A Contact List Full of Traders

Typical scenario. Assembled from recurring project patterns, not a single client record. No client name, order value or delivery figure is disclosed.

Background

Hardware fittings, buyer in Europe, first order from China. Deliverable: shortlist plus on-site verification. Timeframe: four weeks.

The problem

Every contact had a catalogue and a factory-looking profile. None of them could say which processes were in-house, and two had a registered scope that did not match the product at all.

Scope

Establish which of the twelve actually manufacture the product, verify the credible ones on site, and produce a shortlist with stated reasons for exclusion. Sample and tooling discussion excluded.

What we did

Screening started with the business licence: registered scope, registered address against the operating address, and whether the stated process appeared in either. Two contacts failed at this step before any travel was booked.

The remaining ten were asked one question by email: which of the four key processes do you run in-house, and on how many machines. Answers were checked against equipment lists on site rather than accepted as stated.

Four were visited. One operated a clean assembly floor but outsourced the critical stamping; the report records who the subcontractor was and whether it had been visited. Three ran the key process themselves with equipment that matched the claimed output.

What we found

The distinguishing question was not capacity or price. It was whether the supplier could name, without preparation, which part of the order it would not do itself.

Deliverables

Screening table for twelve contacts, exclusion reasons for eight, four on-site verification records, and a ranked shortlist of three.

Result

Four genuine manufacturers identified from twelve contacts; the shortlist of three went to quotation on a single specification basis.

Basis note: the counts describe this screening exercise only. They are not a market average for how many traders appear in a contact list.

Limitations

• No client, product or factory is identified.
• Single exercise; the ratio of traders to factories varies by category and by how the list was collected.

Next step

If you have a list and cannot tell which entries are factories, send three of them with the product specification. Supplier verification is the narrower scope; factory sourcing covers the shortlist as well.