We recently discovered that Alibaba shows a list of "purchasing agents". We thought "Wow really? How are they verified?" They list more than 2,000 individuals at your service. It looks like the upwork.com or the freelancer.com of … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2015
The RMB is Depreciating Against the USD Further and Further
Good news for importers: you can buy more and more RMB with 1 USD. To put things in perspective, we are now back to the level of mid-2011. What happened recently? I certainly don't pretend to have the full picture. Many … [Read more...]
What European Importers Need to Know about Compliance: Q&A With an Expert
Fredrik Gronkvist is a co-founder of Chinaimportal, a company that helps small businesses import from China through supplier identification & verification services. A part of Fredrik's offer is to help importers understand what … [Read more...]
How Technology Will Support Quality Control [Infographic]
A few months ago we showed how the QC inspector job would get easier with the help of a mobile app. Today we want to show how the right technology will allow quality control departments to be better organized and to cut lead … [Read more...]
How to Prevent the Factory from Swapping the Goods after Inspection
In general, inspectors leave the factory after their job. They seldom wait for the goods to be repacked. There is an obvious risk: the manufacturer might swap the goods (for example, present a good batch for inspection and then ship a bad … [Read more...]
Setting up a Supplier Evaluation System that Works in China
If you work with a number of suppliers, you probably know which ones are good and which ones are not-so-good. But do you have a formal system to evaluate and manage them? I would strongly advise to put a supplier evaluation system in … [Read more...]
Managing QC Inspectors, Part 8: QC vs. QA
This is the eighth part in the series about the management of QC inspectors in China. Different companies give different job descriptions to their inspectors. I don't think there are "best practices" here, but this is an important topic … [Read more...]