Elksourcing

A good Purchasing Agent plays a very important role in doing business in China, especially when you’re placing a large order: Sourcing and Verifying suppliers, Quality Control, Loading Process Supervision, Goods Consolidation, Shipping Coordination, Business Risk Control, Legal Contract Support and After-sale service. What is a purchasing agent and why do you need one? A purchasing agent could be an individual, a group of team or a company, helping companies overseas to import from China. Usually it will be supported by a team of experts in each field: sourcing, verification, order processing, quality control, etc. A good agent can be an extremely valuable asset in your overall product procurement strategy. Here are the main services offered by your qualified China purchasing agent: I. Keep finding new products and suppliers. II. Verify, inspect or audit existing suppliers. III. Price negotiations and Supply Chain Management. IV. Order processing. V. Quality Control. VI. Loading Supervision. VII….

Sourcing from China can be a good way to improve your business, but it certainly is not easy. There are countless scenarios where a supplier can end up disappointing a buyer, many of which I have experienced first-hand. So, I’ve put together 10 points on how to minimize sourcing issues and guide your China sourcing endeavors. 1) Market Analysis – Purchase negotiation is not just a simple task and often requires thorough analysis of the supplying market. This type of market analysis does not only include cost data collection, previous project experience, price variance, and product quality, but also includes the analysis of the material market and macro-economic situations. By analyzing the market in this manner, you can help place yourself in a better position to learn and take advantage of the entire purchasing life cycle and to minimize sourcing issues. 2) Supplier Competition – This can be the buyers’ trump card. Sending…

As soon as a purchase order is signed with a factory, an important next step is to engage in order follow up. This is to ensure that your suppliers are in line to produce the correct product, level of quality, special requests, shipment dates, etc. However, there can be many issues that you may encounter while performing order follow up. Here is a quick list of issues that you may find and hopefully avoid, to make sure everything in your order is correct. 1) Find that the product details the factory is using are incorrect. If you identify an issue with the product details too late in the process (either during production or after) it can be a very serious problem. An example would be if the factory had the wrong requested sizes for products that they needed to produce. This can be a burdensome task to fix, especially if production…

In China, it can be difficult to find suppliers who pay as close attention to quality as you do, or as you expect them to do. You can imagine how costly it is when quality issues occur with your orders. For those of you buying directly from the factory, here are three general tips to help you prevent quality control issues. 1. Fully Understand your Products Quality Requirements: Don’t rely on the factory to advise you on what is important for quality. Have a complete understanding of your product and the quality needs, especially for the market you intend to import to. Have a document made for the quality criteria so that you can have an inspection done according to your requirements. 2. Perform Third Party Inspection: Though your factory will have its internal quality control, it is important and necessary to perform third party inspections. As you may know,…

Dealing with a delay in production with shipping and delivery deadlines can be stressful, and the causes of these delays can seem too numerous to effectively protect yourself against. However, there are usually recurring causes for these delays which makes it possible to identify them ahead of time and take steps to help avoid the delays with your order. Reasons for Delay: The production line is too busy – This often happens with China manufacturers at the end of the year due to the Western holiday season. A quality issue arises during inspection – The result is that a partial or full reproduction is needed. Inadequate labor force – This is often due to laborers having to leave for their hometowns for seasonal harvests, or for Chinese New Year. Factory has been outsourcing production – Some factories will outsource part or even all of the work for various reasons. A…

Quality degradation is a supplier’s behavior of progressively degrading the quality of the products to earn more profits, at beginning, it’s not easy to be noticed; but when later on a significant quality degradation is found by the buyer, disputes may arise between the buyer and the supplier, which can ultimately lead to termination of agreements. Why does quality degradation occur? The most important reasons include: 1. Issues concerning business ethics Business is business. Naturally, a businessman’s end goal is to pursue high profit margins. If you do not investigate your suppliers carefully prior to engaging in trade, you may experience issues with certain suppliers beginning to degrade quality little by little over time in order to lower its costs. 2. Disconnection between quality levels of supplier and buyer Buyers can sometimes forget to specify clear levels of desired quality in their quality specifications. Additionally, suppliers tend to sway more to…

Qualifying your supplier and maintaining steady and regular audits of factories that you cooperate with is essential for China sourcing. Often buyers will assume that once a relationship with a factory has been firmly established, the hard part of the China buying process is over. However, most will find that even with some of the more reliable suppliers, without diligent quality control, situations will arise that can have potentially damaging consequences to the overall quality of your shipment. Factory qualification and due diligence is key in any sourcing program. I would recommend conducting your due diligence whenever you are looking for a new supplier, whether it is a new project or simply expanding your current production capabilities. Once you’ve started manufacturing and purchasing from a factory, continue to conduct regular onsite inspections and due diligence checks. You never know when an unexpected operational or management change can potentially harm your order….

With tools such as Alibaba or Global Sources, it’s a simple matter of an internet search to find a supplier in China, so you have the opportunity to take advantage of a large number of competitive factories in a country with low labor costs, rising productivity, advanced infrastructure, and increasingly sophisticated production capabilities. Unfortunately, though, once you have found a supplier online that claims to be able to produce your product, it’s not always smooth sailing from there. In my experience as many years in the industry, I have met with plenty of buyers that have ended up getting frustrated because they have been communicating with suppliers in China for months, without any measureable progress having been made. Often this has to do with the factory in question not actually being able to meet the buyer’s expectations or standards. To successfully find a suitable China supplier, you need a strategy,…