I’ve asked many clients one question: What was the biggest challenge you hit when you started your business? The most common answer is that the biggest challenge must come from his supplier.

In situations without enough orders and customer support in the beginning. It is more important that there are support and cooperation come from your supplier. Sometimes you suppliers Play a bigger role in your career than your customers,but the all wool and a yard wide supplier are scarce resource. You know what they say, a fall into the pit and a gain in your wit. So there are 6 ways and 5 tips sharing with you.

6 ways to find suppliers in China:

  1. From the comprehensive and professional exhibition. Through the exhibition, the biggest benefit is to be able to quickly find a large number of industry-related manufacturersor to understand the industry’s latest products.
  2. From B2B website. For example,Alibaba International website, Global resources, AliExpress,and so on. With website search, the advantage is it can quickly find the manufacturer, relatively you can not fully understand the situation of manufacturers.
  3. Fromweb serach engine. For example, you can search a certain keyword through Google. In the General Natural Search of the first few companies are relatively strong factory. You can also find forums or social marketing accounts. Many salesman post product information on social App, such as Linkedin ,Instagram,facebook.
  4. Introduce suppliers through your supplier.
  5. 5. Professional Industry Forum / Community
  6. 6. Other ways.

Such as through customs data, trade journals, forwarders / Inspection Agencies / inspectors.

5 metrics for supplier suitability —— The five C laws

1.Credit

This point is the most important, integrity is the basis of all business cooperation. There is no first ‘C’ , Others ‘C’ is also useless. The author thinks that we can investigate the suppliers we want to cooperate with through the company’s website, communicating with the staff or ask other suppliers to: Whether the quality of material is stable; whether the delivery time is accurate; and the treatment of the company’s employees, whether the company is in arrears with other suppliers, quality complaints, etc.

2.Cooperative

Supplier’s cooperation is reflected in all aspects of the business development process. Such as the specifications what you want can be able to provided timely, the samples what you need can be sent quickly, or more flexible payment methods, any questions can be solved in a timely, and so on. As everyone knows, if you have a supplier who doesn’t work well with you, you may feel very tired.

3.Complement

It means whether the supplier’s market positioning matches yours. Choosing the supplier is not necessarily the bigger the better, nor is it easy for the smaller supplier to control, many are relative. We all know that to find customers to pay attention to client’s market and positioning. In fact, the same applies to how to find suppliers.

4.Character

If you product different from your peers, it will has a higher premium and also easier to sell. Homogenization of the product is easy to let customers direct price comparison. it will difficult to have good profits. Like our new product, compostable plastic/paper liquid packaging bag, technically solve the problem of biodegradable packaging OTR and WVTR overshoot .

5.Cost-effective

It goes without saying that most suppliers look at the price first because it is most easily perceived, but we have to look at cost-effective. In the case of a certain product features, the price is still competitive. Of course, easier to sell. Then we also try to understand the underlying reason for the competitive cost of suppliers. It’s not that they cut corners, but that the factory is already good at cost control and optimization, good at cost control. Such as low overhead, unit sales are high and the whole supply chain costs are low. For example, product assembly is located in the interior, product assembly costs are low or product design in the production process and manufacturing costs have been optimized and so on!

If you want to buy in China, a reliable supplier is crucial. I hope these summaries are helpful. Your collection is when make sense.