Most advice about vetting Chinese suppliers comes from Chinese suppliers. It is usually true, and it is always written so that the reader ends up verifying things that are convenient for whoever wrote it.
Here is a process that works regardless of who you are dealing with — and it works for a factory and a trading company in different ways, which we come back to below.
This is organised in the order you should actually do it, because most buyers run the stages in the wrong sequence and then wonder why the cheap quote was a mistake.
In this article
Stage 0 — the check that comes before any supplier
Before you contact anyone, write your requirement on one page. This sounds obvious and is skipped by almost everyone, and skipping it is the reason buyers end up unable to compare quotations at all.
What goes on the page:
| Models | Which phone generations, which categories beyond cases if any |
| Quantity | Per model, and total. Whether mixed quantities are acceptable to you |
| Materials | TPU, PC, leather, or undecided. If undecided, say so — it changes who is worth talking to |
| Customisation | Logo, colour, packaging. Whether a new mould is on the table |
| Destination market | This drives regulatory requirements and therefore which suppliers can serve you |
| Target price | A range, not a number. And be honest about whether you can move |
| Timeline | Including how late you can tolerate being |
With that page, five quotations become five comparable responses. Without it, they are five different conversations and you will choose on price because it is the only thing you can compare.
When buyers say they can only compare price, the cause is usually not laziness. It is that they never wrote down what they were buying.
Stage 1 — document checks
These take an hour and no relationship is required. Run them on every supplier, including the ones that feel right.
1 · The business licence and its business scope
Every Chinese company has one. It carries a registered name, registered address, legal representative and — the part that matters here — a business scope.
The scope of a manufacturing business lists production and processing. The scope of a trading business lists wholesale, retail, import and export. Verify it on the national enterprise credit information system, which is searchable by name.
Neither scope is better. What you are checking is that the scope matches the claim. A supplier whose scope says wholesale, presenting a production video as though it were their own line, has told you something.
2 · Export history
Ask for a customs declaration from a previous shipment with the customer's name redacted. It takes a moment for a real exporter and is impossible for a company that has not exported. Suppliers sometimes refuse because of confidentiality; a redacted declaration should resolve that.
3 · Domain, email and address coherence
Check that the email domain matches the website, that the address in the licence matches what they tell you, and that the phone number on the website is not a personal mobile with a different surname.
These are small things. Companies that fail them usually fail other things too.
4 · Trading history against claimed scale
A company founded last year claiming to ship 200 containers a year has a mismatch worth asking about. Not every discrepancy is dishonest — growth is fast — but you should hear the explanation rather than assume it.
Stage 2 — the live conversation
This is where most suppliers are separated from a few. The rule is that the call must be live, and you must control it.
5 · Ask which factory produces which model
For a factory, this is a strange question and you will get a slightly puzzled answer, which itself is informative. For a production partner, you should get a clear one: which plant, which city, which line.
Then follow it: "Could we see a live video call with that factory?" A genuine partner says yes and books it. A company with one production site and a website that implies several will hesitate.
6 · Ask about process, not product
Product questions can be answered by anyone who has seen a phone case. Process questions cannot be faked without experience:
- "What is the most common defect you see on this type of product, and how do you reduce it?"
- "Who approves the first article, and what do they check?"
- "If we send you a Pantone reference that the line cannot match, how do you tell me?"
- "What do you need from us that we often forget to give you?"
It separates people who have dealt with buyers from people who have read about it. A supplier who has actually been handed a rushed file knows exactly what is usually missing from it.
7 · Control the video
Live, not a recording. You choose where the camera points. Ask to be shown something inconvenient — where raw material is stored, how finished goods are stacked, what the line looks like between batches. Ask them to walk somewhere rather than pan across a wall.
On a live call you can ask questions about what you are looking at. That is the whole value of doing it live.
Stage 3 — treat the sample as a verification tool
Samples are usually treated as a formality — something you order because the process says so, then check when it arrives. It is more useful than that, if you design it deliberately.
8 · Ask the sample to test a specific worry
"Send a sample" tests whether they can make something. Better: ask the sample to test the thing you are actually unsure about. A colour you are worried about, a thickness, a specific model fit, a packaging structure. If the sample solves your real question, the sample cost was well spent.
9 · Ask for two options rather than one
Ask for the sample in two finishes or two materials. Cost is trivial, and the difference tells you more than a single sample would — particularly whether they can hold a specification twice.
10 · Use the sample to test the supplier, not just the product
Send your own reference sample where you can. Check whether it arrived unchanged. Ask a question in the email that requires a written answer. Note how long the whole cycle takes.
The first order will have many of these frictions; a sample run is a cheap way to find them now. Communication, cycle time, quality, responsiveness — all of it surfaces at sample stage, when nothing is at stake.
Stage 4 — structure the first order
The last check happens before money moves, and it is about how you arrange the exposure rather than who you chose.
- Make the first order smaller than commercially comfortable. It is cheaper to double a good supplier than to recover from a bad one at volume.
- Split critical items across two suppliers for the first cycle if you can. You pay a little more in coordination and lose the single-source efficiency you have not earned yet.
- Pay against documents, not in advance. The balance against a bill of lading copy is standard practice and asking for it tells the supplier you know the sequence.
- Agree what happens if the goods are wrong, before they are made. Replacement, credit, or a shared rework cost. Settling this during a dispute is far harder than settling it before production.
- Book third-party inspection for the first order even if the cost seems unnecessary. It is cheap relative to the shipment and it establishes a record you can rely on later.
What factory vetting and partner vetting actually differ on
The same checks apply to both, but three of them mean different things depending on which you are dealing with.
| Check | If they are a factory | If they are a production partner |
|---|---|---|
| Business scope | Should list manufacturing or processing | Will list wholesale or import/export. That is correct, not a warning sign |
| Which factory makes model X | Odd question. You are establishing whether they have only their own line | Should be answered precisely, with a plant and a city. Then check whether you can see it |
| Live video | Straightforward — you are looking at their own floor | Harder and more important. The production site is somebody else's, so you should ask more, not fewer, questions about it |
The structural question — who should you be dealing with and why — is covered in a separate article on factories versus trading companies. This one is about the process, which applies to both.
How we score against this checklist
A checklist published by a supplier is worth exactly nothing unless the supplier applies it to themselves. So here is ours.
| Check | Result | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Business licence & scope match | Pass | Send it on request. Our scope lists wholesale and import/export, which is what we are |
| Export history | Pass | Redacted customs declarations available |
| Domain / email / address coherence | Pass | All correspondence on our own domain |
| Claimed scale vs history | Pass | Founded 2017, volumes stated per quotation |
| Which factory makes which model | Pass | We name the plant and city for every model in your quotation |
| Process questions answered well | Pass | We answer all of them if you ask |
| Live video of your production | Partial | We cannot show you a line for a model that has not entered production. We can show you the partner factory's line live, on request — including for a different model currently on that line |
| Sample as verification tool | Pass | Ask for two finish options and a sample targeted at a specific worry. We will do it |
| Structured first order | Pass | Balance against B/L copy, third-party inspection welcome |
| Margin transparency | Partial | We will tell you our margin on request. We do not publish it by default |
| Site visit before commitment | Partial | We do not have our own factory to show you, so this is a visit to a partner factory. Before you have sampled we will not arrange it |
We could have written around them. We have not, because a checklist that only lists what you pass is not a checklist — it is an advertisement, and you should treat it accordingly when you read a supplier's own version of this page.
What we would ask you to do
If you are evaluating us — or anyone — run the process above in order, and do it before you are emotionally committed to a quotation.
Specifically: ask for the business licence and check the scope. Ask which plant makes each model and whether you can see it live. Ask the process questions, including the one about what buyers forget to provide. Ask for a sample targeted at your actual worry rather than a generic one.
And pay attention to how the answers arrive, not only to what they say. A supplier who answers all of it clearly, including the three things that do not reflect well on them, is a supplier you can build a supply relationship with.
Run the checklist on us
We would rather be verified than believed. Three of the eleven questions above we will answer "partially", and we will tell you exactly why before you decide whether that is acceptable.