Wholesale importers · Updated 20 August 2026
China sourcing for wholesale importers and distributors
A wholesale importer's business is built on repeatability: trade customers reorder because the first delivery behaved, and the margin holds because the landed cost per unit stayed where the price list assumed. Both are decided in China, on shipments you never watch being made. So the sealed reference sample and written specification from your first accepted order are held here, and every later order is checked against them.
Start a sourcing brief
This is written for you if
- You import at container scale and reorder the same lines repeatedly
- You resell to trade customers, retailers or your own branch network, rather than to consumers one unit at a time
- You are moving a line to a second supplier, or adding one for capacity
- A change in specification, packing or unit cost between shipments would reach your customers before it reaches you
You probably do not need us if
- You already have your own buying office or resident QC staff in China
- You buy through a domestic importer or trading company that holds the factory relationship, so the specification is not yours to set
- You want a partner who takes title to the goods and invoices you as the seller, rather than a third party working alongside your own supplier contract
- Your retail customers require a social compliance report issued under a named scheme such as BSCI, Sedex or SMETA — labour conditions and site conditions are observed during a factory audit, but no report is issued under any of those schemes
What actually goes wrong
01
The third container is not the first container
Shipment one is made from the approved sample, under attention, often by the supplier's best line. Shipment four is made from whatever the purchasing department bought that month. Substitutions arrive quietly: a thinner gauge, a different resin, a screw thread that is close enough, a carton that fails after two stacked pallets. From the factory's side nothing was broken, because the last few small deviations went through without comment — and that is how a standard actually moves, not in one step anyone would refuse but in a series nobody objected to. Drift like that reaches your trade customers before it reaches you, and they compare it to what you sold them last time.
02
Your customers reorder on a promise you did not renegotiate
A distributor's product is consistency. When a retailer reorders, they are buying the item they already put on a shelf and already trained staff to sell. A variation that a direct-to-consumer brand can absorb as a return rate, and that a marketplace seller absorbs as review damage on one listing, arrives at a distributor as a rejected delivery, a credit note and a conversation about whether you are still reliable supply. The cost of a drifted batch is not the batch. It is the account.
03
Landed cost is decided by things that are not on the invoice
The unit price is the number that gets negotiated, and it is only one of the inputs that decide what a unit costs you delivered. Carton dimensions decide how many units fit in a container. Packing density decides whether you paid to ship air. Duty depends on how the goods are classified and described, and the classification follows what the product actually is rather than what the supplier called it on the proforma — which is why the description that reaches your broker matters more than the one on the supplier's invoice. A price reduction that arrives with a carton-size change can move the delivered cost in the other direction, and none of that appears on the invoice you approved.
04
One supplier, and no measure of how much of them you are
Repeat buyers accumulate dependency without deciding to. The relationship works, so it is never examined, and nobody establishes the figure that governs how it behaves under pressure: your volume as a share of what that factory makes. Whether you are a small share or a large one changes what a delay means, who gets capacity when capacity is short, and how much notice you would get before any of it changed. That figure is easy to ask about while nothing is wrong and hard to ask about once something is.
05
Your customers' reorder dates do not move when your factory slips
A distributor absorbs a delay twice: once as late stock, and once as a trade customer who was given a date on the strength of the last delivery. Qualifying an alternative source is not complicated, but it takes a qualification round, a trial order and a shipping cycle, and none of those shorten under pressure. That arithmetic decides when the work has to happen. A second source built in the quiet part of the year is available when a season goes wrong; one started after it goes wrong arrives for the season after.
What stays with you
Your trade price list is the one document nobody outside your business can write. It encodes what your accounts will pay, what your competitors are doing to you and how much margin you need to hold to keep a line on the shelf. That, and every judgement built on it, stays where it is.
- The trade price list, margin structure and trade terms
- Which lines to carry, and when to drop one
- Account relationships and demand forecasting
- Stock cover and how much capital sits in it
What moves to us
The China-side execution, and the continuity work between orders: holding the baseline a repeat purchase is supposed to be made to, and running the checks that show whether it was.
- Supplier verification and capability assessment before you commit volume
- A sealed reference sample and the written specification held here, and compared against order after order
- The packing standard recorded as part of that baseline, carton construction and dimensions included
- Inspection on repeat orders at an interval agreed per line, with findings set against the previous shipment rather than read in isolation
- Qualification of a second source, and handover to your freight forwarder
What the engagement covers
Before the first order
Supplier verification
Establish which registered entity you are dealing with, what it is approved to produce, and whether the address on the paperwork is where your goods are actually made.
View serviceBefore a line is relied on for repeat volume
Factory audit
Assess whether the supplier can hold your quantities repeatedly rather than once: equipment, capacity measured against your order sizes, and the incoming-material control that decides whether batch four is made from what batch one was made from.
View serviceOn a standing interval, line by line
Quality inspection
Repeat buyers are normally set up as a standing programme rather than booked shipment by shipment: each line gets an agreed inspection interval — every shipment where a failure would reach a trade customer, a set frequency where the line has been stable — written down at the start and revisited whenever the supplier changes a material, a component or a site. Sample-based inspection against the sealed reference sample and the packing specification, carton construction and dimensions included, with results recorded against the previous shipment so a difference reads as a difference. The carton and pack figures come back in the form the landed cost calculator asks for, rather than being estimated again.
View serviceWhen you want an alternative
China sourcing
Qualify a second supplier for an existing line against the specification you already run and the reference sample already held, so switching is a decision you can price and time rather than one made under pressure.
View serviceThe supplier questionnaire, answered in a form you can compare
You send the same questions to five factories and get five formats back, half of them incomplete, none of them checkable from your side. We collect the set before you commit, in one comparable form, and mark what we confirmed against what remains the supplier's claim. On a range you intend to reorder for years, the difference between those two is what the second and third orders run on.
Minimums per SKU across a mixed order
A mixed order has a minimum per line, not one for the order, and the small lines are where the number bites.
What we bring back: Minimums quoted per SKU in writing, and which lines only work when combined with others made explicit.
Price breaks, and what actually changes at each one
A lower unit price at a higher quantity sometimes comes with a different material, a longer wait for a shared production slot, or generic packaging.
What we bring back: Each break quoted with the specification attached to it, so a cheaper number is not a quietly different product.
What is fixed for repeat orders, and what is not
The first order gets attention; the third is made from whatever material is current unless the specification says otherwise.
What we bring back: The change list the supplier agrees to notify before production, and the sealed reference sample held outside the factory for comparison.
Lead time and capacity for repeat volume
Capacity for one order says nothing about capacity for the same order every quarter, particularly in a busy season.
What we bring back: Lead time with a named starting point, plus what the factory has actually committed for the season and where your order sits in it.
Quoting terms, and what the price includes
A term without a named place and version is incomplete, and quotes written on different terms cannot be compared as though the gap were a discount.
What we bring back: Incoterm, named place and rule version on the quotation, with inclusions and exclusions itemised so you can build the landed cost yourself.
The documents your side will need
Commercial invoice, packing list, an accurate product description, and any test report or declaration your market requires.
What we bring back: The document set and its owner agreed before the goods move. We describe goods accurately and pass supplier documents to you or your broker; we do not give tariff classification, duty or clearance opinions.
Questions buyers ask first
How do you stop quality drifting between repeat orders from the same factory?
By holding a fixed baseline and inspecting against it, rather than against a general idea of acceptable. The baseline is a sealed reference sample held here, a written specification naming materials and components, and a packing specification naming carton construction, dimensions and unit count. Each repeat inspection checks the current lot against that held baseline, and the findings are set against the previous shipment rather than read on their own. Materials and packaging can be changed without touching tooling or the production method, so incoming-material checks and carton verification sit in the check alongside the finished product. None of this stops a supplier changing an input; it decides whether the change is found before the goods ship or after they are sold.
Do we have to book each inspection, or can this run as a standing arrangement?
It runs as a standing arrangement, and for a repeat importer that is the normal shape. The first order establishes what correct means — sealed sample, written specification, packing standard — and from there each line is given an inspection interval that is agreed once and written down: every shipment on lines where a failure would reach a trade customer, a set frequency on lines that have been stable for several runs. Nobody then has to decide, shipment by shipment and usually under time pressure, whether this one is worth checking; the schedule already says, and the reference sample and specification for each line stay held here between orders so a check can be run without rebuilding the baseline first. The interval is a decision that can be pointed to later, which is worth more than the alternative — inspecting whichever shipment happened to cause worry. It is revisited whenever the supplier changes a material, a component or a production site, and it can be tightened for one line without touching the others. Per-shipment booking is still available where a line genuinely does not warrant a standing interval.
What should be checked when a supplier asks to change a material or component?
Treat it as a new approval rather than a notification. Get the proposed change in writing with the specific material, grade or component named, then a new sample made from the changed input and compared directly against the sealed reference held for that line. The points to check are the ones your trade customers would notice: dimensional fit, finish, behaviour under normal use, and anything that affects packaging or carton size. Where a change touches a regulated characteristic for the destination market, the applicable requirement is re-confirmed at that point rather than carried over from the earlier input. A change accepted by email and never sampled is how a specification stops describing the goods without anyone deciding that it should.
How does packaging affect landed cost per unit?
Container space is paid for whether or not it holds product, so carton dimensions, units per carton and packing density decide how much of the container you bought is inventory. A carton that is fractionally too large can cost a full layer of stacking, which changes the cost of every unit in the shipment without changing the unit price. Carton strength decides whether goods survive palletising and stacking in a warehouse, which surfaces later as damaged stock rather than as a purchase cost. That is why the packing standard belongs in the written specification and on the inspection checklist rather than in an email thread, and why it is worth settling before a unit price is agreed: a price reduction that comes with a carton change can move the delivered cost the other way.
Can you tell us the HS code and the duty rate we will pay?
No — classification is your customs broker's call, and deliberately so. A tariff classification is a legal determination about your import in your market, your broker or customs agent is the party licensed and insured to make it there, and in several markets giving classification opinions is regulated activity. An opinion offered from this side would carry no standing with your customs authority while quietly displacing advice that does. What is done instead is the part that actually decides the answer: the product is described accurately and completely for your broker — what it is made of and in what proportions, how it works, what it is for, how it is presented and packed, with photographs and the supplier's own technical data attached — because most classification errors trace back to a thin or optimistic product description rather than to a misread tariff schedule. If your broker returns a classification that turns on a factual point about the goods, that point can be checked at the factory and answered with evidence. Where a duty figure is needed for a landed-cost calculation before the broker has ruled, use the broker's indicative rate rather than a number from here.
We already have a supplier we are happy with. What is worth doing?
Two things, and neither requires changing the relationship. The first is establishing your volume as a share of what that factory makes, which is the figure that decides how the relationship behaves when capacity is short. The second is qualifying an alternative before one is needed, so an ownership change, a fire or a lost capacity allocation becomes a switch you have already prepared for rather than a search started under pressure. Qualifying a second source does not mean moving the order, and it does not have to be raised with the incumbent. A supplier relationship that works is a reason to understand it, not a reason to leave it unexamined.
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.
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