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China sourcing

Building a supplier relationship that survives the second year

The 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.

France → China

Buyers often optimise the first order hard — lowest price, tightest terms — and then wonder why they are deprioritised when capacity gets scarce. The supplier made a rational judgement about which customers to protect.

What suppliers actually value

  • Predictability. A smaller order every month beats a large one at random intervals.
  • Payment that arrives when it was agreed to arrive, without a reminder.
  • Specifications that do not change after tooling. Changes are expensive and they remember.
  • Problems raised early and factually, rather than accumulated and delivered as a complaint.

The first problem is the real test

Something will go wrong on an early order. How you handle it teaches the supplier what kind of customer you are far more than any amount of relationship-building beforehand. Asking what caused it, before asking who pays for it, changes the entire shape of the following two years.

Keep reading on this.

ShenzhenWhy being on the ground changes the negotiationDistance is read as optionality. A buyer who has travelled, who will come back, and who can be reached the same working day is a different counterparty.China sourcingQualifying a Chinese supplier: what to check before the first orderFinding candidates is cheap and fast. Establishing that one of them can actually deliver what you need is the work — and it is mostly unglamorous.China sourcingIncoterms for importing from China: EXW, FOB and DDP in practiceThree letters decide who arranges what, who pays when something goes wrong, and how comparable two quotes actually are.

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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