Top 10 Questions to ask Chinese Suppliers | Sourcing Best Manufacturers from China 🇨🇳📦🚢

hey guys and welcome back to the official sourcing of qiyan YouTube channel so you're looking to improve your results with suppliers in China here are the top 10 questions you should

be asking your suppliers in order to get the best results before we get started this is the warehouse that I grew up in and basically I was as a teenager I was packing these boxes in this warehouse

well that's a story for another time

[Music] remember when you're applying these questions you really have to understand and pick your moments when to ask these

questions because there's gonna be ten very important and very valuable questions so you should be asking your manufacturer however you can't just ask these questions at the first interaction the first time we write the Roma on Alibaba you have to build up a bit of

rapport some of them you can ask immediately and some of them you have to do once you've got a little bit of leverage in the relationship or once you build up a little bit of trust within each other as well but I'm gonna keep you right and I'm gonna let you know

when you should be asking these types of questions but remember you can ask these questions by email by WeChat face to face in the can salon fair in the factory directly there's not all right

setting but there is a right time to be asking these questions now make sure you watch this video all the way to the end because the last two questions are two of my favorite ones as well okay so let's get into it

number one the first question you should always be asking and by the way these aren't in any particular order but these are my top 10 so number one are you a trading company or are you a factory now

to be honest the answer to this question doesn't really matter I've worked with plenty of good trading companies and I've worked with plenty of good factories there is this notion they okay I have to work directly to the factory because the trading companies add on

your own margin but in actual case sometimes the trading company offer you a very good service for that margin that they're adding on sometimes the factory doesn't necessarily have an export license so they have to go through a

trading company or sometimes a trading company is just very familiar with a lot of different factories so they know the strengths of each factory and know they know the right place to place our order and sometimes a trading company also

specializes in that category so they can also reach out to factories making different items and a trading company can be your one-stop shop rather than having to deal with many different factories but there are advantages for

working with a factory directly as well so like I said there's not a right or a wrong answer to work on the trading company or a factory but it's important for you to understand which one you're working with so you know what are their

strengths and were their weaknesses okay in question number two where's your factory located now it's important to ask this question because you want to know are the office and the fact relocated together because quite often

the factory can be based in the rural part of China whereas the office can be in the city so you make an appointment to go and visit your factory where you actually go into the office and when you want it to go and see the factory you're like where is it and they're like oh

it's a four-hour plane journey or a 4-hour train journey into the country but you've only set aside that day for visiting the factory so it's very important to know where they're located and as well as knowing where they're located you also want to know which port

did it ship from because if you're dealing with multiple different suppliers you might consider that ok they all ship from the same port and if they ship from the same port then you can consolidate your orders so you're not just sending food containers but you

can do half a container from one supplier and half a container from another supplier and then merge those two together and ship out as one full container so you do maximise on your shipping costs as well but you can ask

which port do you ship from and also F will be which port FOBT R stands for Freight onboard and that's a typical pricing term that they're gonna cover the factory will cover the price of the

goods from their factory the unit cost and delivering it to your port so when they give you an F or B price it just means from that port is where they're gonna deliver the goods to and they cover the insurance of the freight until

it gets to the port so you're only covering it from the port to your destination that's the F will be price question number three how many workers you have in your factory now this is important to understand because again there's not a right or a wrong answer

but it's important to know who you're doing business with and what type of capacity you're doing business with I've worked with some factories which have only got 50 workers and I've worked with some factories which have got 1,500 or

2,000 workers and again there's not a right or a wrong answer the factory which has 50 workers might be a lot more flexible to your needs give you lower mo queues let you try a lots of different colours whereas the one which is got 2,000 workers might have much better

systems in place much better quality control much better faster lead times so you again you just want to know who you're working with and what is the capacity of the factory that you're

working with question number four I like to ask is which markets are you supplying and as a result of which which markets which countries are you supplying specifically because it's important to consider that if a factory

is placing their attention in the African market then probably the quality standards aren't as high is in the American market or after supplying maybe the Japanese in the Korean market maybe there for really high-end products or if they're supplying the South American

market maybe they'll don't really pay attention to testing and things like that and you're making slightly cheaper products but if they're supplying in you know Western Europe like Germany France UK then maybe all the regulations and all

the product quality that are doing is to a high standard okay and if they're also supplying in the USA then hopefully they supply they understand your market very well and in other types of testing and regulations that you need to pass as

well so that's not going to be alien to them when you ask them to pass for certain quality standards if they supply your market and they supply reputable customers then you should be able to pass to the highest standards then question number five a lead on today I

like to ask which brands do you supply and then as a lead onto that who is your biggest customer because you could ask a supplier which brands do you supply and it could ring off all the biggest brands in the world but if you say who is your

biggest customer it's like where's their attention going it's kind of like the 80/20 rule they could supply a brand like The North Face but they might have done one order seven years ago but that's not what they're focused on that's not where their strengths are but

if you know what brands that are actually supplying and you go and research those brands and you find those brands either on their own website or you go to their stores you find them on Amazon you read the reviews you find out really water quality levels of those

brands and if that's a brand that you aligned with and you associate with and you very much like their products then that's also a factory that you'd be happy working with as well guys do me a favor real quick if you're enjoying

these questions so far please smash the like button down below if you hit the like button you're gonna tell YouTube that you are actually liking this content and YouTube's gonna show it to way more people so I appreciate it very very much if you can hit that button for

me real quick thank you very much okay question number six then why did this I think this is in Chinese this means six yeah so my hand signals have gone Chinese a little bit okay question

number six have you supplied any retailers or department stores now this is very important to understand because if they have supplies a retail store let's say that they've supplied Walmart at Target at Bed Bath and Beyond that

means that they're supplying very large quantities which means that if might they've managed to engineer the product down to the lowest possible cost it can be now if you go into any retail store like a Walmart or Target or a Bed Bath

and Beyond you can see that the prices of these products are generally quite low because of the scale that they're doing and that means a factory also joking benefit from those economies to get economies of scale but so can you if

you can sort of piggyback off of their orders so what I like to do is ask my manufacturers hey if you're placing an order if you're getting an order from a retailer let me know give me a call and I might piggyback and I might place an

order off the back of that now I'm not gonna copy the product and make it the exact same but I will do is if they're ordering materials for a hundred thousand products so I'm gonna make sure my product is the same material so I can get the raw material price at the same

cost that they're getting it far as well but again this is a type of question that you can only really ask once you've built up a relationship with you with your manufacturer and you have some orders going because the first time you

approach manufacture if you ask them a question like this will tell you to get lost they're not gonna open up and tell you all this information so only really ask this type of question once you've got a bit of leverage in the relationship as well and they want to

help satisfy you because they want your business to grow as a result of the orders that you've been placing through them now question number seven do you supply any brands selling on Amazon now this is quite important to understand

because it's again it's not a right or a wrong thing if a factory's supplying someone on an on Amazon but it's good to know for your reference because if they do supply someone selling on Amazon then

they understand like the labeling they understand like how urgent we need our shipments they understand that the product quality has to be great if there's a bad batch there's gonna be a lot of negative reviews which is going to affect the ranking which is going to

affect future orders so if they have an understanding of how Amazon works then that's a bonus to you and again if they don't deal with any Amazon customers that's also good because then they don't you know other people aren't also

placing their orders to the same factory so you aren't competing on price for the same products so again you just want to improve your understanding of what the factory is actually capable of it's not necessarily a good or a bad thing but

it's good for you to know now another good question to ask number eight I think I stopped with the hand signals alright number eight is has your factory

completed any third party audits now this is a question that the factory is gonna be like ok they really care about quality because a third party audit is done when you really want to be sure and

confirm that this factory is capable of manufacturing products to the highest standard but also that their factories run to a high standard as well so if you ask about this and you care about the quality that that

factory is then putting out and also when you work with big retailers it's essential you can't manufacture for a retailer or a license without providing audit documents of the factory to your customer to your retail customer so if

you ask for these things they know that you're looking for the top suppliers and they're gonna step their game up a little bit now if they have it they should build to just send you the certificates it could be at BSC I it could be said X it could be a Walmart

audit it could be a Disney audit some of these big companies to do their own audits and once you've done it the factory already half of the paperwork and they can send it to you but very important if you do get a factory's audit form make sure you check the dates

on the form because the audit could have been done in 2008 you know you're looking for something which has been done recently within the last like 18 months or something like that but definitely check that and you know your when you're working with the good

factories or the bad ones now if a factory doesn't have their audit it doesn't mean they're not capable of passing but if they have done it they should definitely bill to send you for reference what they've done so far then

question number nine one of my favorites what new products have you been working on now we all pride ourselves on developing products ourself but bear in mind while we develop products here in

our offices and in our companies so do the factories the factories also like to work on new products because they want to get orders from all their customers and all our clients now they're not going to show these products on Alibaba they're not gonna show these products at

front and center at the Canton Fair but if you have a good relationship with your manufacturer they're gonna show you what they're working on and before even comes to market before it's even available they're gonna let you know what they're building because essentially they want to sell that stuff

to you and if you're a good customer well they're gonna show you what they're working on so you can already be ahead of the market you can start to think about your marketing in your promotion and your ads and all that sort of stuff advertising the features of this new

product which nothing else on the market has based on the knowledge of the factory so ask them what they have been working on and then finally question number 10 what I like to ask as well is when would be the best time to visit

your factory now if you're like me you go to China regularly I always like to go to China I like to visit my manufacturers I like to do my business face-to-face I like to build relationships but even if you have no

intention of going to China you should even you should always ask when is the best time to visit your factory because that shows that you're serious about visiting now the factories really respect the buyers who come to their place of business who have

made the long journey from wherever they are in a world to come to China to come to their factory and you know by the Chinese hospitality that they take you out for a nice dinners and entertainment and things like that and the factory tour that they really really appreciate

you coming over now if you ask when would be the best time to visit your factory now they're a little bit on edge like okay cool if this guy's gonna come and visit as we better make sure we give them with the best service as well as we better make sure we didn't lie about any

of the other stuff that we told them because if we told them we've got 150 workers in our factory and he's coming to visit and it seems we've only got 50 then he's gonna think what else have we been lying about so if you surely intent that you plan on visiting the factory

and it doesn't need to be the next month you know you plan out your trips a year in advance you can say in the next year when it would be the best time to visit your factory and then the other good thing is they give you information about when it's their high season when is their low season when is the factory

busy when they're not busy when it's the Chinese New Year holiday winner there are all their other holidays like the Dragon Boat holidays and all these sorts of things so that again just shows your seriousness with the manufacturer so guys that was my top

ten questions if you have questions that worked for you and you want to share with others please write them down in the comments below so we can all check them out and have a reference as well if you want to connect with me on Facebook please join our free community sourcing

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inside advantage into the Kanto unfair I'll see you there

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