Guides Library / Supplier Verification
9 free checks that tell you who you're really talking to — before you pay anyone a deposit, or pay us for an audit.
Why This Matters
Roughly half the "manufacturers" you'll meet on Alibaba, at trade fairs and in Shanghai office towers are trading companies. That is not automatically a scam — but if you think you're buying ex-works from the factory and you're actually two layers away from it, three things go wrong: you pay a hidden margin, your technical questions get answered by guesswork, and when a quality claim comes, the "factory" you sue doesn't make anything.
The frustrating part: every supplier says "we are factory." Business cards say it. Booth banners say it. Even the rented showroom says it. So don't ask — test. The nine checks below cost you nothing but a few emails and one video call, and they catch the large majority of pretenders before money moves.
The Free Checks
Run them in order — most pretenders fall at #1–#3.
Ask for their business licence (营业执照) — any legitimate supplier sends it within a day. Look at the business scope: a real factory's scope includes 生产 or 加工 (production / processing). If it only lists 贸易, 批发, 进出口 (trade, wholesale, import-export), you're talking to a trader. Cross-check the registration free on China's public company registry — we'll do the lookup for you if you send us the licence.
Compare the registered address on the licence with the "factory address" they give you. A plant sits in an industrial zone or county town; a 12th-floor suite in a downtown office tower does not stamp steel. Paste the address into a map — if the satellite view shows an office block, ask directly: "Is this where production happens, or your sales office?"
Not a polished video file — a live call. Ask the salesperson to walk from their desk to the factory gate and show the company nameplate, then to the line making your product. Borrowed factories fall apart here: wrong nameplate, "the workshop is closed today", or a tour that never leaves one corridor.
Factories are narrow: one process, one material family, one product line — because machines and moulds are expensive. Traders are wide. If the same "manufacturer" offers excavator parts, LED strips and yoga mats, that's a catalogue, not a workshop. Check their full listing page, not just the product they showed you.
Ask for ISO 9001 / CE / test reports — then read the company name on the certificate. It must match the name on the quote and the licence exactly. "Our factory's certificate" with a different company name is the single most common tell. Bonus: verify the ISO certificate number on the issuer's website; fakes are rampant.
Ask one genuinely technical question: "What's the cycle time on this part?" "Which steel grade do you use for the boom — and can I see the mill certificate?" A factory salesperson walks over to an engineer and comes back with specifics. A trader stalls, answers something else, or copies a paragraph that doesn't fit your question.
"Verified Supplier" badges are paid products, not verdicts. Open the actual assessment report behind the badge: it states the business type in plain text — and plenty of badge-holders are listed right there as trading company. The information is public; almost nobody reads past the gold icon.
Ask for a small, real change: a different bracket, your logo moulded in, a non-catalogue colour. A factory answers with tooling cost and added lead time — concrete numbers, because they know their own machines. A trader either refuses, quotes something absurd, or says yes to everything without a single number attached.
Before any deposit, look at the beneficiary on the proforma invoice. Company account matching the licence name = normal. A personal account, an unrelated company, or a Hong Kong shell with a different name = stop and ask why. Mismatched payees are where verification ends and scam territory begins.
The Honest Part
We're a sourcing company ourselves, so here's the unvarnished version: middlemen aren't the enemy — undisclosed middlemen are. A good trading company consolidates small orders from several factories, handles export paperwork the plant can't, and takes real responsibility for QC. The problem is only ever pretending.
Workable
"We're a trade company working with three mould factories in Taizhou — here are their licences, you're welcome to audit them." Disclosed role, traceable factories, written QC responsibility on the contract.
Walk Away
"We are factory" + licence says trading + certificates carry someone else's name + the deposit goes to a personal account. Any one of these is a question; all of them together is an answer.
What Free Checks Can't Prove
The free checks tell you whether the company is worth taking seriously. They can't tell you whether the production line actually runs, whether the QC bench is staffed, or whether the "800 workers" are 80. That takes someone standing on the floor.
That's the entire pitch for a third-party factory audit: an experienced factory auditor at the gate with a checklist, for a flat $60/day — travel at cost with receipts, no markup. Run the audit cost calculator to see the all-in number for your province, or hand the whole supplier hunt to our sourcing service and we only shortlist factories we've stood inside.
Quick Answers
No. For mixed small orders, consolidation, or categories where factories won't talk to small buyers, a disclosed trading company earns its margin. The dealbreaker is deception: if they lie about being a factory, they'll lie about other things too.
Yes — China's National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System is public and free. It's in Chinese, which is the practical barrier: you need the exact registered name in characters. Send us the licence and we'll pull the registration, scope and any penalty records the same day, free.
No. Verification confirms the company exists and paid for an assessment — the assessment report itself often states "trading company" as the business type. Always open the report behind the badge and read the business-type line.
One reschedule is life; two is a pattern. A real factory is proud to show the line — video tours win them orders. Persistent excuses ("camera broken", "workshop confidential") mean the answer is already no.
Our on-site factory audit runs a flat $60/day service fee plus travel at cost with original receipts — typically a fraction of what the big inspection firms charge for the same day. The calculator on this site gives you the all-in estimate for your supplier's province in 30 seconds.
Still Not Sure Who You're Talking To?
Run the nine checks this week. For the suppliers that pass, put an experienced factory auditor on the factory floor before the deposit moves.
Part of the Guides Library · Related: How to avoid scams · Quality control in China