Guides for verifying suppliers, auditing factories, planning sourcing cost, and controlling quality in China.
How to Find Reliable Suppliers in China Without Alibaba
·5 min read
Five supplier lead channels outside the big marketplaces, what each one is actually good for, and the license checks that decide whether a lead is worth a sample order.
Protecting Your Brand in China: Trademarks and NNN Agreements
·4 min read
China registers trademarks to whoever files first, and a Western-style NDA is hard to enforce there. The order of steps that actually protects a product sourced from China: register, contract under Chinese law, record with customs.
Most CE marks are a manufacturer's self-declaration, and the certificate a Chinese supplier emails you is usually a lab document that proves far less than it appears to. What the EU, UK and US rules actually require from an importer, and how to check the paperwork.
The areas that reveal how a factory really runs — the QC bench, the rework corner, the raw material store — and the questions that separate a manufacturer from a trading desk with a showroom.
The evidence that has to exist before a claim can be argued, why the first 72 hours decide the outcome, the settlement structures that actually get agreed, and the claims that will not succeed.
The four components inside a quoted lead time, which one usually slips, why the quoted figure often starts later than the buyer assumes, and the buffer that matches each shipping mode.
Tooling and Moulds: Ownership, Cost and Protection
·4 min read
Who owns a mould you paid for, why paying the full tooling cost does not automatically give you possession, and the contract terms that decide whether you can move production later.
Calculating Container Fill: CBM, Weight and the 20ft Question
·3 min read
Internal container dimensions against the volume you can actually use, when a shipment cubes out versus weighs out, and the arithmetic that decides between one 40ft and two 20ft boxes.
What has to appear on an export carton and why, the marks that customs and warehouses actually read, and the carton specification decisions that determine whether goods arrive intact.
