Amazon sellers · Updated 20 August 2026
China sourcing for Amazon sellers
Most Amazon sellers who contact us about China sourcing are not looking for a cheaper factory. They are looking for a second one, because the factory that was fine for two years is suddenly not scheduling their orders — and a stockout at the wrong moment costs the ranking their ad spend paid for.
Start a sourcing brief
This is written for you if
- You sell on Amazon under your own brand or private label
- You source from China and cannot visit suppliers yourself
- You are launching a new product, or moving an existing one to a new supplier
- Your current factory has stopped scheduling you — rush orders are refused, dates slip — and you want a replacement or a second source
- Everything runs through one factory, and a sales spike or a peak season would leave you with no second option
- A quality or labelling problem would put an established ASIN at risk
You probably do not need us if
- You already run a proven primary and a proven backup factory, and are not adding new products or categories
- You have your own permanent team or office in China
- You need freight forwarding or first-leg logistics only, rather than supply-chain and quality work
- The order is a small trial where a scoped third-party service would cost more than the risk it removes
What actually goes wrong
01
One factory cannot absorb a spike
Demand on a listing moves in steps rather than smoothly: an ad budget goes up, a rank improves, a season arrives, the platform runs an event. A factory's flexibility is set by its own order book, not by your sales curve, so the moment your volume jumps is precisely the moment it has the least room for you. Single sourcing is not a risk that shows up as a bad month — it shows up once, at the worst possible time, as goods you cannot get.
02
A bad batch is not just a bad batch
In wholesale, a defect rate of a few percent is a credit note. On Amazon it is a run of one-star reviews attached permanently to the ASIN, and reviews cannot be recalled the way stock can. The economics of quality control are different for you than for almost any other kind of buyer, because the cost of a failure is not the cost of the goods.
03
The stockout costs more than the stock
Sellers price a delay as the sales lost while waiting. The real bill is the ranking, which the launch spend bought and which does not come back on its own — rebuilding it usually costs more than the original push did. That is the whole reason factory scheduling matters more to you than to a wholesale buyer with the same order: they lose margin on one shipment, you lose the position the shipment was feeding.
04
Your place in the queue is relative, and you find out in peak season
There is no order value that makes you a priority account, because priority is not absolute. Where you sit depends on who else is ordering that month and how much they are ordering, which is why two uneventful years tell you nothing about the season that matters. When capacity tightens, line time goes to whoever fills the line, your rush order is quietly pushed behind a larger account, and dates slip a week at a time. It is arithmetic rather than ill will, and it is why pressing harder does not work: the constraint is the order book, not the relationship.
05
Switching factories is not hard. Doing it quickly is
The mechanics are ordinary: qualify a candidate, sample against your reference, run a trial, move over. What cannot be compressed is the calendar — qualification, a trial run, production and sea freight are each as long as they are. And sellers almost always start looking after the delays have begun, which is the one moment the schedule has no slack left. The uncomfortable conclusion is that a second supplier has to be built while nothing hurts, because a second supplier built in a crisis arrives after it.
06
Amazon rejects on paperwork, not just on product
Goods that are made correctly can still be refused at the fulfilment centre, or charged for rework, because of a barcode placed wrong, a missing polybag warning or a mislabelled master carton. Factories optimise for making the product. Amazon's inbound requirements are not their problem until you make them part of the specification.
07
You cannot tell a factory from an office
A supplier who quotes well, replies fast and shows a clean catalogue may be a trading office reselling someone else's line. That is not automatically a problem, but not knowing changes what a price means, what a delay means and who you can actually escalate to when something goes wrong.
What stays with you
The parts of the business that depend on knowing your market. You are closer to your customer than any sourcing partner will ever be, and none of this should move to China.
- Product selection and category strategy
- Listing, keywords, imagery and pricing
- Advertising and launch planning
- Customer insight and what to build next
What moves to us
The China-side work that costs you nights, uncertainty and the occasional expensive surprise. You get findings and decisions; we handle getting to them.
- Supplier discovery and verification
- Qualifying a second source against the product you already sell
- Sampling rounds and specification alignment
- Commercial terms and production follow-up
- Inspection against your spec and Amazon's inbound requirements
- Coordination and handover to your freight forwarder
What the engagement covers
Before you commit
Supplier verification
Confirm the entity you are paying, whether it manufactures or resells, and whether its capability matches your product and volume.
View serviceGetting to a production decision
China sourcing
Compare suppliers against your actual specification, run sampling rounds and turn the options into a decision you can make from where you are.
View serviceBefore the goods ship
Quality inspection
Sample-based inspection against your approved sample, plus a check of the labelling and packaging your Amazon shipment depends on.
View serviceBefore scaling or reordering
Factory audit
Assess whether the supplier can support repeat volume, and whether production is where they say it is.
View serviceBefore peak season
Factory audit
Establish what the factory has actually committed for the season and where your order sits in it, and get verbal assurances written down as dated milestones while there is still time to act on the answer.
View serviceThe list you would otherwise send to every factory
Buyers send more or less the same seven questions to every candidate, then spend two weeks chasing half-answers that arrive in seven different formats and cannot be checked from where they are sitting. We collect that set before you speak to anyone, in one comparable form — and mark which parts we were able to confirm and which remain the supplier's claim, because those are not the same thing and a supplier profile that treats them as the same is worth very little.
MOQ, and minimum per colour or style
The headline number is rarely the whole answer: minimums usually differ per colour, per style and per packaging format.
What we bring back: Quoted in writing per variant, with the parts that can move identified separately.
Sample and production lead times
A number without a starting point is not a lead time. Deposit received, artwork approved and materials in house are three different clocks.
What we bring back: The start point named, and the quoted duration checked against what the last comparable order actually took.
Where materials and components come from
Whether the mill or component supplier is fixed for your product, or chosen order by order on price — the second answer means your approved material can change without anyone calling it a change.
What we bring back: Sources named; whether they are fixed is only real once it is written into the specification.
Quoting terms
A term without a named place and rule version is incomplete, and quotes on different terms cannot be compared as though the gap were a discount.
What we bring back: Incoterm, named place and version stated on the quotation, with what is and is not included itemised.
Certifications
What the certificate covers matters more than that one exists — scope, issuing body and expiry date decide whether it means anything for your product.
What we bring back: The document itself, its issuer, scope and expiry. We report what it covers; we do not issue reports under any scheme's name.
QA process, and whether you get the records
What is checked, at which stage, by whom, and whether the record reaches you or stays at the factory.
What we bring back: What they actually do, observed on site. Headline pass-rate figures are reported as the supplier's claim, because there is no way to verify them.
What they have already produced
Not a catalogue of what they could make — evidence of your product category running on their line.
What we bring back: Production of your category seen on site. Claims about named brands are usually reported as unconfirmed: that customer's permission, not ours, would be needed to check them.
Questions buyers ask first
What is your minimum order quantity?
We are not the factory, so there is no MOQ of ours to quote — the number comes from whichever supplier you use, and it is rarely one number with one reason behind it. It is several minimums stacked: the material has a purchase minimum set upstream of the factory, a colour has its own dye-lot minimum, printed packaging carries a set-up cost that only makes sense over a quantity, and the line has a changeover cost the order has to absorb. Which of those can move is the useful question. Tooling is often the largest single lever — drop a custom moulded part and the threshold frequently falls straight away. We can take that apart with a supplier and check the agreed terms against what actually arrives, but we do not promise that any particular MOQ can be reduced, because the binding constraint is often a mill rather than the factory.
Do I need a sourcing agent as an Amazon seller, or can I just buy on Alibaba?
Alibaba is a supplier-discovery channel and many successful sellers start there. What it does not give you is an independent check that the company is what it claims, that the goods match your approved sample, or that packaging meets Amazon's inbound rules. A scoped service is most worth it when the order is large enough that a failure hurts, when the supplier is new to you, or when an established ASIN is at stake.
Can you inspect against Amazon's FBA labelling and packaging rules, not just product quality?
Yes, provided the requirements are written into the inspection checklist before the visit. That typically covers FNSKU label presence, placement and scannability, master carton labelling, polybag warning requirements and carton weight and dimension limits. Amazon updates its inbound requirements, so the checklist is confirmed against their current published guidance for each shipment rather than reused blindly.
When in production should the inspection be booked?
Usually when production is around 80 percent complete and packing has started. That is late enough for the sample to represent the finished lot, and early enough that a finding can still be corrected before shipment. An inspection booked after loading records a problem instead of preventing one.
What happens if the inspection fails?
You get the findings with photographs and measurements, classified by severity, and a decision point rather than an instruction. From there the usual routes are rework and re-inspection, partial acceptance of the conforming portion, or holding the balance payment while the supplier responds. The commercial decision stays yours; the evidence to make it is what the inspection is for.
My current factory keeps missing dates. Can you help me move to another one?
Yes, and the sequence matters more than the search does. A replacement is qualified against the product you already sell — your approved sample and written specification — rather than against a fresh set of samples, so the item behind the listing does not quietly change and put your reviews at risk. Run a trial order on production tooling and keep the incumbent supplying until that trial passes, because a switch that goes wrong costs more than the delays you are leaving. Start it outside your peak season: a transition needs a qualification round, a trial run and a lead time that Q4 does not leave room for. Two things to settle early — if you funded tooling, whether the agreement lets you move it is a contract question for your lawyer, and if the design belongs to the factory, a second source may not be possible at all. We verify the candidate, check the site and any tooling on it, and inspect the trial run; we do not move tooling whose ownership is unsettled and we do not advise on the contract.
Can you keep up with the way we work?
We are eight to twelve hours ahead of most of the sellers we work with, which is useful on the days it is used properly and frustrating on the days it is not. What we can commit to is the shape of it: one named person rather than a shared inbox, a message sent at the end of your day answered before the start of your next one, and anything that happens at a factory — an inspection result, a slipped date, a specification question — reaching you on the day it happens rather than in a weekly summary. Inspection reports are with you within 48 hours of the inspection finishing. What we will not do is promise a turnaround on something that depends on a factory replying, and we would rather tell you a date is at risk early than reassure you and miss it.
Can you confirm whether my supplier is the actual factory?
That is what supplier verification is for. The business licence and unified social credit code identify the registered entity and its approved business scope, and a site visit or video walkthrough shows whether production of your product type actually happens at the address given. Where a supplier turns out to be a trading company, the finding is reported plainly — it is not automatically a reason to walk away, but you should know before you commit.
If that is not quite you
Buyers of different kinds fail in different ways. These pages cover the neighbouring cases.
Tell us what you are sourcing
Describe the product, the market and the decision you need to make. We will confirm whether a scoped service is suitable and what it would cover.
Start a sourcing briefKeep researching
Guide
FBA labelling and prep: what your supplier has to get right
OpenGuide
Shipping direct from China to FBA: what to settle first
OpenGuide
How to qualify a backup supplier in China
OpenGuide
Private tooling: when a custom mould is worth funding
OpenGuide
Pre-shipment inspection in China: how it works
OpenGuide
How to verify a Chinese supplier
OpenComparison