Twelve people in one office in Yiwu. When you work with our China sourcing team you are assigned one representative who stays with your account, and behind them sit the sourcers who visit the factories and the warehouse staff who handle your goods. Every face below is someone you may end up messaging.
Most sourcing agencies present a team page as a wall of faces without explaining what any of them do. Here is the actual division of labour, because knowing who to ask saves you a day every time something needs a decision.
Your single point of contact. They quote, chase the factory, send you photos and tell you when something has slipped. You keep the same person across orders, so you are never re-explaining your product to a stranger.
They go into the market and the factories in person. Identifying who really makes a product, testing whether a quoted price is genuine, and finding the second supplier when the first one disappoints.
Receiving goods, checking them against the order, labelling, polybagging, carton prep and consolidation. The physical work that decides whether your shipment is accepted at the other end.
Alan still reads the escalations. When an order goes badly wrong the decision does not wait for a committee, which is one practical advantage of working with a team this size.
This is a sample of the team, not the whole company. The rest of the business — more customer representatives, more sourcers, warehouse and support staff — simply are not pictured here. Everyone works from the same office in Yiwu on China Standard Time, which matters more than it sounds: when your representative needs an answer from a sourcer or the warehouse, they turn around and ask rather than raising an internal ticket.
Handles some of our longest-running accounts. The client who sent the handwritten card below asked for her by name.
Works mostly with Amazon private label sellers, so he speaks FNSKU, polybag and carton limits without needing it explained.
Takes the accounts that ship into several markets at once, where the certificate differs by destination.
Good with first-time importers. Expect her to ask what you plan to sell it for before she quotes anything.
Handles higher-volume repeat buyers where the same SKU has to come back identical run after run.
Covers seasonal categories, which means she is the one telling clients in April that Christmas orders close in June.
Works on custom and developed products, where the conversation starts from a sketch rather than a link.
Picks up the messages that arrive outside your rep’s working hours so nothing sits unanswered overnight.
Goes into the market and the factories. When a supplier says a price is impossible, she is the one who finds out whether that is true.
Sources the harder categories, the ones needing tooling, unusual materials or a factory outside the Yiwu cluster.
Receives goods from the factories, checks them against the order and gets them consolidated for shipping.
Handles labelling, polybagging and carton prep, which is the work that decides whether Amazon accepts your shipment.
This is not a stock photo of models in a co-working space. It is our team at dinner in Yiwu, in the work shirts they wear in the office. We include it because a China sourcing agency is easy to fake online, and a real photograph of real staff is one of the few things that is not.
Clients visit Yiwu more often than you would expect, usually to walk the market or see a factory. When you do, dinner is on us. Alan will try to out-drink you and will probably tell you he can. Consider that a warning rather than an invitation.
Anyone can buy testimonials. Nobody posts chocolates from Belgium to a warehouse in Zhejiang for a company they merely tolerate. These arrived unprompted, addressed to the individual representative rather than to the company.
Sent to the office with a note thanking the team for the help given over a long working relationship.
“Thank you for all the help you provide me with my business and I hope you continue to get me amazing prices for much longer.” A handwritten card and a box of Belgian chocolates, sent to one representative by name and including congratulations on the birth of her first child.
“I want to thank you for all your help. You have been very kind, very generous and very helpful. I would not have made it this far without your help.”
Nougat and Calissons d’Aix, posted to the Yiwu office by a client in Provence after a year of orders. Nobody asked for it and nobody was offered a discount for sending it.
“A parcel of regional confectionery, sent from France to a warehouse in Zhejiang, for a supplier the sender has never met in person.”A sourcing order passes through several hands. Here is the sequence, so you know who is holding it at any given point and who to chase if it stops moving.
Your photo, link or description goes to one named person. They ask what you plan to sell it for and which market it is going to, then brief the sourcer with that context attached.
Goes into the market or the factory in person, verifies who actually manufactures it rather than who resells it, negotiates, and brings back a genuine price with the supplier named.
You get the factory price with our commission shown as a separate line. The sample is arranged and nothing goes into production until you approve it in writing.
Inspected during production and again before the balance is paid, so a defect is caught while the factory can still fix it rather than after the container has sailed.
Counts the goods against the order, then labels, polybags and prepares cartons if the shipment is going into Amazon. This is the work that decides whether it is accepted.
Orders from several factories are combined into one shipment, freight is booked and documents sent. Two months of free warehousing while the rest of your orders arrive.
Not values on a wall. These are specific, checkable behaviours, and if we fail one of them you are entitled to say so.
Monday to Friday 9am–6pm and Saturday 9am–4pm, China Standard Time. If your representative is away, Gabby picks it up rather than letting it sit.
You are not rotated through a pool. The representative who quoted your first order is the one who handles your fifth, and they remember what went wrong last time.
If production has slipped or a sample failed, you hear it that week rather than on the day the goods were supposed to ship. Late news costs you more than bad news.
You are told who is making your product. We do not hide the supplier to stop you going direct, because an agent who needs that trick is not adding value.
Zero markup on the product price. Our commission is shown as a separate line, so nobody here has a reason to steer you towards the supplier who pays us more.
If your product idea has a problem, you will be told at the quoting stage. Several categories on our products page exist to say no rather than yes.
A dedicated contact. One of our eight customer representatives is assigned to your account and stays with it across orders. They know your product, your target price and what went wrong on the last shipment. Gabby covers messages that arrive outside your representative’s hours, so nothing sits unanswered overnight, but she hands it back rather than taking over.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and Saturday 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, China Standard Time (UTC+8). We commit to a reply within one working day. In practice most messages are answered the same day, but the commitment is what you should hold us to rather than the average.
In person. Two of the team are dedicated product sourcers whose job is to go into the Yiwu market and into factories. This is the main practical reason to use an agent based in the cluster rather than one working from a laptop: a supplier who knows an inspector may turn up unannounced behaves differently from one who does not.
Twelve people in one office. That is deliberately small: everyone sits in the same room, so when your representative needs an answer from the sourcer or the warehouse they turn around and ask. Larger agencies route the same question through an internal ticket and lose a day. The trade-off is that we cannot take unlimited clients, which is why we are open about the categories we decline.
Yes, and clients do it more often than you might expect, usually combined with walking the Yiwu market or visiting a factory. Come to the office, meet the person you have been messaging and we will take you to dinner. If you want to test the founder’s claim about beer, that is between you and Alan.
Alan, the founder, still reads escalations personally. With a team this size there is no committee between you and the person who can make a decision. If an order has gone badly wrong, say so to your representative and it reaches him the same day.
You will get a named person, a reply within one working day, and a straight answer about whether your product is worth doing. No call centre, no ticket number, no automated sequence pretending to be a colleague.
