Sourcing Guides
How to verify an international manufacturer before you commit
A structured eight-step verification protocol covering legal identity, production capability, material origin and third-party inspection.
Most failed international purchases are not pricing failures — they are verification failures. A supplier looks credible on a marketplace profile, the sample arrives acceptable, and the first container reveals a trading intermediary with no production control.
Start with legal identity, not capability
Before discussing specification, confirm the entity: registration number, export licence, ownership of the production site, and whether the bank account matches the registered name. Mismatched beneficiary details are the single most common fraud indicator in cross-border B2B trade.
- Company registration and export licence cross-checked against public registries
- Production site ownership or lease documentation
- Bank beneficiary name identical to the contracting entity
- Named export manager with verifiable corporate contact details
Separate factory from trading house
Trading houses are not inherently a problem — undisclosed ones are. Ask for the production line video walkthrough, machine list with capacity figures, and the name of the mill or resin supplier behind the raw material. A factory answers these within a day; a broker negotiates around them.
Factory audit walkthrough — what our inspectors record on site
Video briefing — embed placeholder (YouTube / Vimeo) · youtube
Test before you scale
Pre-production samples should be tested against your written specification, not against the supplier's datasheet. Where tolerances matter, appoint a third-party inspection body for pre-shipment inspection and container loading supervision.
Verification costs a fraction of a rejected container. We have never seen an audit budget exceed the cost of the failure it prevented.
Contract the terms that protect you
- Incoterms fixed in writing, with named place of delivery
- Quality tolerances, rejection thresholds and remedy mechanism
- Inspection right before balance payment is released
- NDA covering specification, tooling and commercial terms
Hassa Global runs this protocol as a standing service under our Global Sourcing division, and every file is handled under NDA from the first enquiry.