A due-diligence framework for evaluating whether a China sourcing partner fits your product, market and risk requirements.
Start with your decision
Describe the decision you need to make first. For example, you may need a verified shortlist, a factory capability review or a pre-shipment quality check.
- What needs to be true before you proceed
- Which product and market constraints apply
- Who signs off internally
Review the proposed scope
Ask for the activities, deliverables, timing, assumptions and exclusions in writing, before any money moves. A general promise to handle everything is not a service definition, and it is the version hardest to hold anyone to afterwards. What you want is a document specific enough that a third person could read it and tell whether the work had been done.
- What will be checked
- What evidence will be delivered
- What sits outside the scope
Check how findings are handled
The process matters as much as the supplier list. Confirm how a problem is recorded, who it goes to, how quickly, and what the buyer is expected to decide at each point. An agent who finds issues but has no route for them leaves you with information rather than with a next step.
- Issue classification
- Corrective-action route
- Buyer decision points
Verify the agent the way you would verify a factory
The checks a buyer is told to run on a supplier apply to whoever proposes to run them. Ask for the registered entity behind the invoice, and check that the party you pay is the party you are contracting with. Ask where the people are based, because the travel line in any quotation depends on it. An agent who is reluctant to be checked on the same basis they check others is telling you something about the standard the reports will be written to.
- The registered entity behind the invoice, not just a brand name
- Whether the payee and the contracting party are the same
- Where the people who will do the visit are actually based
Read the fee model, not only the fee
A single delivered price with the fee inside it cannot be checked: you never see the factory's price, so there is no counterfactual to test the claim that it was negotiated down. That does not make it dishonest — most agents are honest — but it does mean you would not be able to tell. Three answers make two quotations comparable: what the factory charges, what the agent charges, and what freight and storage cost. An agent who can give you all three is comparable; one who cannot may still be excellent, but when the price moves next year you will not be able to see which part moved.
- Ask for the factory price, the agent's fee and the freight cost separately
- Ask who receives the payment for the goods themselves
- A percentage fee rises with the price — ask how that is handled
Ask what happens when something fails
Most engagements are described by what happens when they go well. The useful questions are about the other case. Who decides whether a failed lot ships, and is that decision written down? Is a re-inspection a new visit and a new charge? What happens if the report itself turns out to be wrong within its agreed scope? Answers to these should exist before you engage anyone, because they are hard to negotiate once a container is waiting.
- Who makes the ship-or-hold decision, and in what form
- Whether a re-check is charged as a second visit
- What the remedy is if a report misses something inside its scope
Need this applied to your sourcing brief?
Tell us the product, market and decision you need to make. We will confirm whether a scoped sourcing, verification or quality service is suitable.
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