How to secure your purchases in China

China has a wide range of factories and leads the world market in industrial productions. With its developed logistics, it is now easy to import from China and suppliers are easily found on the internet and in fairs.

Nowadays, buyers from the whole world make their purchases in China. There is however a major issue which is securing your purchases. The best solution to that issue is to make quality control inspections on the different steps of production.

 Inspection at the beginning of production

The inspection company will verify the techniques, the production tools, the raw materials, the different components and the management of your supplier. This will allow you to automatically detect any problems and to correct them.

During production inspection

The inspection during production is the next step, it is done when at least 20% of the products are already made. It allows you to check that if the products are in accordance with their specifications so that you can fix any defects in case of problem. It will also give you a more realistic idea of your delivery times which will allow you to book your transport with your forwarding agent.

Pre-shipmentInspection

This inspection is mandatory to all buyers, it is done when at least 80% of the products are finished and packed. The inspector will select product samples and achieve a series of tests to check the functions, the weight, the measurements, the packaging and the barcodes.

The container loading inspection

This is the last step to assure the quantity of your products, the quality of your products, the loading of your products and the state of the container. The container will be sealed and you can check upon arrival the sealing numbers to make sure the container was not opened.

For each inspection, you will receive a report with a result showing the number of defects found by the inspector. If the result is not in line with your expectations, you will be able to ask your supplier to correct those defects.

There are many advantages with quality control. You will reduce the amount of defects, you will save money by receiving products in good conditions, you will be able to control the delivery times and lastly you will be able to keep the factory under pressure during the whole production.

Those different type of inspections have a cost. However, you do not have to use all of the inspections depending on your product and the amount of products you are ordering.

How to find a good chinese supplier

The major part of the world’s production is made in China, there are companies specialized in a very large field of activities. The major difficulty is to find the right company to work with, the one with a good value for money and reasonable delivery times. In China, there is a strong geographical specialization of factories per region or per city. The first step of finding good providers in China is to determine the geographical place of production for your type of product. The second step is to localize them and verify their prices. The third step is to sort among all the companies. The fourth step is to verify if those factories actually exist and to do an audit of those factories before ordering their products.

 Where can we find interesting products in China ?

Each Chinese region has its own specializations, Shenzhen is specialized in electronics and new technologies, Wenzhou is specialized in shoes, Zhangjiagang is specialized in glass production, Shaoxing is specialized in textile production, Xiamen is specialized in porcelain, etc …

 How do we find them ?

Online platforms such as Alibaba and Made-in-China are used to find those products. However you won’t find all the companies. There is an even bigger offer on websites written in Chinese, the only difficulty is the language barrier to contact the factories. Once we have the contact informations of all those companies, we have to contact a large number of them to verify if they can make the products we want and what their prices are.

How to choose the best companies ?

First of all, we have to take into account different criterias such as their prices, delivery times, size of their factory and its localization. The prices and delivery times have to be realistic. Prices being too low could be problematic as it could mean that the company does not use the right production materials. Are we sure that they guarantee our order ?

Once the selecting process is done, we will have to verify the existence of those companies.

How to verify the existence of a Chinese company ?

 You can use specialized websites which will send you a report under 24 hours. They will check if the company has a valid business licence, they will check their field of activity and if they are an actual factory or if they are traders.

Some companies may send you fake certificates, because of that, it is really important to verify from the beginning. Once you have verified that, you have to order samples to verify the quality of their products. Finally, you will to do and audit on the factory.

Why doing a factory audit ?

Doing a factory audit will give you the perfect photograph of the company. Doing a simple factory audit will make sure that the factory has the financial capabilities of treating your order. You will have a confirmation of the size of their workplace, the number of employees they have, the quality of their machines and the clients they work with. The factory audit will let you know if the factory has orders going on their production line, what products they have in stock and which raw materials they have in their factory.