When you are sourcing a factory who can manufacture your product at a low price, then you are sourcing factories in China. Factories who can produce your product within your price range and quality level. China is the largest manufacturing exporting country of the world and you will, therefore, have the assurance of succesfully find a factory suiting your preferences.
How to source a reliable factory in China?
China is a manufacturing country, also named as the most prominent manufacturing country worldwide. Sourcing a factory that suits you as a company seems like an easy task. Platforms such as Alibaba or Global Sources seem to make your factory sourcing work easy. However, assuming that these sourced factories are also reliable factories would be a mistake. Nothing seems to be what it looks like. Because the limitations of the internet and closed business communities, there are seldom references, experiences or reviews found from manufacturers. Making it difficult to do due diligence and to check information shown.
Sourcing a factory in China mostly starts online. Through searching keywords of your product, you will be looking at factories which are accessible on the western internet. These searches are mostly done at well-known websites such as ‘’Alibaba.com’’ and ‘’made-in-china.com’’. At the first impression, it seems like an easy task to find a supplier who can manufacture your products.
For most of the companies sourcing factories in China, gateways such as Alibaba and more seems to be the only online location to find information about a company. However, is this reliable? The information, products and certificates are often not that transparent. Is a certificate shown verified? Do the products really look like on the picture? Are they really a manufacturer or a trading company? All questions that can be asked when sourcing factories on those platforms. Experience and a lot of knowledge is needed to really analyze these platforms to really source reliable factories in China.
Where are the factories in China located?
There are many factories located in China. However, the areas where the vast majority of these factories settle are around the main export ports of China. Such as the ports at the cities as, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Ningbo, and Tianjin are where many factories are located. Sourcing factories in these area’s will, therefore, often end up with results.
When sourcing factories further away from port area’s automatically incur higher transportation costs which lead to less attractive localization. A large number of factories are around many export airports. It often depends on what type of product a factory produces. The kind of transport goes with a product which often determines whether a factory locates around the export ports or export airports.
When you want full assurance that you source stable and reliable factories in China, you can take two actions. We have highlighted two options in support of your sourcing activities in China.
- Contact a company which can help you with sourcing a suitable factory in China.
You might miss the experience or just need an added-value to your sourcing knowledge. Using a sourcing consulting company to help you source suitable factories can result in more reliable factories, lower risk and lower prices. We from CIL China are a consulting company that can help to execute a sourcing research to source factories in China. Contact for more information.
- Travel to China to visit sourced factories
Visiting sourced factories in China by yourself is the most constructive action you can take as a company. By visiting China and investigate factories, you will gain knowledge and awareness of reality. Seeing the sourced factories and its production lines with own eyes. Many aspects and characteristics of a factory are essential to define reliability. Using a sourcing consulting company to help you in a factory visit and judging a sourced factory might be a wise decision.