Read To Know How You Can Find A Reliable Chinese Product Supplier

These days, China has emerged as a major producer of various manufactured goods as compared to any other country all over the world. Therefore, it is no wonder that China is often called one of the ‘World’s Factory,’ in the manufacturing sector.

The main reason why China has emerged as the most important as well as the cheapest source of manufacturing various industrial products is because of the availability of cheap labour sources.

Therefore, if you like to make your business more cost-effective and competitive in the market, then find a source of your input from any suitable Chinese source.

However, any businessman, especially from a western country, may face serious language problem while dealing with any Chinese company. Besides that, the business practices prevailing in China can be very confusing for a businessman from outside the country.

Therefore, if you are looking for any China suppliers online you may surely come across quite a few of them, but it will be very difficult for you to proceed any further.

What are the various ways to locate the right Chinese product supplier?

Any of your business colleagues in your own country can tell you about various risks that you may face while finding any Chinese product source.

The general view of people is that there are many dishonest Chinese suppliers who may supply you with poor-quality products. Of course, there are quite a few bad apples that have made a bad name for Chinese products, but that does not mean that all the Chinese suppliers are bad.

Therefore, in this post, we will discuss how you can identify a good Chinese product supplier so that you can find a suitable supplier partner in China and develop a long-term business relationship.

The following are a few effective ways to identify suitable Chinese product sources:

Internet search

The internet search is the most cost-effective way to start your search for your China suppliers online in the following search sites:

• Google
• Bing

And a few B2B platforms for sourcing Chinese products such as:

• Alibaba
• Global Sources
• Made-in-China.com.

You can streamline your internet search by filtering your search results for only companies that have the following labels:

• Gold member
• Onsite supplier
• Verified supplier
• Accredited supplier.

Use social media

Using social media may not be an ideal platform for identifying suppliers. Only very few suppliers may have presence on social media, but they can also be a potential source for getting feedback or reviews about various suppliers.

Hence, be a little cautious while relying on any such platforms and do your diligence because the information available may often be unverified, sample sizes can be small, reviews are often subjective.

Visit trade shows

Visiting trade shows can be another good way of finding legitimate suppliers. You can get an opportunity to personally talk to the representatives of your potential suppliers and know more details about their products, companies, production capacity, and also quality-control procedures.

Such direct interaction will help you to evaluate suppliers and also verify their capabilities.

Verify suppliers

Just reading the details about the China suppliers online may not be enough and it is necessary to perform adequate verification on your potential suppliers.

Whatever information is provided by your supplier on the website and all other media channels will be a good start, however, if you are really interested in seriously verifying the supplier, then you have to verify whether really the supplier exists what it is claimed on their website.

Identify a sourcing partner in China

Any sourcing partner is a 3rd-party that can help you to find genuine suppliers for you in a certain country. Generally, these sourcing agents will be quite familiar with the local business practices and other details of that particular country and also familiar with speaking the local language.

If you do a simple internet search then you can get a big list of such sourcing agents. You must check the following while selecting your sourcing agent:

• Check the location
• Experience as a sourcing agent
• Check for reference
• Necessary documents
• Check how they ensure quality
• Check license
• Check both spoken and writing skills in English
• Expertise in your product
• Check his business ethics

How to differentiate between a manufacturer and a trading company?

Often when you try to find China suppliers online then many trading companies can also contact you posing as manufacturers. Therefore, it is essential to know with whom you are communicating. The following tips can help you to differentiate between them:

1. Most manufacturing companies will produce only certain specific products so that they can make their process costs as well as overhead costs low. If a company is advertising several products then it is more likely that the company is a middleman instead of a manufacturer.
2. Generally, trading companies maintain a certain business name that can be quite appealing to global buyers. However, any genuine manufacturers will include the name of its city or town where they are based within their company name.
3. You must also check the factory address on the business card of the company. Check whether the address location is a certain downtown area or located on the twentieth floor of any building. Check whether it is mentioned as a sales office.

If no such mention is available then it can be a trading company.

4. Most trading companies will have websites written in English for impressing foreign buyers. Most small Chinese manufacturers will not have any website, or even if they have, then it will be mixed with Chinese and poorly written English.

However, a bigger Chinese company may have well-written English and sophisticated website too. This can also be another indication of the size of the company.

5. You may ask for any quality certification of the company and any factory will surely be listed as certificate owner.

While looking for China suppliers online, performing all these simple checks can be quite useful. However, if you have a trusted sourcing agent available in China then he will ensure that you will deal with a genuine manufacturer in China.