Chinese New Year disrupts manufacturing far beyond the official holiday — the four phases of disruption, why freight is the real constraint, elevated quality risk in the rush and restart, and how to plan around it.
The four components of lead time on building materials from China — quotation and sampling, production, inland transport and ocean freight — why production starts at deposit receipt, and how to plan backwards from the site date.
How to order, approve and retain samples from Chinese factories — the four sample types, what a physical sample tests that a photograph cannot, and why the golden sample decides every later dispute.
Where building materials are actually made in China — Foshan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Linyi, Zhongshan, Ningbo and Tianjin — mapped to the products each hub specialises in and the port each one ships from.
What is actually inside a Chinese factory quotation — raw material, processing, tooling, certification, packaging and margin — and the five reasons two quotes for the same product differ by 30%.
How payment terms work with Chinese building material suppliers — deposit and balance structures, T/T versus L/C, and why the balance trigger matters more than the percentage.
How China sourcing agents charge — commission, flat fee, retainer or hybrid — what the fee should include, the nine questions to ask before appointing one, and how to tell if you are paying twice.
MOQ on building materials from China is set per SKU — per colour, per size, per variant — not per order. How the three minimums work and six ways to meet them without overbuying stock.
One-stop sourcing routes your whole order through a single coordinator and one consolidated shipment, while multi-supplier sourcing means managing each
Alibaba is better for browsing suppliers and small trial orders, while a China sourcing company is better for bulk building
