Why this question is harder than it looks
Search for a China sourcing agent and you will find hundreds of companies describing themselves in almost identical words: experienced, reliable, factory-direct, one-stop. Those words carry no information, because every competitor uses them too. What separates a useful agent from an expensive one is not the description — it is whether they can answer specific questions with specific answers.
The seven questions below are the ones buyers ask us after they have already been burned once. They work on any agent, including us. If an agent cannot answer one of them plainly, that is the answer.
1. Are you the buyer, or are you reselling to me?
There are three common models, and they behave very differently when something goes wrong:
- Buying office / sourcing agent — you are the buyer, they work on your behalf, and you usually pay a service fee on top of the factory price.
- Trading company — they buy from the factory and resell to you. The margin sits inside the unit price, and the factory name is often not disclosed.
- Broker — they make an introduction and disappear. No inspection, no follow-up.
What a good answer sounds like: "We are a buying office. You contract with the factory, we handle the work in between, and our fee is separate and stated."
What a bad answer sounds like: "We are factory-direct." That phrase usually means you are talking to a trading company that would rather not explain its margin.
2. Can you give me the factory's name and address before I pay?
Some agents refuse and cite supplier protection. That concern is sometimes genuine, but there is a middle ground: the factory name and address under a simple non-disclosure, or a video walk-through of the production line with the company signboard visible.
If the answer is "we cannot tell you until you place the order", you are not buying through an agent. You are buying from a reseller who does not want you to compare prices.
3. How exactly do you get paid?
Ask for the structure in writing: a percentage of order value, a flat fee per project, an hourly rate, or a monthly retainer. Then ask the follow-up that actually matters — do you receive anything from the factory?
Factory commissions are common in this industry and are not automatically dishonest, but they change whose interest the agent is protecting. An agent paid by the factory has little incentive to negotiate the price down. An agent paid by you does. Either model can work; the problem is only when it is not disclosed.
4. Who does the inspection, and what do I actually receive?
"We check the quality" is not an answer. Ask what the inspection covers, who performs it, and what document you get afterwards.
A useful inspection report carries photos with timestamps, measured quantities against the purchase order, a defect list with counts, and a clear pass or fail recommendation. If the deliverable is a handful of photos on WhatsApp, you are paying for a visit, not an inspection.
5. If the goods arrive wrong, who pays?
This is the question most buyers forget, and the one that decides whether an agent is worth the fee. Honest answers vary: some cover re-inspection costs, some negotiate with the factory on your behalf, some do nothing once the container leaves.
What matters is that the answer is specific and written down before you order. "We will handle it" is not an answer. "If the defect rate exceeds the AQL we agreed, we arrange rework at the factory and cover the second inspection" is.
6. Can I start with a small trial order?
An agent who only wants container-volume orders is optimizing for their own revenue, not for your risk. A trial order — even a small one — tests the whole chain: how fast they reply, how accurate the quotation is, how the inspection is done, and how they behave when something goes wrong.
Expect to pay more per unit on a trial. That premium is the cost of finding out whether the relationship works, and it is almost always cheaper than discovering the problem on a full container.
7. Can you give me two customers I can contact?
Not testimonials on a website — actual contact details of buyers who purchased something similar to what you are buying. Many agents will refuse for privacy reasons, which is fair. But a good agent can usually find one customer willing to take a short call, or at least an anonymized case with dates, product category and destination country.
An agent with no verifiable customer history is not necessarily bad — new companies exist. But you should price that risk accordingly.
What to do with the answers
No agent will score perfectly on all seven. The point is not to find a perfect one, but to notice which questions get a direct answer and which get a paragraph of words that means nothing.
Two patterns are worth walking away from: an agent who cannot state their fee structure, and an agent who cannot describe what happens when something goes wrong. Everything else is negotiable.
This guide is written from the buyer's side of the table. If you want to run these seven questions past us, the contact details are on our inquiry page — and we will answer them the same way we ask them.
