Sourcing

How you buy

• AQL Sampling Explained: How to Read an Inspection Plan Before You Pay

  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.

• Custom Manufacturing: Building a New Product to Your Specification

  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: Changing an Existing Product Without Starting Over

  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.

• Private Label Sourcing: Your Brand on an Existing Product

  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 Sourcing: Buying What Already Exists

  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 Product Sourcing Process: 13 Stages for Any Country

  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: Buying Existing Goods in Commercial Quantities

  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.

Who you buy from

• Artisan Producers: Buying From Makers Who Work by Hand

  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.

• Buying House: What It Does and How It Gets Paid

  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.

• Sourcing Agent: What One Actually Does, and Whether You Need One

  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.

• Trading Company (Merchant Exporter): What It Is and What to Ask

  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.