Choose how you buy before you shortlist, then know who you are dealing with.
Custom manufacturing builds a product around your specification, with tooling, prototypes, testing and longer lead times. What it takes, which products suit which countries, and when a simpler model will do.
Light customization changes colour, material, size, trims, finish or packaging on a product a maker already runs. Which changes are cheap, which move the minimum, and why.
How to read an AQL plan when you book an inspection: inspection levels, sample sizes, accept and reject numbers, critical, major and minor defects, and a worked example.
Private label puts your brand on a product a maker already makes. It is a branding and supply-chain job, not a logo job. What the model asks of you, step by step, and where it fails.
Ready-to-sell means buying an existing product with little or no change. It is the fastest way to launch and the one where you control least. What the work really is, and where it goes wrong.
The thirteen stages of sourcing a product from any country, from brief to reorder: what each stage produces, the test it must pass, and where first orders go wrong.
Wholesale sourcing means buying existing products in commercial quantities to resell. Why an export wholesale order is sized in containers, not cartons, and how an order runs from quote to reorder.
Artisan producers make by hand at home or in small workshops. What an artisan card proves and what it does not, why weather sets the lead time, and who ships the goods.
A merchant exporter sells and exports goods other firms make. What that means for your certificates, your origin proof and your payment, and the questions that make it work.
A buying house manages factories for brands and importers: vendor choice, sampling, production follow-up and inspection. How it differs from an agent or a trader, and how it is paid.
A sourcing agent works for the buyer, not the factory. What an agent does, how the pay model shapes the advice, how it differs from a buying house, and what to hand one on day one.
