Thank you for your blog and providing this space to share our adventures in China.
It is full of useful tips posted by experienced people. Living and working in China myself for many years, I recognise, in most of the post, my own experience.
Jia You!
Eric Giraud, Gmet Quality Control

Comment by Eric Giraud
Dear All,
I would like to add my stone to this blog.
I have been living and working in China for many years and also a founder of a 3rd party Quality Assurance company.
Further to the great post from Barbara Cisneros “21 steps to follow when sourcing from China”, If I may, I will add a comment.
According to my experience (and others), when sourcing from China, a key question would be:
Is my business attractive to this supplier?
I do not know any supplier who will refuse a new customer and especially a foreign one.
However, your business should represent between 10% to 30% of their production.
Do not choose very big suppliers who will not necessary give you priority.
We are dealing, sometimes, with customers whose orders represent a small fraction of their supplier’s production output and often, suppliers subcontract these orders which, in 90% cases, affect the quality.
In contrary, do not choose a too small supplier. A workshop with less than 50 people is not reliable.
Going through an agent or a trading company is also risky. If the production is delayed or the quality is not up to your standard, your agent has little leverage toward the manufacture.
As Barbara wrote, keep pressure on your suppliers.
Using a QA company is a good way of doing it. Another way is to always keep a significant amount of money until you approve the shipment. On sales contract you can negotiate, for example, payment of 30% at order, 30% when production is complete and 40% when shipment is accepted.

Eric Giraud, Gmet Quality Control

I’ve recently interviewed a company who run a Quality Control service in China which does the ongoing checks on every order, meaning you can leave the country. We will be publishing the article soon but would welcome any feedback you have on whether outsourcing quality control and monitoring to a specialist has value.

First, I wonder if a factor in this case could be that Ella is a woman? You write China has changed since the early nineties–women were probably not as welcome in the board room as they are today. A pretty and intelligent Western woman like the one described might have been even less desirable.

Second, I believe people like myself that have opted to teach for a year while polishing our Chinese skills have made an error career-wise. The most recent employer I now have is English School X, which is indistinguishable from too many others. “Living like a bohemian” might be more attractive on a resume.