Since October 2026 Seller's notes

Counterparty Risk

What I have seen go wrong on both sides of a trade, and what I do about it now that I am the one selling

Peter Yang sells chemicals from China, and has been on the wrong end of a trade himself.

He has sat on the buying side, worked inside a factory, been paid late, and now sells from this side. Everything below is what he has actually seen, and what he does about it in the orders he handles.

The view is his; SUNWARD INDUSTRY sets the commercial terms. If you are choosing who to buy from, this section was written by the person who will handle your order - tell him what you need and you will get a price within two business days.

Whether you are buying a container of chemicals or selling one, the first thing you want is not to be cheated: that the money is safe, that the goods are real, and that the other side honours the deal. That is what all the negotiation is actually for. The price is the visible part of it. The part underneath is both sides working out whether the person they are dealing with is real.

This is an odd thing for a supplier to publish, and it is worth saying why I publish it anyway. Most of what is written about trading with China is written by sellers describing themselves. I sell chemicals, and I am also the person who has sat on the buying side and got it wrong. That is the reason these notes are worth a buyer's attention: they come from the failure, not from the pitch.

One thing to say up front, because it is where people expect a list: there is no complete checklist. Even people with twenty years in this trade do not have a systematic standard for judging a company, and the ones who are certain they do are the ones who get hurt. A checklist raises the odds slightly and then makes the risk feel handled. What follows is judgement, written down, so that at least it is somebody's judgement and not a generic list — and so that you can read the person selling to you by what he has seen, rather than by what he promises.

Judgement

How I Read a Factory, From Having Worked Inside One

What counts as evidence is the difference between the day somebody is watching and the rest of the month. I had the unusual position of seeing both, because before I bought anything I worked inside a plant in China as assistant and translator to the industrial director, who was a foreigner and spoke no Chinese. A plant can perform for the watched day, and it can produce its paperwork for a visitor, down to the production record for the batch, because that record is written down after the fact rather than kept live. What cannot be staged is the record for the weeks when nobody was there, and that is the part that tells you whether the factory behind a supplier is real.

Judgement 5 questions answered 2026-10-19

Payment and documents

The Bank Account Is Where a Counterparty Shows Itself

The payment details are the point at which a counterparty reveals its structure. A company registered in one country collecting into an account in another, without a reason that is normal in international trade, is telling you something - and the name on the account that does not quite match the name on the invoice is the same message in smaller letters.

Payment and documents 3 questions answered 2026-10-19

Why More Suppliers Want the Money Before They Ship

The normal arrangement in this trade is 30 per cent on order and the balance of 70 per cent against a copy of the bill of lading, and it rests on a site visit rather than on paper. Payment terms do not reduce risk. They decide who is holding it. A supplier asking for the money before loading is reporting on the year they have had, not on their character, and the request moves the risk onto you rather than removing it. The thing that is actually yours to decide is the size of the first transaction: if the money and the container are both exposed before anything moves, the first container has to be one whose loss would not stop you.

Payment and documents 5 questions answered 2026-10-19

Fraud

A Supplier's Website You Cannot Tell From the Real One

A name has to be the same name in a domain, in a bank account, in a company register and in a shipping document. A page is read, and anything that is read can be assembled out of characters that render exactly like the ones you expect — a Cyrillic letter standing where a Latin one should be, at the same size, in the same font, in the same word. The site is a claim about what somebody sells, and the evidence is in those four places rather than on the page — a website cannot fake a name that has to hold in all of them. I have met it in a trade where the first result on the page was not the company, the collection account was where it broke, and the seller's own embassy in China was the way back to the real one. So stop reading the page and read the domain: copy it rather than click it and look at the characters one at a time, and arrive at the site from a link you trust rather than from a search result.

Fraud 5 questions answered 2026-10-19

When the Result Above the Factory Is a Fake

Search ranking can be bought, and what is being bought is the enquiry, not the factory. A ranking is a good answer to "who wants my enquiry" and a very poor answer to "who can supply this", and the two get confused constantly because they look identical from the results page. A company with no plant, no stock and no intention of shipping can outrank a manufacturer that has been making the material for years, and the competence that makes the approach work is bought rather than earned. The conversation can be rehearsed; a collection account in the wrong country cannot. I have seen what that is worth: in South American meat, the first company on the results page was the one I wrote to, the collection account was where it gave itself away, and the seller's own embassy in China was the only way back to the company that actually existed. Buyers lose more than ten million dollars a year between them and none of it comes back.

Fraud 4 questions answered 2026-10-19

Counterparty behaviour

The Customer Who Never Took Delivery

A dispute that appears after the goods have shipped is not always a quality dispute. Sometimes the order was never meant to be taken, and the complaints are the route to a discount, a return, or a payment that was never intended to be made in full.

Counterparty behaviour 3 questions answered 2026-10-19

Bad Times Make Better Liars

A weak economy raises the number of dishonest counterparties and the number of honest ones who will fail, and it does both to the same buyer. The response is not to look for better intentions, because intentions are not what changed - it is to look for counterparties whose position is strong enough that honesty is their cheaper option.

Counterparty behaviour 3 questions answered 2026-10-19

These sit alongside the Trade Notes, which are about the other half of the problem: whether a supplier is worth buying from at all, as opposed to whether it is real. And the company FAQ covers how we work when you have decided to buy.