement of the company's lifetime warranty does not even begin to comply with the minimum requirements for consumer product warranties in the U.S. contained in the federal Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301).

In particular, it does not …

• Disclose what Forious will do to remedy a defect under warranty.

• Absent some reasonable limitation on what it will do, the law assumes that Forious will do whatever is necessary to fix the problem no matter the cost. (16 CFR § 701.3(a)(3))

• Provide "A step-by-step explanation of the procedure which the consumer should follow" to make a warranty claim, including the mailing address or telephone number to use. (16 CFR § 701.3(a)(5))

• Include the following statement, required to be in every consumer warranty:

  "This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights which vary from State to State.." (16 CFR § 701.3(a)(9))

Practical Warranty Issues

In addition to the legal issues, there are practical problems with the warranty.

While the warranty itself does not disclose what the company will do to fix a problem with a faucet, in practice the company is evidently of the opinion that it needs to do no more than replace the defective parts or, if that fails, the whole faucet.

But, that's not the law.

As written, the warranty commits the company to doing whatever it takes to fix the faucet and, in addition, any other damages caused by the faucet. The company's liability has no limit.

Consider this situation:

A Forious faucet leaks, flooding the kitchen and doing serious damage to the cabinets and flooring. The water also leaks through the floor damaging the ceiling and walls, carpet, and most of the furnishings in the rec room in the basement below. The cost of repairing and replacing the damage will run to several thousand dollars.

Because all the damage can be traced directly back to the leaking faucet, Furu­i­si Build­ing Mat­er­i­als is liable for the entire cost of repairing all the damage to the kitchen and rec room.

The company also needs to consider the duration of its warranty.

As written, it is a "forever" warranty, transferring to each subsequent owner of the fau­cet for as long as the fau­cet is in service. Its service life could well be over 100 years. We routinely encounter fau­cets that have been in use since the early 1900s.

All of this is very good for the buyer, but is undone by three factors:

• It is highly unlikely that the company will be around nearly anywhere like 100 years. Sellers from China tend to pop up for a while, then disappear in the fog behind the Bamboo curtain never to be heard from again. The average lifespan is less than years. Its warranty, no matter how strong, ends as a practical matter when the company ceases business in North America.

• There is no effective channel for making a warranty claim unless you are the original owner and have an order number or written receipt.

• If the company does not pay, its warranty would be hard to enforce in a courtroom. The company is safely ensconced on the Chinese mainland and difficult to serve with legal process. (Not impossible, however.)

Customer Service

A faucet warranty, no matter how comprehensive or generous, is only as effective as the company's customer service. The Forious website claims that…

"Forious provides 24/7 customer service. Reach out at service@forious.com for any queries."

We have "reached out" to the company dozens of times with "queries" about its faucets and other matters but have yet to receive a reply.

Our emails are tagged to inform us if and when they are opened. They were opened, and presumably read, but the company did not respond. We have also reached out through the website's contact-us page, again with no result.

The +01 2130000 number provided on the company's troubleshooting page is not a valid telephone number anywhere in the world.

The toll-free customer service telephone number, shown in the heading above, is answered with a recorded message that invites the caller to leave a message or press zero for the operator. Pressing zero, however, merely leads back to the same recorded message.

If you leave a message, an English-speaking representative will call back in one or two days. If you miss that call, however, you will need to leave another message to start the process all over again.

The return caller knew next to nothing about the technical details of Forious faucets, however, and could not answer even basic questions about the company or its products.

A warranty claim sent by email or telephone will get a response that requests a screenshot of the "faucet order ID", whatever that is, and "images or a video (espeially of the problem location)."

If you recently purchased the faucet, you may have a copy of the sales document which is sufficient proof of purchase. If you don't have a proof of purchase, you are out of luck.

A number of buyers have complained to us of being unable to get a warranty replacement from Forious for lack of the sales document. This is actually a violation of the warranty. Nothing in the warranty requires proof of purchase before warranty service will be provided. The company may reasonably require some evidence that you actually own a Forious fau­cet, for which purpose a clear photo showing the installed faucet should be all that is needed.

In one of our response tests, we indicated that we could not provide a faucet order ID or an image of the faucet leak because it had been replaced by a temporary faucet. At that point, Forious ceased responding to our emails.

However, when our testers were able to provide a sales receipt, Furisi was quick to respond with replacement parts or a replacement faucet.

Based on over two months of testing the company's customer service, we rate it "unsatisfactory" for technical issues but "satisfactory" for its handling of warranty claims.

Installation & Serviceability

Furuisi claims that Forious faucets are easy to install, a claim that our plumbers confirmed.

Installation instructions are in English and very clear. The faucets easily passed our installation tests, ranging from "very easy" to "easy" on a four-point scale of "Very Easy" to "Very Hard."

Side-handle kitchen faucets equipped with the company's F-valve, however, failed serviceability.

This test determines whether basic servicing can be performed without uninstalling the faucet. The most basic servicing is replacing the valve cartridge.

We found, much to our surprise, that side-mounted F-valves cannot be removed from the faucet. To remove the cartridge, either the faucet or the cartridge would have to be destroyed. In the event of a cartridge failure, the entire faucet would have to be replaced.

Forious Website

Fu­ru­i­si does not have a website under either its English or Chinese names.

Forious, Inc. does have a U.S. website, but this site – Forious.com – based on a Shopify template, is more than a little unfinished. It has improved over earlier versions when most of its pages were blank but is still not quite done.

For example, the invitation to "pop in for a cup of fresh tea and a cookie" lists the pop-in address as

"8808 Ave Dermentum, Onsectetur Adipiscing, Tortor Sagittis, CA 880986."

This is not a real address: it is merely a placeholder in the Sopify template until the actual address is entered.

On the other hand, according to Los Angeles County real estate records and the U.S. Postal Service, its claimed address of 3960 Glendale Ave. in Los Angeles is not a real address either. So don't plan on tea and cookies in the near future.

We suspect that the site was created solely because third-party hosting sites like Ama­zon strongly encourage hosted sellers to have an English-language website to increase the perceived legitimacy of the seller. Forious does not, however, seem to be taking it seriously.

The sight is not entirely useless, however. It shows images of all of the faucets and accessories sold under the Forious brand, and what appear to be MSRP or list prices.

The list prices do not seem to have a reliable relationship to selling prices, however. One Forious "5 pieces bathroom hardware set, 24 inch" was listed on the site for $0.00. We did not find any retail site selling at that price.

Pseudo-Exclusive Models

Furu­i­si sells about two dozen basic faucet models in North America. The exact number varies from time to time.

The company assigns a unique prefix to its model numbers for each of its major retailers and a finish suffix for each finish, a practice that inflates the apparent number of faucet models.

Counting all of the prefixes and suffixes, it has a total of nearly 400 different model numbers for its two dozen basic faucets.

The 0023 kitchen fau­cet, for example, is the

• LHH0203xx for Home Depot,
• LLL0203xx for Lowe's stores,
• OS0023xx for Over­stock,
• WM0023xx for Wal­mart,
• WW003xx for Way­fair, and
• FF0203xx for all other sellers, including sales on Am­a­zon.

The "xx" represents one of ten available finish codes. (See the sidebar "Decoding For­i­ous Model Num­bers" for finish codes.)

The faucets are exactly the same but the different model numbers allow each seller to claim that:

• The faucet is exclusive, sold only by that seller and

• The seller has the lowest price on that particular model.

The faucet must be exclusive and have the lowest price because the retailer is the only seller on earth with that particular model number.

This marketing sleight-of-hand is not unique to For­i­ous fau­cets. All of the major fau­cet companies, including do very much the same thing.

Testing & Certification

At our last update early this year, only Forious stainless steel kitchen faucets had been tested and certified to all joint Canadian/U.S. faucet standards. As of this update, all Forious faucets have been certified.

Universal certification does not mean, however, that all Forious faucets are legal for sale in all states and provinces. Many states and provinces have their own unique requirements that Fur­ui­si does not meet.

Here are the details of Fu­ru­i­si's certifications.

Comparable Faucets

Faucets made in Asia comparable to Forious in quality with the same or a better warranty, but not necessarily comparable for design or price, include

Conclusions

Forious prices are very reasonable for the quality of the product.

The Pros

• Certification: The company's faucets are certified safe, dependable, and lead-free. The rigorous testing ensures that the faucets have reasonable durability and reliability.

• Quality: The faucets are well-made using what appear to be good cartridges and top-line aerators. The plastic sprays are a little iffy, but the ones we tested worked well enough. We like the pulse button that sprays only when it is depressed – a nice water-saving feature.

The Cons

• Forious, Inc.: The company has no North American facilities of any substance. Its supposed North American company, Forious, Inc., is largely a facade with not much behind it, not even a valid physical address.
• Warranty: The company's warranty does not comply with the content requirements of U.S. warranty law. Although the company claims a lifetime-of-the-product all-risks warranty, it does not explain how to initiate the warranty process or what it will do to fix a problem with a Forious faucet.
• Customers' experiences suggest that it usually does nothing more than provide replacement parts, a limitation that is not disclosed in its warranty. Claimants must also provide an order number. Without that number, the company will not honor a warranty claim.

• Replacement Valves: The company's proprietary F-valve ceramic cartridges cannot be replaced. If the valve fails, the only cure is to replace the entire faucet. This design flaw limits the reasonable lifespan of the faucet to between five and ten years before the valve fails.
• Its other valves for two-handle and top-mounted single-handle faucets are standard configuration valves available from any number of suppliers. So even if Forious is no longer around, you can still get a replacement valve.

Rating Panel Comments

Our rating panel was impressed by the quality of the faucets and almost swooned over the incredibly low prices.

However, none of the panelists would install an F-valve kitchen faucet. The lack of a replaceable valve is too much of a risk.

Most members would install a faucet with a standard configuration valve in a kitchen or bath with "little or no reservation."

The reluctant minority wanted a more transparent after-sale support, particularly a resolution of the mystery of where Furuisi's North American subsidiary is actually located and how it is staffed before they would risk a Forious faucet.

The Bottom Line

There are some problems associated with the brands that urgently need to be fixed. Despite its successes in the North American market, the company seems hesitant to jump in with both feet, unlike companies such as Asian companies that maintain a substantial physical presence in North America supporting their U.S. and Canadian sales.

However, the faucets can be exceptional values if chosen with some care.

We would probably stay away from side-valve kitchen faucets until someone figures out how to extract and replace the F-valve cartridge without destroying the faucet or the valve in the process.

The bathroom and top-valve kitchen faucets are, for the most part, solid, well-styled, and well-crafted faucets, selling for very little money, easily the quality of our usual first-choice in economy faucets, by Delta, and in the same price range.

Continuing Research

We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Forious faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.

Please note that we generally do not answer questions posed in the comments section below. For questions, please contact us by email at starcraftreviews@yahoo.com. We generally respond within one business day.