Smaller Chinese factories commonly outsource orders that are too large or are stretching their capacity. These factories would generally not tell you this and so without proper representation on the ground you will most likely not know this. The outsourced factory may be producing highly inferior quality to the standards that you thought you were getting, based on the initial provided samples. A factory may buy the whole order’s worth of...

Protecting your IPR with small and large factories alike is always an issue in China. You can be assured that most of these factories only do business with foreign entities and foreign markets but a sample of your product will more than likely end up in their showroom as an example of their work. There are no strong legal frameworks as yet in China to protect your brand from being picked up by others and produced by the factory for sale in...

Small Chinese factories offer lots of pros and cons, and it is important to weigh these up before taking a leap with a supplier. They can give you the attention that a large factory can’t. They can spend extra attention to detail on your products, but smaller factories cannot turn an order around as fast as a large factory and they cannot produce very large orders in a short time. They will also have a higher overhead overall and their...

Some buyers don’t worry so much about the production schedule in China and instead only pressure for the products to be finished in time for the shipping date. In my opinion, this is risky and is partly the cause of generally low quality and defective products in western markets. If the onus is on production and logistics department to rush its workers to finish on a deadline, quality measures can be easily ignored. Your order will not...