· 2 min read
What a profile cannot tell you
A supplier page shows what the supplier chose to show. Photos can belong to another factory, certificates can be borrowed, and a trading company can present itself as a manufacturer. None of that is visible from your screen.
Five checks that matter
- Legal existence and registration, checked against official sources, not against documents the supplier sends.
- Legal standing: is the company active, and are there adverse records?
- Who really makes the goods, and where is the production site?
- Capacity: can the factory handle your product and your volumes?
- Who sells, who makes, who receives the payment and who exports. When these are different companies, you need to know each one.
Red flags worth a closer look
- The address on the documents does not match the address of the production site.
- The supplier asks you to pay a company other than the one you contracted.
- Reluctance to show the production floor or to let someone visit.
- A very large range of unrelated products from one “factory”.
Why people on the ground matter
Official validation tells you the company exists. Meeting the people, walking the site and negotiating in the local language tells you how it works. Both are needed, and the second cannot be done from abroad.
After validation: develop, do not just select
The suppliers worth keeping can enter a development program, built case by case around your product: assessments, corrective actions and follow-up, so that quality is designed in before the first order, not discovered after it.