Brand sourcing visit
You are not paying for a tour. You are paying to find out, before committing money, whether the supplier you found actually makes anything — as opposed to a trading company — and can say yes to your terms.
Who this is for
If you recognise yourself here, this is the page for you. If not, say so and we will tell you who else could help.
You have a supplier quote and a sinking feeling. You need to know whether the factory exists, whether it can hold your volume, and whether the unit price assumes a specification you never agreed to.
First production run, no existing relationship, and a category where tooling and MOQ decisions will still be hurting you in a year.
You already buy from China and something has stopped working — quality drift, missed lead times, or a supplier who has quietly started subcontracting.
Sample structure
Density comes from staying inside one industrial cluster. Crossing half a province between appointments is how these trips lose two days.
DAY 1 · ARRIVAL
Pick-up and shortlist review
We go through your shortlist line by line and run registration checks before agreeing the visiting order. Usually one or two suppliers do not survive this.
DAY 2 · FACTORY A + B
Two factories in one cluster
Full walk-throughs with the production manager present. No back-to-back meetings in showrooms.
DAY 3 · FACTORY C + D
Capacity and quality depth
Equipment counts, QC bench, tooling store, and whether any part of the process is being subcontracted out.
DAY 4 · NEGOTIATION
Numbers in the room
MOQ, tooling, lead time, payment terms and sampling — negotiated with whoever can actually agree to them.
DAY 5 · WRAP
Debrief and written handover
A structured recap before you fly, then the written report covering every factory visited and rejected.
The day-by-day route is what visit planning builds, cluster by cluster.
The thing that matters
A day spent with a sales representative produces photos and nothing else. We treat “the boss is travelling” as a failed visit and record it as one.
What we confirm before a factory stays on the itinerary
What you take home
Buyers decide on documentation. Here is exactly what leaves our hands, and when.
The report is scored the same way across suppliers — see the factory visit scorecard.
Money, stated plainly
The question behind most hesitation is whether someone is being paid by the factory to put you in front of them. This is our answer, in a table.
| Dimension | ChinaFactoryHostwhat we do | Commission-based agentthe usual alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Who pays for the hosting | You. A stated day rate or trip fee. | Often nobody — which is the point worth asking about. |
| Money from the factory | Not included | Included |
| Reason to steer you to a supplier | None that pays | Higher commission on some factories |
| Willing to tell you to walk away | Yes, and it is in the report | Structurally discouraged |
| Quote you see | The factory’s figure, unmodified | Sometimes bundled with margin |
| Fee disclosure | Stated before booking | Frequently not disclosed |
We are not claiming every agent works badly — many are good at their job. We are saying that if you cannot see who pays whom, you cannot price the advice you are getting.
Hosting day rate
$—
Interpreting, transport coordination, factory access and negotiation support, per day.
Sourcing commission
Separate line
If we later help place an order, that arrangement is quoted separately and agreed before it applies. Never folded into your unit price.
Flights, hotel, visa
You book them
We do not resell these and add no margin to them.
In the room
Most failed negotiations are translation failures wearing a different hat — a misunderstood tolerance, an MOQ nobody explained the reasoning for.
Negotiation and technical support
The numbers stay exact in the room because of the interpreter.
What we don't do
Booking a hosted visit does not remove the risk of manufacturing in China. It removes the specific risk of paying a supplier you have not verified.
The trip runs in whichever cluster your suppliers sit in.
Practical questions
Three days is workable for two or three suppliers in one cluster. Five days covers four to six suppliers plus a negotiation day. Anything beyond ten days is usually better split into two trips.
It depends entirely on the process. Injection moulding often starts around 1,000–5,000 units because tooling setup dominates; assembly and packing can be far lower. Rather than a generic answer, we tell you the driver behind each factory’s number so you know which part is negotiable.
We reschedule that stop or replace it. Either way it is recorded in the report as a failed criterion, not quietly dropped.
We can follow up on sampling and production coordination, and that arrangement is quoted separately. We do not take a silent cut of your unit price.
Yes. Bringing your existing shortlist is one of the most useful versions of this trip — including when the result is telling you to drop half of it.
Chinese New Year and the National Day holiday shut lines down for days to weeks, and the two weeks either side are unreliable for sampling. We will tell you the exact windows for your cluster before you book flights.
Next step
Tell us your category, target cluster and rough dates. You will get a realistic day-by-day plan — including where we think it is a bad idea.
No obligation. We reply within 1 business day, China Time (GMT+8).
Four fields. We read every one and reply with a straight answer, including when we are not the right people for the job.
Got it — we'll reply within 1 business day (China Time).
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