A second source is only useful if it makes the same product to the same reference. How to qualify one, and where the line sits on tooling and protected designs.
Decide what the second source is actually for
Different worries produce different candidates. If the risk is capacity at peak, the second source needs headroom in your season, which is when everyone else wants it too. If the risk is a single point of failure, it needs to be genuinely separate — a different site, ideally a different owner, not another workshop of the same group. If the risk is price, you need a credible alternative rather than a real one, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which of these you are doing, because a quote used only as leverage rarely survives contact with an actual order.
- Capacity, continuity and price are three different objectives
- Genuine continuity means separate ownership and separate premises
- A leverage quote is not a qualified supplier
Qualify against the same reference, not against a new sample
The point of a second source is equivalence, so the assessment runs against the sealed reference sample and written specification you already have, not against whatever the new factory would like to show you. Ask for samples made to your specification, compare them to the reference on the properties that decide accept or reject, and record the differences rather than averaging them away. Where the new supplier proposes a substitution because of what it can source, treat that as a specification change requiring approval, not as an implementation detail.
- Assess against the existing sealed reference and specification
- Differences recorded per property, not summarised as broadly similar
- Any proposed substitution is a change requiring approval
The entity and the site, checked separately
Confirm the company before the capability. A mainland Chinese company has an 18-character unified social credit code on its business licence, tied to a registered name, legal representative and approved business scope, and the entity you would pay should be the entity you are negotiating with. Then check the site separately: registered address against production address, equipment and capacity against your volume, and evidence of having made your product category rather than a general claim of being able to. A trading office and a factory look identical on a licence.
- Unified social credit code, registered name and business scope
- Payee entity matched to the contracting entity
- Production address and category experience confirmed separately
Where the line sits on tooling and protected material
This is the part that gets buyers into trouble. A second source is not permission to copy someone else's tooling, drawings or design. If the tool was funded by you and the agreement says it is yours, moving it or cutting a duplicate is a contractual matter to settle with a lawyer before anything moves. If the design belongs to the first supplier — as it often does on an ODM product — a second source may not be possible at all without a licence, and the ornamental appearance of a product can itself be a registered right. We will verify entities and check tooling on site; we will not advise on ownership or arrange the transfer of anything whose ownership is unsettled.
- Funded tooling is a contract question, settled before it moves
- An ODM design may not be reproducible by another factory at all
- We check and verify; ownership questions go to a qualified lawyer
Prove it with a real order, at a size you can absorb
Qualification ends with a trial order large enough to run on production tooling and a real line, and small enough that you can live with the outcome. Inspect it at full coverage, compare it against the reference, and hold the result beside your incumbent's recent performance rather than against an ideal. Then keep the relationship warm with a periodic order, because a second source that has not run your product for two years is a name in a spreadsheet rather than a fallback.
- Trial order on production tooling, at an absorbable quantity
- Full inspection coverage on the trial, compared to the reference
- A periodic order keeps the second source real
Authoritative references
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