What happens between your brief and the pallet.

A written brief that answers the same eight questions every time: destination market and the certification set that implies, first-order quantity and intended annual volume, the SKU or a reference shape, what you want changed, packaging and artwork status, target landed cost, the Incoterm you want the number quoted against, and your sample turnaround expectation. Send the identical RFQ package to every supplier, because a quote answering a softer question is not cheaper — it is a different product.

Two rules make the comparison honest: the Incoterm has to match, or you are comparing freight to ex-works, and the tooling position has to be stated the same way in both, or one quote is hiding a mould inside the unit price. A supplier who will not answer item by item is telling you what the working relationship will feel like.

Three checks, and all of them are cheap. Ask for a live video walkthrough of the line that will actually run your order rather than a showroom tour; ask for the business licence and compare the registered address with the one printed on the quotation; and ask for a third-party factory audit report, or commission one if the order justifies the fee.

A pilot batch is the cheapest way to test the answer before you commit to the run. Factory acceptance of that request without scheduling already tells you what you need to know: a trading company cannot show you a line it does not own, and its customs data will show the same supplier buying in what it claims to make.

A should-cost model is your own arithmetic for what the unit ought to cost — material mass, motor grade, battery cells, assembly minutes, packaging, plus the tooling amortisation you are being asked to pay — built before you open the quotes. It turns a price comparison into a cost comparison: with a should-cost in hand you can see which quote is cheap because the material is thinner, and you can argue about the total cost of ownership rather than the unit price. Add the tariff code and the landed duty at your border, and two quotes that looked eight per cent apart are often the same number.

Ask, and expect a specific answer: an intimate wellness device is an assembly — motor, battery, control board, silicone body and housing — and a plant that moulds and assembles the silicone but buys the electronics in is telling you exactly where your quality risk sits. The concept is vertical integration, described in the Wikipedia entry of that name: the more of the critical path a supplier owns, the fewer parties can change your product without telling you.

It is not a reason to reject a factory that subcontracts the board — most do — but it is the reason to ask who signs off on a substitute component when the specified one is out of stock, and to get that answer in writing before the deposit rather than after the first shortage.

It depends on how much you want to change. The five stock shapes that start at 100 units — for example the A0187 slim bullet massager — are the cheap way to test a market, because the minimum is small and the tooling already exists. The four that start at 300 units in a standard colour and 500 with a custom colour or logo — the A0158 dual-motor personal massager and the A0171 dual-stimulation rabbit massager among them — buy a more complex form factor at a higher entry point. A new mould is a different conversation again and starts at 1,000. Read the MOQ by route before you shortlist, not after.

All three, and the difference is the quantity. A stock SKU carrying your label starts at the catalogue entry minimum; private label in a standard colour starts at 300 units; a modified design under ODM starts at 500; and a new mould starts at 1,000. White label — the stock unit with only your logo — is the cheapest way in and the least defensible product, because the same unit is available to every other brand on the same terms. The catalogue specification table states the tier for every SKU, so nothing here depends on asking us.

The entry minimum is not one number, and that is the point. Five SKUs in the catalogue start at 100 units in stock form; four start at 300 in a standard colour. A custom colour, a Pantone match or a logo application moves any SKU to 500 units, because the colour change is a separate production run rather than a decoration step. Full custom moulding starts at 1,000. If a supplier quotes you a single MOQ for every product, ask what it is actually recovering — usually the smallest setup cost in their range, which then cannot cover the product you want.

If you pay for the tool in full, it is yours, and it transfers on request to any moulder you nominate — we will not hold a paid-for tool as leverage, and the transfer terms are written into the purchase order rather than agreed verbally. If the tooling is amortised into the unit price instead, ownership transfers at the end of the amortisation schedule, and the schedule is written down: the amount, the number of units, the per-unit figure, and the date the tool becomes yours. The failure mode to watch for is a tool that is fully amortised but still being charged — which is why the schedule has an end date and not only a per-unit rate.

Either, and it is a cash-flow choice rather than a pricing one. Upfront means a larger first invoice and a clean unit price from the first unit. Amortised means a lower first invoice and a per-unit line you should see separately on the quotation — not folded into a single number. Ask for both versions of the quote at your volume and compare the total cash out, not the unit price: amortisation always looks cheaper per unit and is sometimes more expensive in total, because the schedule can run past the point where you would have reordered.

A stock sample is charged at the sample price and credited against the bulk invoice when the bulk order is placed against that SKU; a custom sample is charged at cost, because the tooling and the hand work exist only for that sample. Both are stated on the quotation as a separate line. The thing to refuse is a sample that is hand-finished and presented as representative of production — a sample made off production tooling is the only one that tells you anything about the units you will receive.

Stage by stage, not as a single number. A stock sample ships in three to five business days. Bulk production is 25 to 35 days after sample approval and deposit. Add one to two weeks for independent pre-shipment inspection and booking, and 25 to 38 days for sea freight to Europe or the Americas. A new mould adds its own tooling window before production starts, and it is the one leg that genuinely varies, so ask for it in writing with a first-article date attached. Anyone quoting one number for a custom project is quoting the part they control.

Under EU product law a company that places a product on the market under its own name or trademark is treated as the manufacturer, so the Declaration of Conformity carries your name and address, not the factory’s — see the Wikipedia entry CE marking, which is also clear that CE is a self-declaration by the manufacturer and not a certificate issued by an authority. What a factory supplies is the evidence the declaration rests on: test reports, a technical file, material compliance, a risk analysis. If a supplier offers to "give you the CE certificate", ask whose name is printed on it. If the answer is theirs, it is not your declaration.

Only on something that is yours. Under an ODM agreement the manufacturer generally keeps the design unless the intellectual property is explicitly purchased — the Wikipedia entry Original design manufacturer puts it plainly: unless one explicitly purchases the IP, the manufacturer retains it, which means it can sell the same product to your competitors. Exclusivity is therefore a contract term, not a feature of the product: it is written as a design, a territory, a period and a volume commitment, and it is priced accordingly. A stock SKU cannot be made exclusive at any volume, because it is already on other brands’ shelves.

Yes, and it is signed before the first drawing is sent rather than after a price is agreed. What the NDA should cover, and often does not: the packaging artwork and dielines as well as the product, the source files as well as the exports, and a clear statement of who owns the artwork once the project ends. Ask for the artwork back as editable source files on final payment — a flattened PDF is not ownership of a design, it is a picture of one.

30% T/T deposit with the 70% balance before shipment, or an irrevocable letter of credit at sight for larger programmes. What we will not ask for is 100% upfront on a first order, and a supplier who does is telling you something useful: it usually means they are financing the order from your deposit rather than from their own balance sheet. The mirror risk is entirely prepayment by the buyer — never pay the balance before an inspection report exists, whichever terms you agree.

The line runs IQC, in-process IPQC, final FQC and outgoing OQC, with 100% final unit inspection and a stated outgoing defect rate under 0.1%. On top of that, sampling inspection follows ISO 2859-1, normally at critical 0, major 2.5 and minor 4.0 for consumer goods. Book a third-party inspection at your own cost before the goods leave, and tell us the date — a factory that resists an inspection is telling you which of the two you are dealing with. It is the cheapest insurance in the whole order and the single clearest signal that distinguishes a plant from a trading company.

It is gated in most marketplaces, which means approval before listing rather than listing and hoping. The application usually asks for a commercial invoice from a supplier, test reports matching the product, and images that match the ASIN, and the single most common rejection is a document set whose model number does not match the listing. On the listing itself, the manufacturer field is your company — the brand owner — and not the factory. Build the document pack at the same time as the packaging, because the invoice and the carton have to agree with each other and with the ASIN.

Use a scorecard with fixed weights, set before the quotes arrive. The seven dimensions that decide a first order are the certificate pack per destination market (20), the final-inspection defect rate (18), delivered against quoted lead time on the second and third order (15), whether independent pre-shipment inspection is welcomed (12), tooling ownership and transfer terms (12), commercial terms including the invoice beneficiary and Net-30 eligibility (13), and document turnaround (10).

Score each from 0 to 5 and multiply score divided by five by the weight. Two suppliers that look equal on price routinely separate by twenty points here, and the gap is in the columns that cost money after the deposit. The weighted table is set out in full under scoring a supplier on the quality page.

Six fields, and none of them requires a finished design: the target market and channel, the first-order quantity plus the annual volume band across three orders, what you want changed from the base SKU, the target landed cost or retail price, the packaging and artwork status, and every compliance document you already hold. A brief in that shape gets a written scope back rather than a sales call, because it answers the four questions a factory asks before it can quote: which market, how many, what changes, and who carries the certificate. The enquiry form takes exactly those fields.

They answer three different risks, so read them as a set and not as one gold star. ISO 9001 is a quality-management system standard — described in the Wikipedia entry of that name — and tells you the factory runs documented, repeatable process control rather than heroics; it is about consistency, not about the product being good. BSCI and SEDEX (the latter built around the SMETA audit methodology) are social-compliance audits: they look at labour, working conditions and subcontracting, so a clean report is a signal that your brand will not be the one photographed in a bad supplier story.

None of the three is a product-safety certificate, and a factory can hold all three and still ship you a unit that fails your own spec — so treat them as the floor for who you will talk to, and let a third-party factory audit and a pre-shipment inspection carry the rest. A buyer who asks for the audit report reference number, not just the badge, is the buyer suppliers take seriously.

Trade assurance is the broader idea that your deposit is not simply gone the moment you pay it: the money is released against proof of shipment or against an inspection pass rather than on the supplier’s say-so. In practice that means stage-gated payments (a deposit to start, a balance released only against an inspection report or a bill of lading), and a second source nominated in advance so a single failed supplier cannot hold your launch hostage.

The two cheapest protections are also the two most refused by bad actors: never pay 100% upfront on a first order, and never release the balance before an independent inspection report exists. A supplier who resists escrow or an inspection is telling you exactly where the risk sits — and that is worth more than any badge on a homepage.

A tech pack is the document a plant builds from, and it is not the same thing as a brief or a rendering. At minimum it carries the drawing with the dimensions that matter to the packaging, the material call-out per surface that touches skin, the tolerance on every dimension with a control point, the surface finish, the colour reference, the packing configuration and the label position.

It is written in the plant's language, which usually means bilingual with the Chinese terms alongside, because the person reading it on the line is not reading your email. Two things make it worth the afternoon it costs: an approved sample pinned to a revision number, and a change-control rule that says any deviation is quoted before it is built. A tech pack without those two is a picture of a product; with them it is the specification a third container can be judged against.