Six pieces on where money and time are lost when sourcing from China. We do not write them to sell a service — we write them because most of these checks a client can run alone, if they know exactly what to check.
What to request from the counterparty, which five public registries to check, how the bank-details substitution scheme works, and which signals point to risk before the first payment.
The price gap between a factory and a middleman reaches 20–40%, yet from the outside they look identical. Seven testable signs — from the wording of the business licence to how they behave when asked technical questions.
Which categories require mandatory conformity assessment, how a certificate differs from a declaration, why processing takes 2–6 weeks, and which documents cannot be obtained after shipment.
Mandatory marking is being rolled out in stages. We break down the timetable of entry into force, what exactly is required of the importer, and why preparation cannot be left until shipment.
Worked through on the numbers: the grey scheme wins on small shipments and loses on large ones. What goes into the full cost of a purchase beyond the unit price, and why saving on documents can cost you more.
The decisive control window is the days while the goods are still in China and the balance is unpaid. How batch inspection works, what a reference sample is, and why “we check it at the warehouse” does not always work.
Why we publish this
We do not pretend the checks described here are secret knowledge. Any of the nine steps in the first article can be carried out by your own member of staff. We publish them for two reasons.
First: if you run the check and find a problem, you have already saved money, and that is a good outcome in itself. Second: if you look at the volume of work, the language barrier and the need to conduct it on Chinese soil, and decide it is simpler to hand it to us — you will understand exactly what you are paying for.
Both outcomes suit us. That is precisely why we do not hide the method.
Describe the task — we will tell you which documents you specifically need, which region of China it makes sense to ship from, and which checks are worth running first. The first review is free, and it commits you to nothing.
