Recently I wrote about a little tree cone I found in my Mengniu yoghurt and how it bugged me to the point of never wanting to buy that product again. Today I read about how Wang Xiaoshan, a columnist, published a microblog post calling for Web users to boycott all Mengniu products. This was because it was found in October of this year that some of Mengniu’s products were contaminated with over double the national permitted level of...

Mengniu Yoghurt, they certainly use all natural ingredients, I just hope it came from a tree above a blueberry bush… Almost every morning on my way into work, I stop at my local Jingkelong (Chinese Supermarket Chain) to buy a Yoghurt. It’s usually a Blueberry one with real blueberries in because I am a great believer in the health benefits of Blueberries. I also am careful about which brand of Yogurt I buy since the melamine scandal...

Sourcing from China for the first time can be a daunting experience. There are many cultural and language differences as well as huge differences in business mindsets. These combined issues can put you on the back foot from the start and put the supplier at a much more advantageous position. This can easily negatively affect the result of your negotiations, both in terms of price and product quality. Consider appointing an agent for you in...

When you order samples from a Chinese manufacturer at any stage, it goes without saying that you, as the customer, expect to see a close to final product with small exceptions that only mass production can achieve. Very often a buyer will accept that a mass production item will/should look like the sample they received. This is a fair assumption but unfortunately, more often than not, this is not the case. If the correct and detailed...

It is important to time and plan your orders right. If you place an order too late you may find yourself at the back of the queue for production and delivery and therefore miss your intended delivery date. Seasonal items are a perfect example of this. Many Chinese factories don’t carry stock in anticipation of upcoming orders. They work on an order by order basis. This means that if you order too late, there may be a long queue of pending...

If your company is understaffed or on a tight budget it’s a useful consideration to use a sourcing, QC and manufacturing agent when manufacturing in China. These are 3rd party entities that act on your behalf in China and in the factories. It is sometimes an expensive affair flying out to a supplier in China to watch over a production or to solve a quality issue. A sourcing agent is a viable solution. Many SME’s use these services...