Does anyone have any experience? I have a client that produces a printed fabric item that I’m sure could be produced in the Far East to improve margins.

Does anyone have any advice on where one would start trying to source a suitable manufacturer? Are agents the way to go or is it a case of researching manufacturing facilities and getting on a plane?

Any help would be greatly appreciated…

alibaba.com

Thanks Woody, is that a reliable route? It’s a bespoke printed/manufactured product, is that the best way to find a supplier?

Shibboleth,

If you contact your local UK Trade and Investment team they can in turn contact their guys (or girls) on the ground in the regions you are considering and ask them to source suppliers for the products you want. There is a cost to this I understand but depending on the savings you are looking at making may be a quicker and easier source.

Dont forget that sourcing from abroad will incur duty charges at import that, depending on the product, may reduce your savings. However there are a number of schemes available (GSP for instance) that could reduce or remove the duty completely subject to source and local origin.

Matt.

Thanks Castrol, that’s very helpful. I’ll make further enquiries…

Cheers!

I have an acquaintance who is an intermediary between UK chain stores and Chinese textiles manufacturers. He’s been going out to China for twenty years and has a great (he tells me) local partner – certainly very successful at what he does. If you want thousands of whatever it is you want, he might be your man. On the other hand, if you’re too small scale or effectively a competitor, then this is probably no help at all. Let me know if the company’s name would be useful to you.

That would be a massive help konabunny. It’s certainly not going to be in competition (unless he makes traditional Dutch costume) but the quantities are in the 10s of thousands per annum, so fairly decent numbers…
The items are currently manufactured in Holland at considerable expense. I’m certain it could be made cheaper in far east, just need to find a good contact to help liaise with local manufacturers….

For textile goods I’d look at Pakistan as well as China.

I would go with an agent unless you’re willing to set up a local purchasing office. You really need some kind of middleman keeping an eye on things. Otherwise you get totally random happenings like clothes with the only suitable cleaning method specced as “Wipe clean with a damp cloth only”…

The whole job of getting a Far East supplied item is tortuous – you’ve got to find a decent agent and supplier, so that you reduce the chance of your product being despecced and your packaging art being altered from “almost certainly going to happen” to “might happen”. You also suddenly have massive lead times, so more cash tied up in stock even if you are making a better margin, and more chance of going out of stock.

For some stuff it’s an absolute no-brainer – relatively simple and low spec items, you can order 20000 Far East units rather than 10000 European items and still be saving a fortune. For other items, you may spend as much on supply chain management, print management and QA as you save on the manufacture.

You may also move from a situation where you’re a relatively large customer for your supplier, and therefore pretty important and treated with kid gloves, to being a small part of the supplier’s business and not getting replies to emails once things start getting difficult.

No brainer eh. No brains IMO.

Even making hig-tech products os no longer a protection from asian competition: Q Solar is the fifth German solar panel maker to go bust as they can’t compete with cheap asian products.

Traditionally Quality would suffer so it made sense to retain technical know how and outsource the mass production of less quality critical parts.

However most of the new registrations to ISO9001 Quality Management Standard over the last few years have been companys in the far east. So not only are they able to beat us on cost, they are also able to compete with us on quality.

Find a supplier that is ISO accredited and work very close with them whilst also keeping your cards very close to your chest(you could give them all the knowhow they need to approach your customers- a ready made market- “we can supply you the same as you’ve been getting for half the price”)