supplier

A Factory Audit is a comprehensive yet cost-effective way to make sure your vendor is reliable and offers quality products whether you’re just beginning to work with a factory or want to assess an existing supplier. A common factory audit includes many additional benchmarks, giving you robust insights to the way the factory is managed. Before you place any order, learn why a factoryaudit can save you from making a huge mistake by choosing the wrong factory. 1. Verify Supplier Legitimacy Working with suppliers in China comes with risk, but a factory audit from a reputable quality control firm minimizes uncertainties. It’s difficult to verify a supplier’s claims from a distance, in particular without having industry knowledge. A factory audit can ensure that the factory is legal and has all the necessary certification and licenses to be able to sell and export goods. 2. Confirm Supplier’s Product Expertise A factory audit gives you an inside look at the factory’s showroom…

Supplier chain is an integral factor in the success of your importing business. They can work like a well-oiled machine, where confidence levels are high, and the quality and delivery of products and services from your suppliers exceeds your expectations. Or they can become a burden to bear, swallow up precious resources and cost your business thousands of dollars in administration and performance management. Like most importers, you probably find yourself in a situation somewhere between these two extremes. But there’s hope when it comes to finding and developing great supplier relationships. Stick to this step-by-step approach, you’ll be reaping the rewards of supplier chain management. 1). Supplier selection Choosing suppliers is crucial to your business. And categorizing your supply base is also vital to making the most of your available resources when managing those suppliers. Importers often consider various criteria for evaluating potential suppliers when beginning their search, such as:  A.   Minimum…

Whether you decide to try a sourcing agent, continue sourcing on your own, or to use an online sourcing platform, you should still understand how to properly determine if a supplier is the right match for your ecommerce store.   Here are 5 factors you should consider when determining if a supplier is right. 1. Margin  It seems obvious that the price per unit needs to be low enough that you have room to take a healthy profit. However, there are many factors beyond price per unit to consider when determining the actual price of your products: Get a shipping quote: Distance, country of origin, and available shipping methods all have a major impact on the overall shipping price. Before committing to production, make sure you get quotes from your own freight forwarding partner or their internal shipping managers. Calculate customs duties: When importing goods, you may be subject to additional fees…

If properly managed, sourcing from China can bring good profits, however, it’s crucial to work with good suppliers, or the whole business could be a disaster. This is a tricky process. In this article, we will advise you how to identify and communicate with potential suppliers. 1. Drawing your ideal supplier profile Ask yourself a few questions: Do you need a supplier with strong engineering capabilities (to develop new products)? Do you need them to have a wide range of designs that you can choose from? Do you want them to focus on low cost? Or on high quality? How big should they be? This is a very important criterion. If your orders are not big enough (over 20K pcs per order), you might need to work with a sourcing company that will place your orders in a medium sized factory and follow production closely. 2. Go to online B2B directories and/or trade…

During your importing business, if you work with several Chinese suppliers, you will have to deal with production problems, especially for new suppliers. It might be a factory refusing to rework substandard goods, or an unacceptable delay, or simply a project that comes to a full stop without warning. What to do for you as an importer in such a situation? 1. Show that you are ready to walk away The favorite strategy of Chinese factories that don’t want to correct problems is… to wait. And wait. Until their customer (who needs to deliver his own customers) must let them ship. So, the first thing to do is to give them the feeling that you’d rather cancel the order (and lose your deposit, if you wired some cash before shipment) rather than receiving products that can’t be sold at all on your market. The second step is to try to understand…

After hard work for some while, you have verified a few manufacturers when sourcing from China. One of them will be your first choice, and hopefully you will have a couple of “backups”. What is the best way to handle them? And what about the unfortunate situation where your “first choice” disappoints you? 1. Cultivate your “second choice” With a bit of luck, you have found and verified a supplier that seems quite promising. If you want to reduce your risks of long delays, I strongly encourage you to keep communication open with a few more suppliers. I even believe you should spend the time and the money to verify at least one more supplier, and to start working on pre-production samples with that supplier, even though they are not your first choice. 2. Those “never again” suppliers Some suppliers will prove to be untrustworthy. The worst scenario, which happens every day,…

When it comes to importing from China, finding the right suppliers is critical. It determines whether it will be a good start of the entire procurement process or not. After you have found out some candidate suppliers, you need to figure out which one is your right fit. There’s no one-size-fits-all supplier. That’s why you want to find a supplier that matches the portrait you draw in the groundwork for supplier evaluation. So, what to look to verify suppliers in China? 1). Company background Is the supplier legitimate? Is the product compliant with importing country regulations? Ask suppliers whether they can send you copies of these official documents like below: Business license, Business registration, Certificates, Patents, and so on. Check the company presence on the internet. Are there any reviews about this company online? Can the company provide any references from their real clients? 2). Business model Check the product range…

After you attend Canton Fair or HK Show, you collect many contacts for a potential supplier in China. What to do the next? Follow below five steps to successfully dealing with Chinese suppliers. 1. Develop the Relationship The first step before striking a deal with a supplier is to reach out and request samples of the specific product. Not only does this allow you to get a hands-on feel of the product, it helps both you and the manufacturer agree on the product requirements and cost. Oftentimes, language and cultural differences can slow down the communication process, but it’s vital to iron out these details upfront before placing a large order. 2. Perform Due Diligence Once you’re happy with the product, it’s important to perform background research to make sure you’re dealing with a reputable company. There are several free resources available online that allow you to find blacklisted companies throughout China,…