Importing from China III: Verifying suppliers

Verifying chinese supplier or manufacturer

As we have previously commented, the finding of suppliers is crucial to importing from China. We need to do a valuable research so that we can find out the best firms to work with before investing too much money in the searching and negotiation. Once we have done it, we should be able to choose at least from one to three suppliers that we want to meet properly. Thereafter, it is time to audit a factory.

Why should we verify our supplier? It is mainly because of the following four seasons:

1.      We need to know if the firm we are going to deal with is a manufacturer or only an intermediate. When we do a research on Alibaba website, we may find generic names such as “Shenzhen Electronic Appliances Co. Ltd.” or “Guangzhou food and beverage Co. Ltd.”. Then, we should be suspicious because they may be intermediates.

2.      We must check the process of manufacturing and the condition of the factory. These two things will give us an idea of the real capacity of manufacturing of our supplier as well as the rough estimate of the product´s quality.

3.      We need to get to know our contact because both buyer and supplier will distrust each other at first. Therefore, the best option is to hire someone who can do this job or visit the factory by your own.

4.      We need to focus on the strategy we have in mind. The supplier could be: a state company, a small company that plans to internationalize, a merchandiser that focuses his job on the Chinese market, a supplier specialized in selling to other foreign firms, etc. Therefore, we need to choose a supplier who shares the same interests we have.

Importing from China II: Finding suppliers

We are going to concentrate on the first stage of the importing business: the finding of suppliers.

This current step is sometimes considered to be underestimated. People are usually convinced that the first supplier they find on Alibaba that gives them a good price is the right one. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, finding suppliers on Alibaba or other similar websites can be misleading. The price that the suppliers specified in the advertisements is only written to catch the attention of customers and make them get a new contact. From then on, it starts the negotiation. Negotiating depends on a variety of factors but mainly the size of purchases and the frequency of the orders.

Version china de Alibaba

Also, we cannot forget that the Chinese suppliers we are going to deal with on the Internet are only the ones who have an English website. Therefore, we should be doubtful because most of the Chinese suppliers do not speak the language of Shakespeare. In most cases, you will be dealing with brokers or traders that work as intermediaries between suppliers and customers and earn a commission for their services.

The main goal is importing from China avoiding these traders or brokers so that we can control the supply chain. The way to do it is by hiring a firm which can look for suppliers as well as contact them . Then, we will not have to pay any commission and we will have a fixed price from the beginning because we have previously set out a transparent and trustworthy business. In this way, we can be sure we know who we are buying from.

In the next entry, we will explain to you how to verify a supplier once we have chosen one. We hope we have clarified some of your doubts. If it is not the case, do not hesitate to contact us writing down a comment on this website.

Importing from China VI: Transport Management

Importing from China VI: Transport Management

Transport management is the most systematic approach and the only step of the process that we can manage in the place of destination thanks to new technologies. However, the easiest way to do it is by hiring other companies that can do the work for us. Besides, these companies usually work with big amounts of goods so they have preferential treatment with forwarders as well as customs officers.

The question is: how should we do the transport management?

Negotiating Incoterms. It is usually the supplier who has more power of decision than the other parts of the negotiation. However, we can always negotiate it. If we are a small company, we would like to use either Incoterm CIF or DDP so that we do not have to manage the operation. However, if our supplier owns a small factory, he will try to use either Incoterms EXW or FOB for the same reason.

The most common way is to buy using Incoterm FOB and to hire a firm which manages the whole import operation until we receive the goods in our warehouse.

To calculate the rates: As we have commented previously in this entry, we need to find out the Taric code or HS code of our product so that we can calculate the duties we have to pay in the custom office of the country of destination.

To hire a freight forwarder: One of the most commonly things in the import/export business is hiring a freight forwarder that manages the transportation of the goods. They can deal with customs officers and they are specialists in groupage.

 To purchase an insurance policy: It is always advisable to purchase an insurance policy. The price varies around 0.5% of the cargo value. However, the amount we have to pay usually varies depending on the values we want to ensure. It will be higher if we want to ensure both the goods and the cost of transportation rather than only the cost of the goods.

Preparing the documents: The most important documents are the Bill of Lading (B/L) and the Certificate of Origin. These documents verify the main features of the goods, their value, the place of origin of the goods, the parts involved in the shipment and the responsibilities of each of them. We will talk about it in further detail in the following entries.

Once we have followed these steps, we will not have any problem in receiving the goods in our place or warehouse. We hope you have found this information useful and please, do not hesitate to contact us writing down a comment in this website.

If you are thinking about getting into the import business from China, do not hesitate and contact us with no obligation.

Frauds when it comes to buying products in China

Frauds  when it comes to buying products in China : Find out if your supplier is an impostor

Have you suffered from fraud when you have bought products in China? Do you think your supplier is an impostor because you have not received the goods that you have previously bought? Have you import products from China into your country and you have received a different product from the one you bought?

 These are some of the most common ecommerce frauds targeting potential customers all around the world. Suppliers sometimes contact us directly and offer us cheap products which are finally frauds.

Here you have a list with some examples that may end up in frauds or scams:

1. If the seller owns a reliable webpage on Alibaba but once you write to him, he does not reply with a business email address, this may be a fraud. For instance, if the email address ends up as hotmail.com or gmail.com and it is not the name of the company then, you may be suspicious about the reliability of the seller.

2. If the seller we talk to, owns a serious company, has a webpage and shows appealing prices but he tells us to  pay by Western Union or bank transfer to his personal account, it is a fraud. Sometimes, they try to convince us of the safeness of the transaction but if we check the bank details of the payment, we will realize we are sending money to a personal account.

3. If our contact offer us cheap trademark products such as Samsung or Apple, it is only one of the two ways: it is either a fraud or imitation products. No one can sell original Ipads for 100 USD each, it is just wishful thinking.

In MingTa we want to help our customers and friends to avoid this kind of frauds. Therefore, we are going to launch the following initiatives:

A: For those who are not sure about the person of contact, we are going to offer an additional service so that we can find out if those suppliers really exist. From our office in China, we will call them, we will search on our databases of fraudulent people and we will send emails to the supplier in order to provide our customers with usual information about the person in contact. The cost of this service will not be high so that we can help all fraud victims and people who have problems buying products from China.

 

B: We offer you the current webpage to leave a comment and explain the frauds that you all have suffered. By doing this, we want to help others to avoid being suffered from frauds or scams. Tell us your experience and make others not to repeat them!

Cheap products from China

Cheap products from China

Buy Cheap Chinese products from Spain, Chile, Mexico and other countries: CONSULT US WITH NO OBLIGATION

Cheap Chinese products are in demand in most occidental countries but occidental people are not always ready to buy them. Many problems stop people from getting the products even if the products are very cheap. One of the main problems is the lack of security. People are afraid of scams as well as getting bad quality products. Also,  the lack of information is one important barrier at the time of buying a product from China.

MingTa is the solution to all those problems and we will help you to buy cheap Chinese products to any reliable person with capacity of investment.

Nowadays, these are the Chinese products in demand:

–          Hairdressing Products: scissors, razors, combs, brushes, hair iron, hair dryer, curling tongs, cutting tool and many other cheap products.

–         Cheap Chinese Smartphones

–          Phone cases for mobile phones and tablets. Apple and Samsung are the most demanded products now.

–          Electronic accessories like powerbanks, USB/Flash memories, loud-speakers, Bluetooth headphones and SIM cards.

–         Artificial grass. Latin-American is the main destiny of this product because of the increasing of football fields that do not need of watering.

–          Cheap Chinese Jewelry. Everybody wants cheap bracelets and necklaces.

–         Chinese Clothes. It is very common to import these products into countries such as Chile.

Therefore, there are thousands of cheap Chinese products that can be purchased. The best way to do it is by contacting experts that are able to verify the supplier, negotiate the prices, verify the quality of the products and manage logistics. By doing this, we will avoid taking risks and we will save time in the import process from China.

If you want to know more on how to import cheap Chinese products, contact us with no obligation and we will inform you.