Top 5 Reasons that You Need a Sourcing Agent

When making purchases, most buyers hope that they can directly trade with the factory in order to save more costs. However, many buyers have overlooked several very important facts. A truly good factory either focuses on product development and production, or the price does not have an advantage for small-scale buyers. Even if the merchants who often go to China to purchase in the factory, you don’t know that the person or team that helps you make contact is most likely not from the factory. They are just agents that cooperate with the factory or have an office inside the factory to make foreign customers think that they are the representatives of the factory.

Only those who have had factory experience know that it is very difficult for a factory to take care of both production and sales. Especially the so-called factory you are currently working with can provide you with almost all types of products, so there is no doubt that this person/team must be an agent.

In China, all agents are very clear that foreign customers are not willing to directly work with them, so they have various methods to hide their identities very well. If you haven't lived in China for a long time, it is almost impossible for you to see through their identities.

But is it that bad to cooperate with an agent? In fact, it is not, especially for small and medium buyers.

First of all, you may have been working with a agent for a long time, but you don’t know it. Secondly, the agent charges a reasonable agency fee, but can provide better service, better price negotiation skill, strong purchasing resources and capabilities, which is a real saving for you. Save time and money. In the new era of trade environment, buyers’ thinking mind should also change accordingly.

Now, let us briefly check out the benefits of working with agents:

1) Simpler Communication & Better Business Relationship

A superior sourcing agent is a person/team with good English and comprehension, business assessment, general specialized skill, coordination abilities, product design and overall wild spread perspective.

They will always focus on the buyer's interests, and strive for the best interests of the buyer at any time. At the same time, they will continue to cooperate to deepen the business relationship between the buyer and the supplier. Due to differences in language and culture, this is difficult for foreign buyers themselves to do.

2) Excellent Management & Control

If you cooperate with a good agent, then your purchase will proceed perfectly as planned. First of all, this agent have in-depth cooperation with related industry. He or she will have the latest and valid information on production, QC, logistics, after-sales service, etc. Specifically, agents can better and more easily understand and verify supplier information without willing to sell one particular product. Therefore, purchasers can better find the products they need, without spending unnecessary time being confused by various supplier information.

3) Mature in Handling

Sourcing agents generally have profound business relationships with various factories for many years, so they have a good understanding of related products and suppliers, and they have full experience in how to negotiate prices and terms with suppliers, also very good at handling special situation that occurs, and give a reliable delivery timeframe. Global trade is very complicated, from production to logistics arrangements, especially when multiple commodities are involved, so cooperating with agents is actually a good choice.

4) Reliable Convenient Product Tracking & Quality Control

Experienced buyers know that the quality of samples often different from bulk goods, and the production date is often delayed. Hence sourcing agents play a very important role in these situations. It is the most basic for agents to go to factory to conduct QC, and the more difficult thing is to ensure the delivery time of the products, in many cases, factories will give product to larger customers in priority even after they have promised you a timeline. If you do not pass the agent, the buyer remote urging factory aboard has very little effect, while sourcing agents can go to the scene to supervise and put pressure on factory.

5) Authentic Assessment and Review

Different countries have different requirements for different product reviews. Therefore, when buyers directly request the corresponding documents from the factory, they may not be able to provide with a real and valid paper. It is possible that the factory gave the Photoshop one or it has expired. In this case, it is usually found that the certificate has failed after being inspected by the customs, which leads to huge losses. In order to avoid this situation, the sourcing agent can help the buyer to review the relevant certificates before purchasing the product, and even go to the factory to review the production site, production line, warehouse, etc., if the purchaser finds that one factory is not suitable, he can still directly change to another one, these time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks can be handled by agents easily.

On the surface, it seems that it is more economical to deal directly with factory, but in essence it is not the case. After the business transaction is concluded, there are many small and important situations that buyers may not have the time and energy to deal with. In the long run, although agents charge fees, the time and effort that is actually saved for buyers to develop more products and customers is worth the money.