This article is mainly aimed at importer who have little experience in purchasing in China. The contents includes the complete process of sourcing from China, as follows:
Select the category of products you want
Find Chinese suppliers (online or offline)
Judge authenticity/negotiation/price comparison
Place orders
Check sample quality
Regularly follow up orders
Goods transportation
Goods acceptance
1. Select the category of products you want
You can find countless kinds of products in China. But, how to choose the goods you want from so many goods?
If you feel confusing about what to buy, here are some suggestions:
1. Pick a hot item on Amazon
2. Choose high quality goods with good materials
3. Products with unique designs
For new importer, we don't recommend you buy market saturation, competitive big goods. Your goods should be attractive, that will help you start you own import buesness easilar. You can make the decision according to your own situation. in addition, it is also very important to make sure that the products you need have been allowed into your country.
The goods usually not be allowed to be imported:
counterfeit products
tobacco-related products
flammable and explosive dangerous goods
pharmaceuticals
animal skins
meat
dairy products
Some China Import Products List
2. Find Chinese suppliers
Chinese suppliers are mainly divided into: Manufacturers, Trading companies and Sourcing Agent
What kind of buyers are suitable for looking for Chinese manufacturers?
Manufacturers can produce products directly. A buyer who customizes products in large numbers. For example, if you need a large number of cups with pictures of your pet , or if you just need a lot of metal parts to assemble your product -- then choosing a manufacturer is a good choice.
Depending on the scale of factory. Different Chinese factories make different kinds of products .
Some factories may produce components, while others may produce only one category of screws within a component.
What kind of buyers are suitable for looking for Chinese trading companies?
If you want to purchase a regular variety of products in a variety of categories, and the number of items required for each is not very large, then choosing a trading company is more appropriate.
What is the advantage of a Chinese trading company over a manufacturer? You can start your business with a small order, and the trading company won't mind starting a new customer with a small order.
What kind of buyers are suitable for looking for Chinese Sourcing Agent?
Buyer who pursuit of high quality products
Buyer who have a wide range of products needed
Buyer who have custom requirements
Professional China sourcing agents know how to find the best product by make good use of their professional knowledge and abundant supplier resources.
Some time professional sourcing agent may help purchaser get better price than the factory and lower the minimum quantity of an order .
The most inportent reason is it will help you save a lot of time.
When looking for a manufacturer/trading company type supplier,
you may need to use a few Chinese wholesale websites:
Alibaba.com:
One of the most popular wholesale websites in China is the international version of 1688, which has a wide range of products and suppliers, just be careful not to choose fake or unreliable suppliers.
AliExpress.com:
There are more individuals and trading companies in the seller category, because there is no minimum order, it is sometimes convenient to shop for groceries, but you should have a hard time finding large manufacturers because they have limited time to handle such small orders.
DHgate.com:
Most of the suppliers are small and medium-sized factories and trading companies.
Made-In-China.com:
Most of the wholesale sites are factories and large companies. There are no small orders, but they are relatively safe.
Globalsources.com:
Globalsource is also one of the common wholesale websites in China, user-friendly and provides you with information about trade exhibitions.
Chinabrands.com:
It covers a complete catalogue, and most products have written descriptions.The minimum order quantity is subject to the negotiation between the buyer and the seller. There is no specific limit on the minimum order quantity.
Sellersuniononline.com:
Over 500,000 China products and 18,000 suppliers on the wholesale site. They also provide China sourcing agent service.
We have wrote about “how to find reliable suppliers in China”before, if you are interested in details, just click.
3. Purchase products
If you have selected several Chinese suppliers that look reliable in the last step.It’s time to ask them for their quotations and compare them with each other.
Before you compare prices, you need at least 5-10 suppliers to provide prices to you.Those are for you to analyze the benchmark price. Each product category needs at least 5 companies to compare. More types you need purchase, more time you nees to spend. So ,we advise buyer who needs multiple commodity types choose a sourcing agent in China. They can save lots of time for you. I would like to recommend Yiwu's largest sourcing agent company-Sellers Union.
If all the suppliers you found offered you a reasonable price，that’s great , It means you did a good job in the last step of sourcing . But in the meantime,It also means there's not much room to bargain on unit price.
Let’s put our attention on product quality
There are many reasons if the price have a big difference between these suppliers. May be one or two suppliers trying to make a lot of money in it, but the price is particularly low, may also be the quality of the product to cut corners. In the purchase of products, the price is not all, must remember this.
Next, categorize the quotations you are interested in and those you are not interested.
Do quotations that don't interest you become garbage in the recycling bin? No, actually you can know more market information by asking them some questions ,such as
- Are you a factory or a trade company, or a purchasing agent
- What machines do you use to make your products
- Does your factory have a quality certificate for this product
- Does your factory have its own design? Will there be infringement problems?
- The price of your products is much higher than the market price. Is there any special reason?
- The price of your products is much lower than the market price. That's good, but is there any special reason? I hope it's not because the materials you use are different from other materials.
The purpose of this step is to improve your understanding of the market, including materials, reasons for price differences, etc.
Finish this step as quickly as possible, get the information you want, don't spend too much time on it, you still have a lot of work to do.
After finish this , we look back to our interesting quotations.
First of all, be patient and polite to your suppliers for providing the quotation service free of charge (this helps close the relationship) and confirm that the material used is indeed what is expected
You can ask them
"We are evaluating all the quotations we have received, your prices are not the most competitive, can you tell us about your materials and workmanship?”
“We sincerely look forward to cooperation and hope that you can offer us the best price. Of course, this is based on our satisfaction with the quality of the samples.”
If you are in purchase through offline, you need to visit multiple suppliers on site to compare and select the most cost-effective products. You can see touch the physical field, but you cann't write down directly, direct comparison in the brain. This requires considerable experience. And even find looks basically the same product in the market, it may vary in small details. But again, ask at least 5-10 stores, and don’t forget to take pictures and record prices for each product.
Some famous Chinese wholesale markets:
Yiwu International Trade City
Guangzhou Garment Market
Shantou toy market
Huaqiangbei Electronic Market
4. Place Orders
Congratulations! You have completed half of the process.
Now, you need to sign a contract with the supplier to ensure product quality and punctual delivery.You'd better mention the delivery date and delivery method in the contract: Delivery time, Delivery way , Package , Acceptance criteria , the settlement method , quality inspection and acceptance standards, as detailed as possible to think of all possible situations, just in case.
5. Check sample quality
In China, there are people and organizations who check the quality of products for customers. We can call them inspectors.
A professional inspector will make the first inspection before the production, usually checking:
Raw materials, semi-finished products, prototypes or samples of customer satisfaction as well as their production equipment and workshops, remember to keep samples for final verification after these inspections, starting with the raw material stage to avoid some of the major losses due to raw materials.
But! Only check onece , you still can't guarantee that they will outsource your raw materials to other factories, the quality of workers and the factory environment may not be up to your requirements, so if you can't do regular inspection, it is better to entrust a Chinese agent to perform this operation for you.
Follow up your orders to make sure production is on track, indicate that you want to understand the product situation through live video or pictures..
Note: Not all factories will cooperate with you to complete this work.
6. Shipping goods from China
Four words you must know in order to ship products from China to your country: EXW; FOB; CFR and CIF
EXW: Ex Works
Supplier is responsible for having the product available and ready for delivery when it comes out of the factory.
The carrier or freight forwarder is responsible for receiving the goods from outside the factory to the final place of delivery
FOB: Free On Board
The supplier is responsible for forwarding the goods to the loading port. At this point, responsibility passes to the freight forwarder up to the final point of delivery.
CFR: Cost and Freight
Delivered on board the vessel at the port of shipment. The seller pays the Cost of transporting the goods to the named port of destination.
But the risk of the goods passes on fob at the port of shipment.
CIF: Cost Insurance and Freight
The price of the goods consists of the usual freight from the port of shipment to the agreed port of destination and the agreed insurance premium. Therefore, in addition to the obligations of the CFR term, the seller shall insure the goods for the buyer and pay the insurance premium. In accordance with the general international trade practice, the amount of insurance to be insured by the seller shall be 10% plus the CIF price.
If the buyer and the seller do not agree on the specific coverage, the seller shall only obtain the minimum coverage, and if the buyer requires additional coverage of war insurance, the seller shall provide the additional coverage at the buyer's expense, and if the seller can do so, the insurance must be in the contract currency.
If you take the goods directly from the manufacturer, we believe that it may be better to appoint your own agent or freight forwarder in China than to entrust the goods directly to the manufacturer.
Most of the suppliers aren't good at supply chain management, they are relatively unfamiliar with the freight link, and do not know much about the customs clearance requirements of different countries. They are only good at part of the supply chain.
However, if you do research on purchasing agents in China, you will find that some companies are committed to providing complete supply chain services from sourcing to shipping. Such companies aren't very common and it's best for you to do your research when choosing a supplier/agent in the first place.
If the company can do a complete supply chain service on its own, then your import business is less likely to make mistakes.
Because they don't shirk responsibility to another company when something goes wrong. They're more likely to try to figure out a way to solve the problem because it's part of their responsibility.
Shipping isn't always cheaper than air freight.
If your order is small, air freight may become a better choice for you.
What's more, the opening of the Sino-European Railway between China and Europe has greatly reduced the cost of transportation, so sea transportation isn't a completely necessary option, and you need to make a decision on which mode of transportation to choose according to various factors.
7. Goods Acceptance
In order to get your goods, you need to get three important documents：bill of lading，Packing list，invoice
Bill of lading -- proof of delivery
A bill of lading is also known as BOL or B/L
A document issued by the carrier to the shipper certifying that the goods have been received on board the ship and are ready to be carried to the consignee for delivery at the designated place.
In plain English, it is the express order of various freight companies.
To be provided to you by the shipper, after you deliver balance payment, the shipper will provide you with the electronic version of the bill of lading, you can pick up the goods with this voucher.
Packing list -- a list of goods
It is generally a list provided by the supplier to the buyer, which mainly shows the total gross weight, total number of pieces and total volume. You can check the goods through the box list.
Invoice - relates to the duties you will pay
Show the total amount, and different countries will charge a certain percentage of the total amount as a tariff.
The above is the whole process of sourcing from China. If you are interested in which part, you can leave a message at the bottom of this article. Or contact us at any time-we are Yiwu's largest sourcing agent company with 1200+ professional staffs, established in 1997. Although the above import processes are very complicated, Sellers Union has 23 years of experience, familiar with all operational processes. With our service, imported from China will more safe, efficient, and profitable.
Post time: Apr-26-2021