5 points to distinguish manufacturer and trading company
When buying from China, people always want better price. In order to achieve this, people always want to find real manufacturers rather than buying from trader. As the price from manufacturer will obviously lower than trader.
However, if you try to search something online like Alibaba or attend offline exhibition fair, you will find everyone looks professional, everyone is say they are the manufacturer and they have the factory. But in fact, among the suppliers there are only maximum 30% are real manufacturers, the rest are just trading company. So how to find the real manufacturer is the key point for people who buy from China.
So how can we distinguish the trading company & real manufacturer? Through our 5 points, it may help you.
1) Type of merchandize
Trading company can cooperate with several factories at the same time, so their product catalog may look ‘comprehensive’. You can see from their website that they normally provide a wide series of products or service. On the contrary, manufacturer mainly produce one or two kinds of products.
For example, like building materials, the trading company they will have door, windows, tiles, sanitary, lighting etc on their website, which seems they have all the products you need. While the manufacturer used to have single product like doors or windows only. They can not have other products like tiles on their website.
2) Ability of language
The manufacturer mainly focus on manufacturing. Most of their technologist are very good at technology or skill, not very good at foreign language. Some manufacturers will have their own export department, but they may still not perform professional.
While the trading company mainly focus on service not the manufacturing. So they will perform very well about the service, like English speaking, product show etc. They can hire sales people who speak very good English in order to gain good impression from the foreign clients. Besides English, some of the trading company they even speak Spanish, Arabic, Russian etc.
3) Office address
Trading company used to locate in city center like a business building or busy business area where is very convenient for the clients to visit. So their address used to be something like “Address: Room1901, xx Building,…”
However, manufacturer will choose a big and cheap place to meet their production needs, not just a small office area. So their address used to be “No.108, xx industry zone, xx road,”.
So from this point, it will be easy to tell the trading company if you check their address carefully.
4) Website
Trading company will always have good & professional English website. Their website will look beautiful & professional. Also, as focus on exporting only so most of them do not have Chinese website.
For manufacturer, most of them have good Chinese website only. Some of them have English website but may not look as professional as trading company. You may not understand that some of the manufacturers still not have website, as they used to supply their goods to another manufacture or trading company.
5) Account
The trading company used to open USD account in Hongkong as Hongkong has no foreign exchange control. While the Chinese manufacturer used to open USD account in mainland China in order to have tax rebate from Chinese government for export. For those who still not get export license, they will not have USD account, they only have RMB account. So if you want to buy from them, you have to pay them RMB or find a buying agent who will pay them RMB.
So if you see company that provides USD account in Hongkong then most of them are trading company.
All in all, we hope you can find the right suppliers you want when buying from China. If you are too busy or still do not know how to find the real manufacturer then we are pleased to assist. We have been doing sourcing & buying for 12 years in China, with rich experience we are able to help you finding good manufacturers from China. If anything we can assist please contact us.
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