Sweet and Sour Sourcing

 

 

 

All the big guns are doing it. It would be difficult to find a High Street fashion retailer that was not sourcing a major part of its stock from China. Offering solid quality at a decent price, China has become the destination of choice for big buyers of everything from bootlaces to blouses to designer bags.

 

But if you’re a smaller operator, a boutique or a designer, how should you go about sourcing from China? This is a brief guide that might help point you in the right direction.

 

There Be Dragons

It might seem strange and far away, with an unfathomable culture and a language that’s famously unlearnable, but China is changing very rapidly. Nowadays, some of the truly mysterious things about urban China are how so many people know their Pradas from their Guccis and how amazingly long the queue is outside Pizza Hut on a weeknight.

 

Many Chinese youngsters speak passable English and are proficient online, so if you’re exchanging emails with a factory or wholesaler you found online, you shouldn’t have too much trouble making yourself understood. And most factories now have experience of dealing with Western customers, so cultural differences are not as much of an obstacle as they once were. 

 

 

Size Does Matter

As a general rule, Chinese factories like bulk orders. Logic might have it that you could place a relatively small order and just pay a higher unit price, but it rarely works this way. Such is the emphasis on bulk production that China’s own fashion designers often resort to sourcing their materials from abroad.

 

If you’re looking to source something “off the peg”, there is scope for placing smaller orders, and a great place to find what you’re looking for is the sourcing website www.alibaba.com, which lists tens of thousands of ready-made products and provides an easy way to communicate with Chinese factories directly.

 

However, if you’ve designed something and you’re looking for someone to make it, you may find it hard to persuade a factory to take on a small order. To get around this, you might need to think of ordering for a mixture of retail and wholesale. Keep what you need and sell the rest on.

 

Alternatively, it’s a bit sneaky, but you could try telling the factory that you’re placing a trial order to be followed by a much larger order later on. If you’re clever, the “trial order” could be big enough to give you all the quantity you need.

 

 

 

Make It Last

There is always going to be a risk that what you get isn’t quite what you ordered, either in terms of quality or quantity. To reduce this risk, you need to find a producer you feel good about. Alibaba (www.alibaba.com) is handy for this as well because it posts up online videos of many of the factories it lists. You’ll get a good idea of the quality of the end product from the look of the factory and its machines.

 

Having found the right supplier, your best bet is to build a long-term relationship with them. If a factory is reassured that the orders are going to keep coming, it has more to lose by selling you short on quality or quantity.

 

Wherever possible, you should also avoid making full payment for goods up-front. Arrange to pay a deposit first and then make the full payment only after you’ve seen a sample from the same production run.

 

Protect What’s Yours

Copyright theft is a major issue in China. That doesn’t deter the big retailers from producing clothes there, but if you’ve designed a unique product that you fear might be copied, you probably should not have it made in China.

 

Got a Licence for that Bra?

Remember the “Bra Wars”? Then you’ll know that there are quotas on the import of certain Chinese textile products to the EU before the end of 2007. Before you import any of these products to the UK from China, the factory you buy them from will need a quota allocation, and you will need an import licence from the Department of Trade and Industry (www.dti.gov.uk).

 

The products covered by these restrictions are: pullovers, men’s trousers, blouses, T-shirts, dresses, bras, flax yarn, cotton fabric, and bed and table linen.

 

The EU is also preparing to impose anti-dumping duties on Chinese shoes. So that’s also something to watch out for.

 

 

Where To Begin?

The two main sourcing websites for China are Alibaba (www.alibaba.com) and Global Sources (www.globalsources.com). They are a trove of useful information, not just about suppliers, but also about various issues from shipping to fraud and copyright protection. If you’re thinking of coming to China to visit a trade fair, you’ll also find most of the main trade fairs listed on these two websites.

 

There are so many trade fairs in China now that it can be difficult to know which ones are really worth a visit. By far the largest is the twice-yearly Canton Export Commodities Fair in Guangzhou (www.cantonfair.org.cn), which is for all kinds of products, but still has a huge section for clothing and fashion accessories. Another worthwhile show is the Shanghai International Clothing and Textile Exhibition in March (www.fashionshanghai.com).

 

One word of warning about trade shows. Before you pack your bags and head for China, you’ll need to make absolutely sure that the show really does deal with the products you’re looking for. Sometimes you’ll be surprised. Knitwear shows, for example, are strictly for underwear, bedding and towels.

 

Tim Wilson is general manager of Chunkichilli Knitwear Ltd (www.chunkichilli.com)