After making your decision about which supplier to contract with, order your product samples but plan to evaluate them after you return home.

Sample Preparation

Sample preparation, depending which kind of products you want to import, can take considerable time. Contrary to what many people think, factories usually do not keep samples in their warehouse that can be sent right away. The more complicated a product is (for instance home appliances or consumer electronics products) the longer it will take and the more diligence is needed from the factory to prepare the samples according to your specific requirements.

You have reached a turning point in your own quality control. The first step was your scrutiny of each supplier visited during the trip. You should have a good idea how each supplier will perform and how talented their management is.

Providing them with detailed information about your sample requirements could become the key to your success. Why is this so important?

When the Sample is Wrong

Imagine that you did not pay adequate attention to instructing the supplier about your sample requirements and they prepare the sample according their own factory standards. Timing however is important and you need the samples checked for compliance with your requirements in your home country. It needs to be right the first time.

If the first sample is incorrect, you could take a risk and place your order in hopes that the supplier will get it right the second time. It is not a good idea to take this risk because there cannot be a guarantee that the supplier will actually follow your new instructions.

It is best asking the supplier to manufacture new samples. Time starts to become an issue as you wait for new samples to be made and it will take 3-7 days delivery time to ship them to your home country. Add everything up and you have possibly lost a month. This could be crucial if your goal is to be among the first to promote the new products in your home market.

Never place any order with new suppliers before you receive acceptable samples with the proper quality and your QC people or an authorized lab has approved them. Anything else is a gamble and you do not want to begin production with that level of risk. Only after establishing a sound business relationship with your suppliers, can you be confident that factory will closely follow your instructions. It is important to set things right from the very beginning.

Have Samples Properly Packaged

When asking for samples, be sure to request they be packaged according to your specifications. This should be the same packaging the end consumer receives. At this point, they should workout the details to determine how many pieces fit into one 20′ or 40′ ocean-going container. Along with this, comes the details of how many fit into one export carton and if any inner packing needs to go into the export carton.

With this information, you can calculate the freight cost. It may be necessary to change the sales packaging size in order to fit more pieces into one container and save substantial freight charges. It makes a big difference if you can pack 1,400 coffeemakers in a 40′ container instead of only 1,200 pieces and it will certainly affect your selling price.

Samples are seldom free which is understandable because they are handmade and very labor intensive. Even if they are simple plastic products, the supplier has to follow your instructions and injection mold them in a certain color which is very time consuming because the plastic injection machines are usually running at full capacity and the injection is limited to one color at a time. If you ask for several different color samples, they can only make them when they have production in the requested color. Naturally, this increases the time it takes to receive the samples.

An alternative is painting the samples but the surface of a spray painted object looks different from an injected one and may mislead you into approving something that later proves to be less than perfect.

Order Plenty of Samples

Do not make the error of ordering a single sample per product/color because you need reference samples for several purposes. Common samples needs include:

• Samples for your showroom
• Samples for lab testing
• Samples for photo shooting and gift box preparation
• Samples for your inspection company
• Samples for your sales managers to show to customers

That is only the beginning of a long list and believe me, large buying offices like hypermarkets, department stores, and other large volume importers ask for even more samples because they are aware of the extensive need when introducing a new product.

The worst-case scenario is if you give the only color reference sample to a key customer and after they place an order with you, you cannot determine which specific color to instruct the factory to begin with. It is a good idea to always keep one or more samples per color locked up in a safe place to avoid embarrassing errors. Due to the limited storage space, suppliers may not keep their reference samples at all after completing production.

You now have the information to better understand why suppliers are reluctant to provide free samples to new customers. In many cases, you can convince the supplier to refund the sample costs after you reach a certain order volume. It is good business to negotiate this in the beginning.

Besides the sample charges, you will be asked to pay the freight charges for the sample delivery. This can get expensive because samples are usually sent by air courier in order to make up lost time and stay on schedule. Suppliers do not want to pay these charges and it is often difficult to convince them to do so. If they do so, it is usually only after a successful business relationship has been established.

If you need the samples urgently, and that is usually the case, you are better advised to look for a compromise, otherwise you may lose the competitive timing edge in your home market.

As you visit each of your factory’s various departments, you may learn a portion of the production is subcontracted to other factories. Unless special circumstances apply, the subcontractors are usually near by.

The factories find this to be a sensitive issue and may be reluctant to disclose it.

They may try pretending the other factory belongs to them and is an extension of the production of the factory you are in. There is probably nothing further from the truth. Often, relatives of your factory’s owner run the other factories and they doing each other favors. It is very common in China.

The problem you are looking to uncover is if the subcontractor has a totally different quality standard (if they have one at all). That means whatever quality assurance the factory has given to you may be contradicted or jeopardized through their cooperation with subcontractors.

The main reasons factories use subcontractors are:

1. To save money by squeezing the subcontractor to accept lower prices than they are capable of achieving themselves
2. To overcome a temporary production capacity shortage
3. To do a favor for a friend or relative that does not have enough orders to run their factory efficiently
4. Cover-up labor rights violations
5. Access to production equipment such as injection machines, spray-painting, and mold shops that they do not have

The problem is you have no idea how well or poorly the subcontractor’s factory is managed without visiting. Your factory might not make this visit easy but you should insist.

Possibly your factory has several subcontractors. The more subcontractors, the more risk you will be taking that some of them have quality problems. This is a very good reason to insist on visiting them.

You cannot simply go wandering into the subcontractor’s factory. You are going to need cooperation from your factory. Most likely one of the staff will accompany you and your visit will probably be limited to the area of the subcontractor’s factory that is performing work for your factory.

Be sure to apply the same stringent quality and performance requirements as you did to your own factory. It is the only way you can protect your own business interests and to assure the quality of your imports from China.