There are two different problems here, and buyers confuse them. One is a criminal who takes a deposit and disappears. The other is a real company that is not a factory, sells you a marked-up product, and ships something slightly different from what you approved. The first is rarer than people think. The second is extremely common and costs more in total.
The checks below catch both. None of them require you to be in China.
1. Get the licence, and read the code
Every registered Chinese company has a 营业执照, a business licence, with an 18-digit unified social credit code. Ask for a photo of it. Then look that code up yourself, free, on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System at gsxt.gov.cn. Commercial mirrors like qcc.com and tianyancha.com carry the same data with an easier search.
Four things to read on that record:
- Registered capital. 100,000 RMB is a shell. 5 million RMB and up suggests a company with something at stake.
- Business scope (经营范围). It must cover what you are buying. If you are buying electrical goods and the scope says "advertising services", you are not talking to a manufacturer.
- Status. Look for 存续 or 在业 (active). 注销 is deregistered. 异常 is listed as abnormal, usually for missing annual filings, and it is a hard no.
- Establishment date. A company registered eight months ago selling "since 2009" is a red flag dressed as experience.
The name test. The company name on the licence, on the proforma invoice, and on the receiving bank account must be the same three strings. If the salesperson says "pay my boss's personal account, it's faster", you have found the answer to your question for free.
2. Work out whether it is a factory or a trader
Most "factories" on Alibaba and 1688 are trading companies. That is not fraud, and a good trader adds real value in consolidation and quality control. But you should not pay a factory price to a middleman, and you should not expect a middleman to control production.
| Signal | Factory | Trader |
|---|---|---|
| Product range | Narrow, one or two categories | Everything in the sector |
| Customisation | Can change a mould, a voltage, a housing | Can change a label |
| MOQ logic | Tied to a production run | Tied to whatever they can buy in |
| Answers on process | Specific: cycle time, scrap rate, line count | Vague, or repeats your own words back |
| Price for the same item | Lower, less flexible on terms | Higher, more flexible |
Ask one question that only a factory can answer: what is the injection cycle time on this part, or how many people are on the assembly line, or what is your monthly scrap rate. Traders either guess or change the subject.
3. Make them walk
Photos are worthless, and video clips are barely better. A live video call is different, if you control it.
- Ask them to start at the gate and show the company sign next to the street number.
- Ask them to walk to the loading area and show you cartons with other customers' shipping marks.
- Ask them to pan across the production floor without stopping, then count the machines out loud.
- Ask for something they cannot have prepared: today's date written on a carton, or a specific item placed on a machine.
A staged showroom survives none of this. A real factory does all of it in four minutes and is slightly annoyed by the end.
4. Buy a sample, and pay for it properly
A sample order is not about the sample. It is about watching how the supplier behaves when the amount is small: whether they confirm specifications in writing, whether the packing matches what was agreed, whether they send tracking without being asked three times.
Two rules. Pay for the sample and the courier; a free sample from a supplier who is not yet a partner usually means the sample is not from the production line. And put the specification in writing before you pay, in a document both sides have, so the sample becomes a reference you can hold them to on the bulk order.
5. Inspect before it ships, not after
This is the only check that covers everything the other four cannot: whether the goods in the cartons are the goods you approved. Once a container is on the water, your leverage is gone. Returning consumer goods from Africa to China is not economic, and the seller knows it.
A basic pre-shipment inspection covers carton count, quantity per carton, product function on a sample, label and packaging accuracy, and photographs of what is actually in the boxes. In China that runs roughly 50 to 150 USD per order when done by an agent. A formal third-party report from SGS, Bureau Veritas or Intertek starts around 300 USD and is worth it above roughly 20,000 USD of goods.
Red flags, in the order they usually appear
- A price 30 percent below every other quote for the same specification, with no explanation of why.
- Refusal to share the business licence, or a licence whose company name does not match the invoice.
- Payment requested to a personal account, or to a third company "because of tax".
- Specifications that change after the deposit, described as "the standard version".
- Pressure to pay the full amount up front for a first order. Normal is 30 percent deposit, balance before shipment.
- Communication that stops being prompt once the deposit clears.
- A shipping mark or packing list that arrives later than the goods.
If two of those appear in the first week, stop. There are thousands of suppliers for almost every product made in China, and the cost of switching is a week. The cost of a bad first container is a season.
Questions buyers ask
Can you check a supplier I found myself?
Yes. Send the company name or the shop link and we run the licence lookup, check the business scope, and tell you whether it is a factory or a trader. If the order goes ahead we inspect before shipment; if it does not, you still keep the answer.
Is a gold supplier badge on Alibaba worth anything?
It is a paid subscription, not an audit. It tells you the company has been verified as existing and has paid for visibility. It does not tell you the factory is theirs, the quality is good, or the price is fair. Use it as a starting point, never as a conclusion.
What if the supplier is genuine but the quality is just poor?
That is the more common case, and the answer is specification, not trust. Write down what "good" means in measurable terms: wall thickness, lumen output, stitch density, carton burst strength. Then inspect against that document. Undefined quality cannot be enforced.
How much should I pay up front on a first order?
30 percent deposit and the balance against a pre-shipment inspection report is the standard structure in China. Some factories ask 50 percent for custom work, which is reasonable. Full payment before production on a first order is not, however friendly the salesperson is.