What I got wrong buying from China, and what I do about it now that I am the one selling
Peter Yang bought from China before he sold into it, and got it wrong the first time round.
He writes from his own experience, and says so when the experience is his and when a question is one he has not thought all the way through. The view is his; SUNWARD INDUSTRY sets the commercial terms, and a price comes as a written quotation.
The reason this section exists: almost everything written about sourcing from China is written by sellers describing themselves. This is the other half - what a buyer actually ran into, and what a seller who has been on that side does about it now.
It 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.
These sit next to Counterparty risk, which covers a different failure: not whether a supplier is worth buying from, but whether it is real and whether it will still be there when the money is due. And Factory or trading company covers the question that comes before either of them: which kind of supplier your order needs, and what each one is actually good at.
Most supplier problems are not caused by exotic fraud. They are caused by ordinary gaps in what you checked and what you assumed. These notes are the things I learned the expensive way, written down so the next buyer does not have to pay for the same lesson.
Two rules I work by. First, write down what actually happened rather than what could have happened. Second, if a question has a real answer, the supplier has one; if it does not, so do they, and that tells you something.
Whether a supplier is a factory or a trading company matters far less than whether the price matches your cost expectation and whether quality is protected in writing. A trading company does not necessarily quote higher - the gap comes from volume, not from the middleman.
The Gold Supplier badge means the seller paid for a more expensive annual subscription. It does tell you the company is genuinely trading. It tells you nothing about the quality of the goods.
When a supplier has one or two thin pages and the content does not really match the product, my reading is that the product is not something they genuinely trade. It may simply be listed to make the catalogue look broader than it is.
A price below the market is not a bargain, it is information. Every product has a cost and a market, so a quote under the market means either someone is trying to lure you into the transaction, or the quality is not what appears to be - and in neither case will the supplier volunteer which.
The core of a factory is management, not photography. The same product tested at a different time, by a different operator, on different equipment, by a different method, will give a different result - and in practice that happens almost every time. So the thing worth evaluating is the process control, not the building.
I have bought chemicals and feed materials, arranged production across several Chinese factories, and been on the losing end of a transaction that looked documented in every direction. I have also spent years answering the same questions from the other side of the table, which is a useful education in what buyers are actually worried about.
I am not claiming any of this is universal. Different products, different risks. But the judgement is transferable, and it is offered freely.