Procurement · China and India
Procurement, from the specification to your warehouse.
Our responsibility does not end at the factory gate. It ends at your warehouse. We run the supplier audit, hold three quality inspection gates, then carry the cargo through freight and customs — from our own offices at both of Asia’s sourcing bases.
Our offices at origin
Beijing · Noida
Origins
China · India
Quality gates
Three, before dispatch
Chain
Sourcing → freight → customs
Before anything else
The origin decision comes first.
China or India is not a preference and it is not a political question. It follows from your category, your tariff exposure and where the cargo has to land. We hold offices at both, so the recommendation costs us nothing either way.
| China sourcing · Beijing desk | India sourcing · Noida office | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it usually wins | Depth of component ecosystem, mature tooling, fast prototyping, the widest category coverage. | Engineering castings and machining, textiles, pharma and chemical inputs, agro processing, and buyers who need a second origin. |
| What it asks of you | A clear specification and a willingness to work at Chinese MOQs, which tend to be higher. | More time in supplier discovery: the base is deep but less consolidated, so qualification does more of the work. |
| Our position there | Beijing desk since the beginning of the company — institutional relationships and the language. | Noida office in Delhi NCR, with the freight and Employer of Record desks in the same building. |
| Typical reason clients choose it | Category simply is not made anywhere else at that quality or scale. | Tariff and concentration risk. Buyers who already source from China and want a second base rather than a replacement. |
Category coverage, minimums and duty treatment change. We confirm the current position for your product before you commit rather than publish figures that may be out of date when you read them.
Method
Eight steps, and what you get out of each one
A sourcing mandate goes wrong in predictable places: an incomplete specification, a trading house presenting itself as a factory, terms agreed verbally, and an inspection that happens after the container has sailed. The sequence exists to close those four.
Step 01
Brief and strategy
We turn what you need into something a factory can quote against: specification, tolerances, volumes, target landed cost and the delivery window. Where the specification is incomplete, we say so before anyone quotes on it.
You receiveA sourcing brief and the origin recommendation, with the reasoning
Step 02
Origin decision
China or India — decided on your category, your tariff exposure and where the cargo has to land, not on where we happen to have an office. For some categories we recommend running both.
You receiveA written origin read, with the trade-offs stated
Step 03
Supplier identification
Candidate manufacturers found through our own desks, industry associations and trade bodies at origin — screened for category experience, capacity and whether they are a manufacturer or a trading house presenting as one.
You receiveA shortlist, with what each one actually makes
Step 04
Supplier audit and qualification
Our people go to the plant. The supplier audit covers registration and export documents, production lines and capacity, quality systems and certifications verified against the claim, and references taken.
You receiveA factory audit report with photographs
Step 05
Negotiation and terms
Price benchmarked across the shortlist, then the terms that decide whether a good price survives contact with reality: MOQ, payment schedule, lead time, packaging, tooling ownership, the Incoterms 2020 rule that applies, and what happens if the goods fail inspection.
You receiveA quotation comparison and the draft supply terms
Step 06
Sampling and approval
Tooling where required, then samples against the specification. The sample you approve becomes the golden sample — the physical reference every later inspection is measured against.
You receiveApproved golden sample, sealed and retained at origin
Step 07
Production and inspection
Three gates, described in full below. Production is monitored on the floor rather than reported to us by the factory, and problems surface while there is still time to fix them.
You receiveInspection reports at each gate, before dispatch
Step 08
Freight, customs and delivery
Export documentation, booking, the sea, air or road leg, customs clearance at destination and delivery. Where a sourcing mandate normally ends, ours continues, run by our own freight teams.
You receiveOne shipment file, from factory floor to your door
Quality
Quality inspection at three gates, all before dispatch
Inspection after arrival is not quality control — it is evidence for an argument you have already lost. Every gate sits at a point where something can still be done about the finding, and sampling follows ISO 2859-1 at the levels agreed for your category.
Where the gates sit
Materials in
Components and inputs arrive at the plantPre-production
Production run
The line is runningDuring production
Finished goods
Packed and labelledPre-shipment
Dispatch
Then freight and customsThe point Every gate is upstream of dispatch, which is the last moment a problem is still a production issue rather than a claim.
Gate 01
Pre-production
Before the line starts: materials and components verified against the specification, the golden sample confirmed on site, and the production plan checked against your delivery window.
Why it is there. Catches the wrong material before it becomes a container of the wrong material.
Gate 02
During production
Inspection while the run is on the floor, typically at the point where enough units exist to be representative but not so many that a defect is unrecoverable. Sampling to ISO 2859-1 (AQL) at the levels agreed for your category.
Why it is there. Catches a drifting process while the factory can still correct it.
Gate 03
Pre-shipment
Finished goods sampled against the golden sample and the specification, quantity verified, packaging, labelling, markings and export documents checked against destination requirements.
Why it is there. The last point at which a container can be stopped rather than argued about later.
Accountability
We are accountable for the goods, not for the introduction
Cost and time leak at the handover between sourcing, freight and customs, because each party can attribute the problem to the other. On our file there is no handover.
Purchase and freight on one file
The order, the booking, the export documents and the customs entry sit together, managed by people who can see all of them.
Landing in a market you do not operate in yet
If the goods are going somewhere you have no entity and no staff, we set up the entity and employ the team — the same contract, the same counterpart.
Both directions
The corridors run the other way too: African and lusophone producers reaching Asian and Gulf buyers, with the same qualification discipline applied to the buyer.
Categories
Where we are asked most often
The method does not change by category; the qualification questions do. If your category is not listed, ask. Where a specialist would serve you better we will say so — and where we take the mandate, we take it whole.
- Industrial and engineering components
- Construction and building materials
- Electrical and electronics
- Vehicle and machinery parts
- Packaging
- Textiles and apparel
- Furniture and interiors
- Agricultural inputs
- Medical and laboratory consumables
- Private-label consumer goods
Common questions
The questions buyers ask before the first order
How do you charge for procurement?
We agree the basis in writing before any work starts, and we tell you which one applies in the first conversation. What we do not do is take an undisclosed margin on the factory price: you see what the supplier quoted.
Do we buy from you, or from the factory?
Either. Some clients contract the supplier directly and use us for qualification, inspection and freight. Others prefer us to buy and resell, so there is one counterparty and one invoice. The second is usually simpler when the goods are moving into a market where you have no entity — and if you need that entity, we set it up.
What is a realistic minimum order?
It depends on the category and the factory, not on us. Custom and industrial products carry higher minimums than stock items, and tooling changes the arithmetic again. We establish the real minimum during qualification and tell you before you commit, rather than quoting a number here that would be wrong for your product.
How long does it take?
A stock item from a qualified supplier moves quickly. A custom product with tooling, samples and approval rounds is a different exercise. We issue a dated sequence after the brief, and we issue it once it is real rather than once it is reassuring.
What happens if the goods fail inspection?
That is why the gates exist and why they sit before dispatch. A failure at pre-production or during production is corrected on the floor. A failure at pre-shipment means the container does not ship until it is resolved, and your remedy is whatever the supply terms we negotiated give you — which is precisely why those terms are agreed in writing at step five, not after a dispute.
Do you inspect with your own people?
Our own teams are at both origins — Beijing and Noida — and that is who goes to the plant. For specialised testing that requires a laboratory or an accredited body, we appoint one and manage it; we do not present a third-party certificate as our own inspection.
Can you handle the freight and customs too?
Yes, and it is the reason clients consolidate here. Air, sea and road, export documentation, customs clearance and final delivery run on the same file as the purchase order — so no one can attribute a delay to the other side of a handover.
Which Incoterms do you work on?
Incoterms 2020 rules, chosen for the shipment rather than by habit. The rule decides where risk and cost pass between you and the supplier, and it is agreed with the supply terms before the first order — not written on the invoice afterwards.
A drawing, a sample or a paragraph is enough to begin.
Send what you have and we return the origin read, the sequence, and precisely what else is required before any factory quotes. An incomplete specification is identified at that stage rather than discovered in production.