Service · outsourced buying function
Buying from China properly is a full-time job in a different time zone, a different language and a different legal system. Most companies handle it with someone who already has another job — and then wonder why prices drift, deliveries slip and quality moves between batches.
You keep the decisions: which supplier, which price, which specification. We do the work that makes those decisions possible and then carries them out.
Outsourcing is not always the right answer. Here is when it is not.
Cheapest on paper
Usually an operations or purchasing person who also has another role. Works while volumes are small and products are simple.
Best at real scale
A dedicated employee or a small office. The right answer once your volumes justify the fixed cost and you can manage a team remotely.
The middle, and where most buyers sit
A standing team on the ground that learns your products, with warehouses to inspect in and an EU entity to import through.
If you are placing two orders a year, option A is right and we will tell you so. Outsourcing earns its cost when buying is continuous — when there is always something in production, always something being inspected and always a next order being negotiated.
An agent works order by order and their knowledge leaves with the order. Outsourced procurement is a standing arrangement: the same people learn your products, your tolerances, your seasons and your customers, and improve the buying over time. The difference shows up in year two, not week one.
No, and you should not accept an arrangement where you would. You approve suppliers, prices and specifications; we execute, follow up and report. What you hand over is the work, not the decisions — a buying department that made decisions without you would be a supplier, not an outsourced function.
When you buy regularly but not enough to justify a full-time buyer plus travel plus someone in China. A hire in Europe cannot walk into a factory in Guangdong on Tuesday. A hire in China needs managing, and managing someone in a country you do not know is its own project.
Either a monthly retainer for the function, or a margin inside the goods when we buy on our own account. We tell you which model applies before we start, and we do not run both at once — taking a margin on the goods while also charging a management fee is how this industry gets its reputation.
Order status, production progress with photographs, inspection results, shipping and landed cost. Frequency is set to your rhythm — weekly for active production, monthly summaries otherwise. You should never have to ask where an order is.
Describe the product and the volume. We come back with a workable structure, a quote including landed cost, and an honest lead time — or with the reasons we would not take it on.