Most people who want to import certain products from china will always say, “I want to find the factory” because they think factories offer the lowest price. Unfortunately, this is not always true. Sometimes, a trading company offers lower prices than factories. Buying from factories also has various other troubles such as quality issues and late delivery.
In China, trading companies are sometimes more famous than factories, that’s why the number of trading companies is times more than that of factories. Various trading companies also supply IKEA, Walmart, and other large customers. Li & Fund Ltd, a well-known Hong Kong Company, is one of the most successful trading companies and serves countless international groups in different industries.
Trading companies offer professional and better service, and I’m going to introduce its advantages in following 4 reasons.
Trading Companies Are Easier to Communicate with
Sales from trading companies tend to have higher and better English understanding and communication levels than those of factories. Thus, they won’t get problems in communicating with customers. They also reply to customers’ emails in time. Moreover, if there is any problem in production, shipping, or inspection, the trading company’s sales always notify their clients at the first time.
Many middle or small-scale factories tend to emphasize production and cooperation with local trading companies. Those factories may also have foreign trade sales. Still, they are not good at communicating in English and are usually slow to reply to customers’ emails (Chinese mostly use Wechat and phones for daily contacts and rarely use email). In addition, most qualified sales prefer working at trading companies because they get more working experience.
For example, a particular brand of disposable e-cigarettes is trendy worldwide, and you might think that it is produced by one of the best factories in China. But you do not know that it may be by a trading company through supply chain management and jointly produced by more than 3-5 manufacturers. In addition, many factories also have foreign trade sales, but they spend more than 90% of their time dealing with trading companies. Therefore, it may take two to three days to respond to inquiries on Alibaba, and others will not even get a response.
Trading Companies Have More Product Choices
Every single product supplied by a trading company usually gets many factory suppliers. Thus there are more designs and types. Moreover, even for just one item, the trading companies may offer products of different qualities according to customers’ requests.
Factories usually specialize in one product, which leads to significant limitations. They cannot offer you many choices.
For example, to make electronic cigarettes, choose a trading company, and you can have different styles of the same puffs. However, if you select a factory, you will have to contact 5 to 10 because you can only get one choice from each person.
Trading Companies Have Smaller MOQ
The MOQ of trading companies is usually small, but they can also serve well both small and large businesses. Even for small orders, quality is strictly controlled.
The MOQ of factories is much higher, so they prefer customers who can place large orders such as one style MOQ is at least 50000pcs. For small orders, they like taking them from trading companies，so that can save the time of complicated communication with foreign customers. They can deliver goods to trading companies, which usually place orders to them.
Trading Companies Are Safer to Cooperate with
Trading companies choose their suppliers carefully. They tend to select stable factories that produce good quality goods to enter into a long-term cooperation.
If a customer has an issue with the quality of the product, the trading company will be readily available and willing to help. If necessary, they will ensure that you get a part refund from factories because it is the trading company that brings business to the factory, so the factory has to satisfy the request of the former.
If you don’t usually buy large quantities from factories when quality issues arise, they will not readily help a trading company.
The following tips may be helpful for those who prefer buying from factories.
- You specialize in just one product type, and you need that from one supplier.
- You are familiar with factories based in the local or some other cities, and you can easily find them because finding factories is sometimes challenging even for native Chinese. You better focus on selecting the various products that trading companies offer instead of spending too much precious time finding factories.
