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China sourcing

Changing supplier without losing your tooling, your quality or six months

The decision is usually made late and executed fast, which is the wrong way round. A transfer prepared over three months costs a fraction of one improvised in three weeks.

France → China

Most companies stay with a failing supplier longer than they should, because the switching cost is visible and the cost of staying is spread across quality incidents, late shipments and management time. Then a crisis forces the move and the transfer happens under the worst possible conditions: no tooling in hand, no second source qualified, and an empty warehouse.

What you must have before you say anything

  • Your tooling, physically or contractually. If you paid for moulds and the ownership is not written down, this is the moment you find out.
  • Complete technical documentation that does not live in the current supplier's head: drawings, materials, tolerances, acceptance criteria, the golden sample.
  • Enough stock to cover the qualification of the new source, which is longer than the new supplier's first quotation suggests.
  • A new supplier that has already made samples from your documents — not one that has promised to.

The sequence that works

  1. Qualify the new supplier quietly, as a second source, while the current one is still producing normally. This is not disloyal; it is ordinary supply-chain hygiene.
  2. Run a real order through the new supplier, small but real, and inspect it as strictly as a first order from anyone.
  3. Move the tooling only once the new source has produced acceptable parts, and arrange its physical retrieval before the conversation about ending the relationship.
  4. End the old relationship clearly, in writing, with outstanding balances settled. China is a smaller world than it looks and a supplier you left badly talks.

What is genuinely lost in a transfer

Not the drawings — the accumulated tacit knowledge. The operator who knows that this part needs an extra second in the fixture, the adjustment nobody wrote down, the informal tolerance that has held for two years. Expect the first runs from a new supplier to surface defects the old one had silently solved. Budget for that rather than being surprised by it, and write down every fix so the next transfer is cheaper.

The best moment to prepare a supplier change is when you have no intention of making one. A qualified second source is also the strongest position you will ever have in a price negotiation.

Keep reading on this.

China sourcingWhen you need a second supplierDual sourcing costs money and attention. The question is not whether it is safer — it is whether the failure it protects against would actually hurt you.ShenzhenTooling: the cost people discover too lateUnit price gets all the attention in a first quote. The mould is what actually locks you to a supplier, and it is rarely discussed until it is paid for.China sourcingBuilding a supplier relationship that survives the second yearThe first order is a transaction. Whether it becomes a relationship is decided by how the first problem is handled, not by how well the first order goes.China sourcingWhat a sourcing agent costs, and the three ways they get paidCommission, retainer or margin — each one points the agent's interest somewhere different. Knowing which model you are in tells you what advice you are getting.

If this raised a question about your own project, tell us where you are — the first conversation usually clarifies more than a proposal.

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