One of the most fundamental factor during the sourcing process is to make sure the supplier and our sourcing professionals understands the product specifications and the level of quality you require. To save time from going back and forth with the supplier as well as to organize your thoughts thoroughly, we will ask you to spend 15 minutes to define the product that you’re looking for and fill out a form of Request for Quotation (RFQ) that we will send to the prospective suppliers.

We will begin to work on issuing an initial Product Sourcing Report once we have a deep understanding of your requirement. We will provide you with an initial Product Sourcing Report with a few number of quotes from different factories that meet your price, quality and lead time requirements. The report will give you a quick overview on the estimated costs of purchasing the goods from supplier. You’ll also be given an estimate on shipping costs across various methods of shipping. In the report, you are able to see calculated estimates on product price, shipping costs, import fees and some other possible tariff and tax, import requirements, product certifications required, and requirements for customized add-ons and product alterations.

Our Initial  Product Sourcing Reports are created by reaching out to our network of suppliers and to a small scale of suppliers found upon various databases. We compile their specifications and pricing to get average numbers that we use as estimates. We will keep you in the loop the entire way, but our experienced team of local purchasers is working on your behalf to ensure you receive best possible deals. In other words, we will work as your project manager, delivering detailed reports that we go over in as much detail as possible. Presenting you with the next steps to keep the process moving and allowing you to focus on your sales and the growth of your business.

After several days of deep work, we will provide you with an even more detailed Supplier Evaluation Report, giving you the factory information which has been analysed and organized, further detailed pricing, product descriptions and specifications. You’ll get a full understanding of the suppliers we are providing, along with their contact information, available catalogues and websites.

There are a lot of factories with different strengths and capabilities, and they all have their own pros and cons. Our number one goal is to find and negotiate with the qualified suppliers that are capable of supplying quality product that meet your specifications. Our trained negotiators are always striving for getting you the best possible deals. As we send the RFQ to suppliers and get their replies, we will screen & evaluate them not just on price but also responsiveness, service, company background and more. Usually we will call the suppliers or visit the suppliers directly, and also communicate with them via Wechat to follow up. We will use various database to find out more about their company background, factory and production information, their main products, and main export markets. Some information we will cover in the Supplier Evaluation Report include:

• Are they responsive?
• Do they answer our specific questions or do they give a generic auto response?
• Do they provide actual product photos or are they copied from somewhere else?
• What quality control system do they have?
• Do they manufacture these products themselves or are they a trading company?
• Which countries do they export to?
• We will review the supplier’s Product mix, which will be a clue telling whether this product is their strength, an ancillary product, or even if they are a trading company.
• Is the factory information and factory photos supplier provided earlier true or not.
• Contact information. Do they reply to emails? Do their telephone numbers work?
• Company registration/Business license, registered capital.
• Certification: It’s common knowledge that in China many types of quality management certifications for example ISO-9001, is easily bought. Despite the best efforts China has made in the past few years, corruption is still here. So take these certificates with a grain of salt.
• Alibaba Gold supplier certification – This is purchased by the supplier and one of Alibaba’s revenue streams. To be fair, Alibaba does attempt to verify the factory’s information but do not rely on just that.

After you receive the Initial Product Sourcing Report and Supplier Evaluation Report, we’ll begin working on negotiating & getting Samples from the qualified suppliers, then having them shipped to you.