How do you know if you can trust the company to send the products
Step by step, be patient to work out a reliable supplier.
Small orders to start with supplier, make sure everything is fine, as it is small amount, it should be ok for you, business has risk itself. There is no 100% guarantee that they are scammer, including other factor, factory shut down, they gone with money(even all license and company is there when you visit them).
Sometimes, there is big order but we have leadtime and need to place order as scheduled. then, what should we do?
1. Try to look for a supplier that is verified by a third party and years' registered member, for example, a 4-7 years registered member, and has some business record displayed there.
2.Verify company details and address info, company large or small, check if all the info is same, etc. (certainly, only a Chinese can do well for this part)
3. Visit factory to see check meet them.
4. Search from internet to see if there is any black report to this company.
5. Hire an agent to take care of the order for you even the company is licensed, you still need quality control before shipment.
Retailer, wholesaler buying product from china — Aliexpress
Today, the internet business developing so fast, from B2B to B2C, more and more oversea retailer, wholesalers changed their purchasing resource from local distributor/importer to buying directly from China to save their cost.
In deed, this way can save the middleman cost, but there are more and more complaint and faulty products happened during these direct transaction, because their is no third party(middleman) to control the goods. For example, a retailer or wholesaler buying machines from China on aliexpress, if the seller on aliexpress is reliable, certainly, everything goes fine, but once you meet an unprofessional one that have never export to your country, then faulty goods may happened. for machines, there are more specification to meet each countries' standard, that means this machine only suitable for certain countries. So, this kind of products you should buy from local distributor, because they have test the machine to meet your countries' standard with samples and then custom production. you should know that 90% of China products are custom made for worldwide importers.
I do not suggest any people to buy machine or something similar by retail or wholesale from China, a professional importer is needed, what is professional importer?
It is importers buy sample from the supplier to test in his country, if everything goes well, then they place order for bulk production according to the sample.
Buying from China sometimes is cheap, but be careful that it is not for everything.
For this kind of item, you can buy from your local distributor or wholesaler, and that is real warranty. Some seller give warranty on the listings, but they are heavy items and impossible to return to China. So, real warranty will not be executed.
Shipping basics for newbie
it depends on the quantity your buy and how would you like to ship them, by air or by sea.
But to have another company arranging these things will be better , usually, you can send an inquiry to supplier to get a rough cost for both. if by air express, if their price is ok, then you can just ask the supplier to ship for you. From my experience, most of suppliers do not have good resource of good rates, certainly, there are some supplier also offer great rate.
When you need your goods shipping by sea, you must not ask the supplier to ship for you, because the china forwarder will forward all the cost to your destination port, and they quote very cheap price to China suppliers. The best way is you find a forwarder at your end, ask the supplier to quote product price by FOB terms, give contact of your fowarder to the supplier to ship the goods.
If you want to save your work, you can pay for a little service fee to a sourcing agent for handling all these work. they can offer the service like Sourcing products, place orders, inspect the goods, arrange goods with supplier to warehouse, consolidate shipment, handling export, documentations, etc.
Benefit of using a good sourcing agent
Besides professional of industry/products, it is also like hiring a staff for a company, using a sourcing company is like to have a good staff working for the company inChina, for example, as a sourcing agent of me, my client do research with a list for the items and send to me. so I will be the staff of my client's company to be purchasing manager, and doing the work:
Sourcing products, place orders, inspect the goods, arrange goods with supplier to warehouse, consolidate shipment, handling export, documentations, etc. lets say there are more than 10 suppliers or more into a container.
If the client want to deal with suppliers directly, he will certainly need to hire a staff in his country, and I am sure the salary will be double or more than a sourcing agent in China, and this staff can not compare with a sourcing agent for communication with local Chinese suppliers.
From the above, you can see there will need a "good" staff, whether this staff has enough experience to manage these work, rather than experience, ability of the person to solve problems is more important, intelligent enough, etc. Intelligent is the key to compare with professional of products, for me, when I start my sourcing agent service, a lot of products is new to me and never deal with them before, if you are smart enough, then you will use your brain to study by yourself to be familiar with products, in this internet world, a lot of things you can learn by yourself, just need to work hard.
All this is also "good" factor of a sourcing agent as a staff of a oversea company.
To use a sourcing agent or not, pls be serious.
It is happy to receive a client's inquiry that interested in my service, most of them come to learn me from my blog articles or my reply to other clients for solution of problems, thand I am rather happy that they like my opinion and their trust to me.
But, when I receive their inquiry with words like "I will be making a purchase soon, and maybe, I could use your help with inspecting factories and inspecting Goods...assuring quality trading service.." they contact me just "maybe", and then another words "Please provide me with a list of suppliers for this product, who is reliable and who is not. Company names, informations, order limits etc." they send these words even we do not talk about any cooperation terms, or my service charge, who knows, after I work out a list of suppliers, they can not accept my service fee. This looks they do not respect other people's work. maybe it takes one or two days's work to collect those suppliers, but will be ignored as we do not confirm any cooperation words.
What I want to say is : you can not treat a sourcing agent like sending inquiry to a supplier who they have a quotation list ready every moment and send to all buyers by the same. a sourcing agent is partner, who can decide success of your business, and give solutions depending on what help you need.
How to select a good sourcing agent for custom make a electronic product?
This is called OEM project, and you do need one to take care of this OEM project, for example, plastic case after mould tooling, functional testing, if possible, PCB design is also the quality that you can identify for the item, hot release, etc. when an electronic item developed, there will be a lot of defectives need to be approved, so this agent will represent you to control them.
To start this project, you will need to search a quality manufacturer, Shenzhen would be the best place for electronic items, since it is a customized item, after you choosed a supplier, you will need to do with these steps:
1. Sending samples or designs to the manufacturer for a quotation, including(unit price, mould fee, sample fee, and time schedule for all of them), if possible, advise the supplier when the item need to be finished. Note: unit price will need supplier to quote for different quantity, such like initial order quantity and regular quantity, there will be a difference.
2. Sending payment for mould fee and sample fee to supplier, start tooling and making samples, if possible, your agent take care of the sample parts quality, such like material or workmanship, and final finished sample will still send to you for approval.
3. Placing initial order, as it is a new item, a rate of defectives will be higher, so, the agent need to be professional and careful enough to found out any problems, almost need to spend more time at workmanship, and do more random inspection to ensure everything goes fine.
4. After item sold into market, there should be some problems found by consumers, well, even how professional inspection still hard to avoid this, then you need a good communication with supplier for approvement and revision.
Controling and communication is important for this kind of case, so you do need to let your sourcing agent understand your item, so that he can control and work better for you.
Regarding the cost that a sourcing agent, I think a nice job is better than any cost, certainly, cost should be fair for both party. remember, a nice work will also make you good selling too, this is how sourcing agent live.
Container Shipping| Two Shipments from Two Suppliers in China
This is the case that two shipments from two province in China, and 50% for each of the supplier for the container.
You need to have an forwarder to handle your shipment first, if possible, a forwarder from your country would be cheaper for the total shipping cost, such like port charge, handling fee, etc.
Ask your forwarder to quote freight from two port and how long to it will take, then you can select one of the route. Tell your forwarder that your goods are at two place, then they will arrange a warehouse for one of the supplier to deliver goods, they can load container at two places but same port, this would avoid damage of the goods, anyway your forwarder can handle this. You need to talk to one of your supplier that if they can deliver the goods to the other port warehouse that the forwarder arranged. and see if they will charge more.
If you want to release two bill of lading for two suppliers, you will need to ask them to book shipping space with your forwarder. if you want just to be one bill of lading, you need to pay for the goods to the supplier before shipment, otherwise they won't deliver the goods. Then there would be a problem concern about shipper name list on the bill of lading, if possible, you can just ask your forwarder to make all documents from their company, as invoice and pakcing would need one company name too.
how do you choose the company you cooperation ?
We are working as a Purchase Agent, I think it would be a good thing for us to answer this quality that how we choose company to work with us. Here are some tips:
1. Person from the supplier should be smart enough to work with us.
2. Check if they are professional for making similar item with us.
3. Check if they are making high end or low end items.
4. Quality or requirement, these will need to understand after visit supplier, need to see their company ability.
All the above points is to avoid problems during production.
Freight for Import from China, by Sea or by Air
If you are going to import from china, there would be cost at your port, usually they are shipping cost,VAT,duty,
port cost, handling fee,
reloading fee, etc.
This is because you use a China local forwarder to ship the goods to you, I am sure the forwarder is arranged by your supplier,
if by CIF terms, it is just costing them 1-10$ per cbm, some even give free freight to the supplier, and forwarder just put
those fee into the debit of buyers(destination port).
The best solution is you search a forwarder locally in UK, in this way the local charge will be much cheaper, certainly,
before you working with them, ask them to send you a quote for LCL and FCL, then you just need to give contact to supplier
for booking shipping space for shipment, or ask forwarder to contact supplier, you can even ask the forwarder to pick up goods
from the supplier and ship to you.
For me, sometime my clients do not have a forwarder for shipping, I will use my cooperated forwarder, but besides asking
price of freight, I also ask them to quote the destination port cost, this will avoid them charge too much to my clients.
and make happy business.
is it reliable for a China manufacturer with HK business license?
In fact, we can not recoginize the supplier by their company registering situation.
In China, there are some bosses of companes registered formally with government, but they still can take the money of the company and run. What would you say for this?
The other way, some are just middleman when they list the company on internet, I was once helped a client to visit the factory for onsite audit before he place order, actually, I was just there to see if the company is good enough for us to work with, but when I was there, I noticed that the businessman who deal with my client was just a middleman, and not belong to the factory where he said was their factory. I report this to my client, he asked me to find another factory for him finally, and order was well produced and he was happy with the quality.
If you are not a Chinese, I am sure it is impossible you can not recognize this.