Chinese people like negotiating during the business and you can negotiate in most cases during your sourcing in China (in some special cases prices are fixed, say, supermarket ), here are the basic bargaining skills for your reference:

1.‘Letting the enemy off in order to catch him’ – If the price cannot be lowered further, you can pretend to end the negotiation so as to make the suppliers compromise.

2.Keep bargaining – you can adopt some strategies such as conducting a war of words, a honeyed talk, and even a spoiled brat till the suppliers lower the price.

3.Keep nitpicking – to obtain a better price, you had better pick out somthing wrong to make suppliers downhearted.

4.Tempting the suppliers step by step – you can tempt the suppliers by the promise of building a long-term cooperation, big orders, and better payment terms etc so that they can make concessions in pricing.

Above negotiation skills can be used case by case, however, the best way to negotiate during internation trade is to use following two tips:

1.Shopping around

There is a Chinese saying,“You would not suffer losses if you shop another three or more stores to compare”, which means when purchasing any item, you should look for their competitors and the suppliers providing the same quaility items, then compare their price, trade terms, quality etc and select a best one to work with in the future. The premise of comparison is built on the similar product quality, service and price. The compared products should be at the same class.

2.Cost analysis

To be a professional buyer, what you should know well is not only the product itself, but also the costs of major raw material, production, labor and management etc. And the best bargaining strategy is to fully calculate the cost of one product, adding in the appropriate margin of the manufacturer, and knowing yourself and the suppliers well, then the lower price can be finally reached.

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Elksourcing：Professional Supplier Sourcing -The First Step to Your Successful Business in China

Apr 21, 2021 Elksourcing, sourcing by 露露

I received two inquiries today from our old clients, demanding for another professional supplier sourcing service, which is playing more and more important role in their import business these days.

Professional Supplier Sourcing refers to the sourcing service carried out in a very professional way. Some importers only source suppliers by searching online or simply attending a general commodity trade fair, which is regarded NOT professional enough sometimes in China.

How to conduct a Professional Sourcing service?

First of all, Professional Sourcing means product proficiency; you have to be very proficient with the product itself, covering the product name, specifications, descriptions, application and market price etc. You have to try to be an expert in this field.

Second, Professional Sourcing indicates the proficiency of related manufacturing bases. In China, almost every city or province has their own pillar industries, especially for some special items, say, ceramics, chemicals,furniture,fireworks etc.So before sourcing in China,you have to study the right industry clusters first. Most of the foreign importers try to source the suppliers by attending trade fairs, say, Canton Fair.With the information and internet development,more and more customers quit trade fairs now in China.

The best place for you to meet and find out some qualified suppliers is the right manufacturing bases. For example, if you’re looking for ‘fireworks’, you have to go to Liuyang city, which is called ‘Home of Fireworks’, where there are more than 400000 people directly or indirectly engaging in this business in China. ‘Liuyang — made’ fireworks account for more than 60% global market at present. This is the same to other products; almost every product has their unique manufacturing bases in China.Say,Qingdao for tyres, Lecong for furniture, Zhuji for socks, Yiwu for general commodities, Xintang for jeans, Wenzhou for ties and shoes, Anji for bamboo products, Liling for ceramics, Yongkang for hardwares, Shenzhen for electronics, Guangzhou for clothes, Xuchang for hair products, Changzhou for floorings etc. Of course some products may have more than two or three manufacturing bases as China is too big. For example, in North China people to go to Tianjin to buy steel banquet chairs while in South China, Shunde is the largest manufacturing base for those items.Click here to find out more Professional Markets in China.

Third, Professional Sourcing means that you have to attend professional trade fair instead of the general trade fairs. Say, if you’re buying furniture you can have a try on Furniture China (www.furniture-china.cn), and this is the same for other product sourcing, Door industry — www.door-expo.com, Lock industry — www.lock-china.net and Tube industry — www.tubechina.net etc. More professional fair information.

Lastly, Professional Sourcing needs professional verification skills, you have to be able to check out their export or import qualifications and obtain their full registered information in order to avoid future business scams in China. Some professional sourcing service company like Elksourcing offers Basic Verification Service on their suppliers after the client books their sourcing service in China.

Welcome to do business in China !

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Elksourcing：How to effectively source from multiple Chinese suppliers simultaneously?

Apr 21, 2021 Elksourcing, shopify dropshipping by 露露

For the big buyers or importers, it’s not difficult to purchase from multiple suppliers at one time because each supplier could at least fill up a 20 ft container, the customs clearance and logistics are comparably easier. But to those start-up companies,they usually test the markets with small orders, indicating that they need to purchase different products from different suppliers with trial orders at one time. In such cases, the domestic logistics management,lead time control, delivery time control, stocking, warehousing, and customs clearance etc are rather complicated.So how do we make an easier and more effective sourcing from different Chinese suppliers simultaneously when the order is not big enough?

First of all what we need is a reliable and experienced Chinese partner or purchasing agent like Elksourcing.. An excellent partner or agent can well consolidate all your shipments at one time, coordinate the lead time and delivery time, arrange domestic logistics, control the business risks, arrange warehousing and clear the customs on time etc.

Secondly, it’s vital to control the lead time and delivery time of each shipment. The ones with longer lead time should be paid earlier. All the consolidated shipments shall be delivered to a designated warehouse in China. Any delay of one shipment will result in the delay of whole order, which may cause an unexpected stocking or warehousing cost in China as well.

Thirdly, all the documents for customs clearance have to be prepared in advance for consolidated orders, each shipment may require different documents for customs clearance. For example, some products are made from wood, then a special fumigation certificate is required in order to clear the customs.

Last but not the least it’s necessary to choose the appropriate transportation way, whether to ship by sea, air or express, depends on the total shipping cost and the specific need from each client. Elksourcing has rich experience in sourcing and consolidating different shipments for her clients in Mainland China, please feel free to ask us any question related.

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Elksourcing：How to choose a qualified supplier in China

Apr 21, 2021 Elksourcing by 露露

1.Excellent CEO or boss:

Only excellent CEO or boss can make the enterprise develop healthily and stably.

2.High-quality management team:

When the enterprise has high-quality and competent staff, the management of the company will be efficient and dynamic.

3.Stable staff:

Stability of staff can ensure the quality consistency of the product. The excessive mobility of the staff will affect the quality of product.

4.Advanced equipment and facilities:

Well-functioning machines guarantee the better quality of product.

5.Superior technology:

The enterprise should not only have high-quality staff and good management,but also have experienced and innovative technical staff. Only through continuous technological reform and innovation can the quality of the product be guaranteed and material cost be reduced.

6.Splendid management systems:

Scientific incentives,unimpeded management channels, and sound management systems can fully encourage staff to show their initiative,which also can make sure the supplier is reliable and their product and service are top-ranking.

7.Reliable quality control system：

Strict quality control measures and systems can confirm the right quality in China.

8.Timely delivery：

A good supplier should honor the contract and the lead time should be well controlled.

9.High-quality after-sales service support：

If theiry after-sale service terms is well stipulated in written forms, then it might be considered to be a good supplier as well.

As a professional sourcing service company here in China, we always use above checkpoints to access and select a qualified supplier for our clients worldwide.

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Elksourcing：How to Improve Your Vendor Relationship?

Apr 21, 2021 Elksourcing, Vendor by 露露

Sometimes, small business owners overlook the value of maintaining positive relationships with their vendors. For a business to succeed, it’s important they understand their vendors’ needs and build a strong relationship based on trust. Here are some valuable tips I learned from my experience.

1. Pay Your Bills on Time

As your vendors work on thin margins, cash flow is essential. When you consistently pay on time and respect agreed-upon conditions, you demonstrate appreciation for their contributions and your business rises to a “most trusted” status in the vendor’s eyes. This comes in handy if you need to call on the vendor for rush deliveries or other special requests.

2. Make Sure the Vendor Understands Your Goals

A vendor who “gets” your business is of far greater value than one who just goes through the motions of filling orders. Take the time to communicate your goals and where you plan to take your business in the future. Invite their suggestions on the role they can play in achieving these goals. A trusted vendor will likely have unique insights into the industry and offer helpful feedback you won’t find anywhere else.

Keep your supplier updated on planned product updates or a new launch. Extend an invitation to attend strategic meetings or to simply tour the office to get a better feel for your business. Consider visiting their place of business and learning more about how they operate as well.

3. Assign a Dedicated Vendor Manager

In most cases, the relationship works more efficiently when the vendor has a single point of contact within your business. Assign a person to take on this role and be responsible for ongoing communications. Under this arrangement, the vendor can quickly get an answer to questions regarding inventory, delivery, etc., instead of wasting time trying to find someone with the authority to make a critical vendor-related decision.

4. Find Out What the Vendor Needs from You

A strong relationship works both ways. When you understand how a vendor chooses to operate, the process generally runs smoother. Be sure you fully understand the payment terms and types of documentation the vendor requires, as well as their preferred channels and time-frame for orders and deliveries. Adjust your orders to meet these preferences and give them as much lead time on orders as possible.

5. When Mistakes Happen, Don’t Point Fingers

Problems are inevitable on the occasional processing or delivering of an order. Your vendor relationship will be strengthened if, instead of pointing finger and assigning blame, your vendor manager works with his or her counterpart to clarify the situation and take steps to ensure the same issue doesn’t crop up again.

6. Refer a Trusted Vendor to Others

When your vendor is contacted by a prospective customer that you referred, their loyalty to your business becomes stronger. This is a concrete way to show your appreciation for their services and it’s likely they will return the favor at some time in the future with a referral.

Businesses that see vendors as partners, rather than just another operational necessity, gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Because of the relationship they’ve developed, they can depend on vendors to come through in times of increased customer demand and to offer the best pricing arrangements available anywhere. In these situations, everyone wins.

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Elksourcing：Why Quality Inspection is Important?

Apr 21, 2021 Elksourcing, quality by 露露

Without proper quality control inspection, there would be a drastic increase in product recalls. Safety issues or product defects can endanger the consumer or put the seller at risk. To avoid these problems quality inspection should be done effectively by the professionals.

In order to implement an affective quality inspection, an enterprise must first decide which specific standards the product or service must meet. The inspection process must be ongoing to ensure that remedial efforts, if required, have produced satisfactory results and to immediately detect recurrences or new instances of trouble.

1. Quality Inspection Can Enhance Product Quality

Waste is expensive and it is more likely to occur when you don’t take quality control measures. If you don’t pay attention to detail or implement processes to reduce variability, you’ll have to throw away more finished inventory, costing you the price of the labor and materials that went into producing it. Pay attention to quality inspection at every level so you can identify defective materials before you combine them with useful ones; this saves your time and effort of backtracking and spending your time and money on frustrating damage control. Ensuring customer safety saves your business money and averts damage to your reputation. It is also simply the right thing to do.

Since standards have become a symbol for products and service quality, the customers are now keen on buying their products or the service from a certified manufacturer or a service provider. Therefore, complying with standards becomes a necessity when it comes to attracting the customers. Quality inspection is a broad practice used for assuring the quality of products or services.

2. Quality Inspection Can Improve Business Reputation

Quality is an important factor when it comes to your company’s reputation. In times of Facebook, Twitter and so on, it is easy to receive bad reviews about your product. On the contrary, positive reviews let your company standout. The reputation of a company is important to succeed long-term. Don’t risk your reputation because of low quality. There is no doubt that quality control is of immense importance and contributes directly to a manufacture’s reputation and bottom line. However, micromanaging one’s manufacturing process can become tedious work; especially with all other aspects of business management to consider as well.

Compliance with regulatory conditions and standards can create unnecessary bottlenecks in production when checked near the end of the assembly line. Effective quality inspection spreads this load out evenly across the entire process, with multiple checkpoints along the way. This makes for less surprise and far fewer financial losses overall. It also plays a huge part in building consistency throughout the assembly by eliminating redundant processes and scrapped materials.

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Elksourcing：Quality Inspection for Sourcing Products from China

Apr 21, 2021 Elksourcing, quality by 露露

When it comes to sourcing products from China, quality inspection is one of the most important factors that should be always considered. Quality has become a critical success factor for many organizations.

When you manufacture products in China, it is essential that you keep quality control factors in mind. Markets simply will not accept defective, unsafe and poor-quality products, regardless as to the price point and discounting. For this reason, it is important to identify the right company in order to manage quality control at the highest possible level. There are a number of key things about quality control, as shown in the following:

1) Quality and Compliance

It is important to distinguish between quality and compliance as both are key components of manufacturing processes. Quality is defined as services and products that are intended to deliver specific performance levels whilst compliance is all about meeting regulatory requirements. The organizational goals of most businesses center upon manufacturing competitive products that drive profitability, thus, ensuring that the business thrives in an environment of rising product development costs and globalization. In order to achieve these goals, factories need to ensure the creation of high quality, compliant products.

2) Manufacturing Traceability

The need for manufacturing traceability is increasing globally with commercial pressures growing to meet regulatory requirements. By mitigating the risk of product recalls, performing end-to-end quality control of processes and reducing manufacturing costs, organizations can easily handle and minimize risks across the entire supply chain. The key focus here is the ability to help manufacturers to easily identify the problem when it occurs, together with the associated details.

3) Inspection Result

When quality inspection companies inspect products, there are a number of potential outcomes. These include Pass, Fail, Hold. Pass as we all know that the product/service is fit for purpose. Fail is clearly the opposite of Pass. When the result is Fail, then the product has significant defects and cannot be shipped.

When the inspection indicates Hold, this means that there is some form of issue such as the dimensions of master carton are different to that on the PO, and other issues which need to double checked by the client. It is essential that every customer receives only those products that meet their specifications.

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Elksourcing：Steps to Get Your Own Products Made in China

Apr 20, 2021 Elksourcing, sourcing by 露露

China is always the first place you need to consider, if you have an amazing idea for a product that you believe will do well on the market. However, it is not easy to make an idea to reality, if you do not follow the right practices, you may suffer in loss of money and time. In this article, we share you the right steps to get your own products made in China.

1) Getting Drawings and a Prototype

You need to get this idea made into engineer designs and a prototype. It is crucial you get both done; it can be difficult to manufacture a product without an engineer drawing that has tolerances, bill of materials, and technical requirements. You need a prototype, so you know your product is functional and looks good. You can do this in China, but it is not easy. Communicating with an engineer in China over different time zones can be difficult enough, but when there is a language barrier, the challenge is compounded as difficult ideas and concepts can be hard to translate. Progress is much slower because of this. It is recommended that you get your design and prototype completed in America. We can help you get started on this process if you need help finding an engineering company.

2) Finding a Supplier

Okay, so now you have a good prototype with clear and exact engineer drawings. The next thing you need to do is find a factory in China that can produce your products. You basically have two options, find one yourself, or get a sourcing company to find one for you.

You may think that getting one yourself may be the cheaper solution, because you don’t have to pay a commission. In actuality, it is often more expensive. If you choose to get one yourself, you must learn the culture, fly to China, and start building business relationships over time. You would need to look for factories that have the capability to manufacture your product and keep your level of quality. You would need to visit their actual location. Just googling Chinese factories doesn’t work because many “factories” have websites but are really just a front some scammer setup out of his apartment hoping to con westerners out of their money. They could also be a real factory but may steal your product and sell a knockoff version. After a lot of flying around China while paying for a translator, you will be out a large chunk of money, with no guarantee of success.

Using sourcing agents can simplify things as you no longer have to deal with cultural differences, language barriers, time zones, the risk of getting burned by a fraudulent factory, and a whole lot of jet lag.

What makes a qualified sourcing company? Well, for one thing, the biggest isn’t always the best. Alibaba has had a number of issues over the past few years as published in many articles. A good sourcing company will have skilled people in China who either are Chinese or know the culture and language fluently. They have a longstanding history of protecting intellectual properties and know how to find qualified factories. They are responsive, pay attention to detail, and will ask a lot of questions about your situation to get a clear picture. They will help you through the import process and have a replacement policy for defective products. Sourcing agents should be upfront about fees and will work to fix any issues that occur.

3) Getting a Quote

When you find a sourcing company you like, you will need to provide them with your engineer drawings and other information such as: your shipping location, quantities to quote, packaging and labeling instructions, so they can tell you how much it will cost to produce and ship your product. Also, make sure you provide the company with any additional requirements you need your product to pass such as U.S. consumer certifications. It is a good idea to get exact quotes and not shop around for ballpark figures, so you have reliable numbers. It is important to note that cost, while important, should not be your main reason to pick one quote over another. Choosing a company that is responsive, reliable, and reputable will save you more money over the long run.

4) Purchase Order

Now you have a quote that includes sample, production, and shipping charges, along with estimated production times, you should be ready to place a purchase order. Some companies offer a third-party inspection service which may be a good investment if this is a first order or you are buying a large order. At this point, you should have been provided information about marking your product as “Made in China”, various import fees and paperwork you should expect, and you should either have your own customs broker, or have had one referred to you. Make sure the factory will make and send a sample to you before you move to production so that you will know the level of quality you will be receiving. You should also review their replacement policy.

5) Receiving Shipment

After you have signed a purchase order, you should receive a sample for approval. If there is something wrong with the sample, bring it up with your sourcing agent and have a corrected sample sent over. When you approve the sample, you should expect to pay a portion of the production order up front, and the balance when the order is ready to ship. You should expect to have to file some paperwork. Many companies will ship your products to the port you chose, and you may be responsible from shipping it from there to your door. Make sure you inspect your shipment, and the right quantities were received.

After following these steps, you should have an awesome product ready to hit the market that you can be proud of and can enjoy the success in business.

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