This is a follow up to another article by HelloJasmine title "Fight with Chinese Supplier".

My story:

I import various products from China and elswhere.  Never have had I more frustrating experience than China.  I have also had wonderful experience with Chinese manufacturers.

I tried a dish towel, kitchen towel set.  Everything was designed.  Samples approved.  Prices agreed on.  I really didn't negotiate as the price given to me was reasonable enough.  Let me restate that.  I gave a reasonable price target and that was met.  Production started, and frist container was late.  By about 4 weeks.  Was told second container will be faster (I had given continuing orders).  That was late by 7 weeks.  By the time they got to the 3rd container, I was told the factory was shut down by the govt.

Tried another factory, bigger, better, faster and more expensive.  They are now late by 2 months.

For all this, I did not go to the factory directly.  Nor did I find a factory.  I used a very large towel trading company, which will remain un-named and hope they read this for their education.  I used a large trading company, with their years of experience, expecting these kinds of problems can be avoided.

I have traveled China extensively.  Love China.  And I know how it works there.

Conversely, I had manufacturers turn orders around in record time.  Put my order in front of others because I had an important dead line.

The point is there is the good, the bad and the ugly.

There are some industries where they are greatly impacted because of high demand.  There are some factories that agree on a price based on their costs.  But when the costs increase, they hunt around for cheaper raw material.  Sometimes, there is internal strife.  There are a lot of family owned industries in China.  More than likely the factory did not want to work with a trading company anymore.  They most likely feel that they would make more money, dealing directly with a customer.  Same applies to agents.

All these people, work very hard.  But the key thing is, if it is urgent, and orders are going to be big, do your homework.  Go visit the factory.  The trading company that I deal with refuses to let me visit the factory or tell me where it is.  They refuse to let me check on my production.  In the mean time I have lost 100s of thousands of dollars of sales.  My customer has lost sales.  Funny thing is I chose them for their knowledge and expertise not only on cotton products but dealing with small factories.  And they have my deposit.  If you done this enough times, you'd know when a factory is capable of doing what you want them to do.  To me, more than anything else, is honesty.  If they tell you it will be shipped tomorrow, and you tell your customer tomorrow and tomorrow never comes, you are f____d!

The key is you got to pay them a visit, work with them.  Once they get going on your orders, everything works out.  Anticipate that no one is going to give you what you want and at the time period you want.  Saves a lot of frustration and helps keep your BP down.

And if you don't get to visit a factory for one reason or the other, something definitely does not smell good.  Time for you to change your supplier.

My advice to Chinese agents and factories is tell the truth.  Be a little bit more open.  IF they like your product, they will buy from you.  If they like you, they will buy from you for a long time.

Remember, if a shipment is late, it does not turn over, and you do less business.  And if a product is really late, it will lose it's place.  Stores cannot have empty spaces in their shelves.  If a product is bad, there will be a lot of returns from customers.  A returned product costs up to 10 times the original shipped product.  So, it takes 10 shipments for you to recover from that loss.  And if packaging is not right, or your cheat by putting less inventory in a case, it will show up.  It will show up on your customers computer as unsold inventory.  Eventually it will build up to a point where you don't get any orders as the computer shows they have stock.  But the stores are empty.  So being honest with your cusomer is profitable!

Patience is a virtue.  I bet Confucius came up with that one!

I think the important is the factory should have an experienced foreign trade staff, we could operate and control everything well for the order.

For me, once the order give me the order, I will be in correspondence with my clinet for the order, I will arrange and discuss with the production department how to reach the shipment time according to the order, if can still can not settle the problem, do find some way to settle the problem. as for qualities, I will tracking this order myself before customer inspection, if the customer can not come, I will give a full inspection myself to insure the goods would satisfied my customer.

As my experience in internation trade, acknowlege of the China factory situation, if the factory do not have a good management group, shipment time and quality would have problem, so, all these would need a staff who work with you to settle the problem which may occur. 

Do you agree with my point?

I think for the first time, it would be good if you can send a representative there to monitor the progress of your order.

Im glad you recieve your goods and always remember late is better than never.

But keep in mind not all the factories are like that "slow-mo". Work hard and keep searching. Im sure you will find a good and speedy factory.

regards

Mr Law

Quoting from [Partisan]:

 

A normal export-oriented factory always welcome buyer' visiting and open for daily communication with their export staffs(team).

Enhance modern business culture  is the most important thing for the top managerial level.

Nowaday,Functional organization, well-educated professional managers and well-trained skill labors is essential for factory developement.

I don't see any difficulties of finding out a good manufacturer in China or elsewhere. if you could make more efforts on it.by yourselves not through someone else.

Hi, Partisan.

Thanks for sharing your story with us.

I posted another story-http://resources.alibaba.com/topic/294547/Make_me_happy_make_me_sad_fight_with_Chinese_suppliers_2.htm

You can have a read when you are free. It was similar to your story. You will have the same feeling on it.

Yes, I know how your felt and agreed to one of your sentence:To me, more than anything else, is honesty.

No matter what the troubles or problems happend. But the factories or trading companies should tell the buyers the truth first. But some factories tried to hide something from the buyers until they have to face.

If anything I can help you to take care of your purchase in China, pls let me know. Although I may not the best one to control your sellers, I will be the one who will always tell you the truths in China as your eyes.

I think buying from trade company, maybe result in a little high price, but won't happen very frustrating thing.

Though nowadays more and more chinese factories have their own export department, the staff are usually not as professional as trade company's. And because of the culture difference, the most appropriate people who deal with chinese, of course is chinese!

Long story¬! You know China very much.

I have been work in a trading co. , all the stituations you said occured in my previous works. But i think the factory and trading co which you cooperated need a process to develop and regulate. And this stituation will be happen in all over the world , not only to China. People alway doing things at his own benefit, and we are lack in understand one another on intenational trading. Pls believe that  the factory is always trying to satisfied customer's requirement as long as they can. As you know, most of factories aren depend on handwork which is easy to occur the unexpected things and the speed of production is much slower than machine. We also understand the importance of shippment, but the thing don't go as we expected, we feel helpless about it sometimes. I don't mean to shift off our duty, but understand is a virtue too, right?

Anyway, i appreciate your comment, i will note in my heart for my following work. I believe we can do better and better, for we are  friendly aspirant and active man!

Respect for this post.

Poli

Quoting from [chinaaoli]:


HI i am sorry to hear that.. i am a chinese,i know some chinese people can't do very well.but in fact we have many good suppliers,so,please don't despair Good luck to u..

Quoting from [Elecpack]:

I think the important is the factory should have an experienced foreign trade staff, we could operate and control everything well for the order.

For me, once the order give me the order, I will be in correspondence with my clinet for the order, I will arrange and discuss with the production department how to reach the shipment time according to the order, if can still can not settle the problem, do find some way to settle the problem. as for qualities, I will tracking this order myself before customer inspection, if the customer can not come, I will give a full inspection myself to insure the goods would satisfied my customer.

As my experience in internation trade, acknowlege of the China factory situation, if the factory do not have a good management group, shipment time and quality would have problem, so, all these would need a staff who work with you to settle the problem which may occur. 

Do you agree with my point?

Jasmine...

Everything you are saying has already been done.  Right now I am trying to figure out how to get my deposit back.