The best supplier is the source factory, not the middleman – Part 3
When purchasing in China, the best supplier must be the source factory, that is, the manufacturer, not the middleman.
How to judge whether the Chinese company you do business with is a production firm or a middleman who only does trade. We generally judge this way. First of all, look at the business license of the other party. From the business license, you can basically tell whether it is a factory with production capacity or a middleman. Secondly, you can ask the other party to provide the previous export performance and the current product series information as the basis for judgment. If the other party is really a production enterprise, it is necessary to check whether the product you need is his main business product. If the product you need is not his main business product, we believe that the other party is still not a qualified supplier. Next you need to check other information about the business, such as the size of the factory, number of product lines, production capacity, number of employees, inventory of similar products, etc.
We have been emphasizing finding the source factory, because when you negotiate business with the source factory, your various interests can be guaranteed to the greatest extent. If you are negotiating business with an intermediary, the request you put forward about the product, in most cases, the intermediary has to ask the factory for answer in order to reply to you, especially when you need a new product or propose revisions, therefore the response will not be timely. In terms of price, the middleman also has no advantage, and the price is definitely higher than the ex-factory price of the factory. There are also some small production enterprises that rent a part of the workshops of large enterprises to produce their own products, and at the same time declare that their products are the products of a large enterprise, because on the surface their address is the same as that of the large enterprise. This situation is also common in China.
