The COVID-19 outbreak was first identified at the end of January 2020. Conditions in China are now gradually improving as a result of the country’s vigorous containment efforts. What is it like to manage a supply chain under these circumstances? How does one mitigate risks that no-one had predicted? To...
Experienced importers with deep knowledge of China and its culture are able to realize savings and increase their revenue. But not all importers have that background. We previously covered this topic in the blog series “Are You Leaving Money on the Table?” In that blog, we explored what happens when...
Price is not everything when sourcing from China, but it still is the most important reason why importers source from there. Importers come to us for a number of reasons, but the three most common requests are: Quality assurance, finding suppliers, and securing optimal pricing. Every importer is concerned with...
The impending tariffs and the trade war with China have been an ongoing and popular topic in the press, and an especially important issue in our business. One of the benefits of this kind of activity is that importers are focused on reducing COGS (Cost of goods sold). A recent...
Four weeks ago, I shared with youMichael De Clercq’s blog about his predictions on a positiveoutcome of the additional tariffswith China. As you know, President Trump originally set a deadline of March 1st. We are now at that deadline and,a few days ago, we all learned that hepostponed this deadline...
We field a lot of questions about China sourcing and the management of the China supply chain, such as: How is it done? How hard is it? What are the pitfalls? etc. The best answers are provided by China sourcing specialists. To address some of these questions we thought we...
USA businesses that buy Chinese goods are adventurers. They go to the other side of the world to secure supplies of low-cost products for their customers. They brave all sorts of challenges ranging from quality (whether it meets their expectations), price (whether they really got the best price), cost of...
China sourcing alone is a complex concept even before you get to logistics. Then you realize that there are so many moving parts to the logistics steps alone. According to an article we recently read in The Economist, giants like Amazon can now offer shipping products within an hour in...