Sourcing Trip
Come to China. Leave with a decision.
Most buyers spend a week in China and go home with business cards. We spend the weeks before your flight filtering suppliers, so the days you are here are spent deciding — not discovering.
The shortlist, the scores and the appointments are in your hands before you board. You land into a locked agenda, not a search.
The real cost of an unprepared week
A plane ticket is the expensive part. The week is what you waste.
The trip itself is rarely what fails. What fails is arriving without a filter.
01
You meet who is nearest, not who is best
Walking a fair hall or a market district surfaces whoever rented the booth. The factory that actually fits your specification may not exhibit at all.
02
You cannot tell a factory from a trading company
Both have a booth, a catalogue and a business card. The difference shows in a business licence and a production floor — neither of which is on the stand.
03
The conversation beside you is not the one in front of you
You will be understood at the fair. What you will not hear is what is discussed between the sales manager and the factory owner while you wait — where the real margin, the real capacity and the real lead time are decided.
04
You go home to compare, and the trail goes cold
Six suppliers, six formats, no common basis. Two weeks later the follow-up emails slow down and the trip produces nothing.
How it works
The preparation is the product
The days on the ground are the visible part. The work that decides the outcome happens before you land.
- Before
We filter, you approve
We write your requirement into a bilingual RFQ and send it across the supplier base. Business licences are checked against the Chinese national registry — factory or trading company. Certificates are verified with the body that issued them, not accepted as PDFs. You get a scored shortlist with the reasoning behind each number, and you approve who is worth your time before anything is booked.
Scored shortlist · verified certificates · locked agenda
- During
You decide, we run the room
Fair halls, factory floors, technical sessions. We ask the questions that separate a manufacturer from a middleman, run the tests a catalogue cannot answer, and negotiate in Mandarin — price tiers, MOQ, tooling, lead times, exclusivity. Each evening you get the day's decisions and the next day's plan in writing.
Factory visits · live product tests · daily written debrief
- After
You leave with something signed
A written term sheet with the supplier you chose, samples in hand, and a report you can act on. Then, if you want it, the same team handles samples, inspection and shipping — the file already exists and nothing has to be explained twice.
Term sheet · samples · written trip report
What you take home
Evidence, not impressions
Every trip produces the same artefacts, so a decision taken in a factory canteen still holds up when you are back at your desk.
Bilingual RFQ
Your requirement written once, in English and Chinese, so every supplier answers the same questions in the same order — and their answers can be compared side by side.
Scored comparison
A weighted scorecard across technical fit, compliance, capacity, commercial terms and responsiveness. One number per supplier, and the reasoning behind it. You also see how many suppliers were contacted and why the others were cut.
Factory visit sheets
One completed checklist per factory visited: production floor, test stations, traceability, quality documents, with photographs.
Verified certificates
Certificates checked against the issuing body's own records — with the check documented, so you know what was confirmed and what could not be.
Written term sheet
Price tiers, MOQ, tooling, lead times, payment terms and warranty, agreed and signed before you fly home.
Trip report
Who you met, what was decided, what is still open, and the next 90 days — written up and sent after departure.
Who pays us
You see the factory's real quote, in full
The most common complaint about sourcing agents in China is the commission the buyer never sees. Two things make it impossible here.
We take nothing from any supplier
No referral fee, no rebate, no kickback, on any order, at any time. We are paid by you and we report to you. An agent paid by the factory has an interest in you signing with that factory — which is the opposite of what you are hiring us for.
You see the factory's quote as we received it
The supplier's price reaches you unchanged, as its own line. Our fee is a separate line beside it. There is no version of the number that you do not see — which is what makes the commitment above verifiable rather than a promise.
Written into the engagement
This is in the engagement letter you sign, not only on this page. If you ever find a payment from a supplier to us, the trip is refunded in full.
Trade fair season
If you are coming for the Canton Fair
The Canton Fair runs twice a year in Guangzhou, across three phases of five days. Each phase carries different product categories — coming in the wrong phase means the halls hold nothing you buy. The phase-to-category mapping is stable from session to session.
- Phase 115–19 October 2026Electronics and appliances · machinery · vehicles and two-wheelers · lighting · electrical · hardware and tools · new materials
- Phase 223–27 October 2026Furniture · building materials · sanitary · ceramics · houseware · kitchenware · gifts and decorations · gardening
- Phase 331 October – 4 November 2026Fashion and textiles · shoes and bags · toys and baby · medical devices and health · personal care · sports and leisure · pet · stationery · food
Dates verified 6 August 2026 against the official Canton Fair site. Spring 2027 dates are not yet officially published.
A fair is a net, not a decision
The fair is where you cover ground quickly and meet suppliers you would never have found online. It is rarely where the best partner is standing, and fair prices are usually above factory-direct prices. We use the fair days for breadth, then spend the rest of the week in the factories that matter — most of them within an hour of Guangzhou by high-speed rail. If you are still deciding what to sell, coming outside fair season is cheaper and more useful, and we will tell you so.
The rule most buyers find out too late
Anyone accompanying you inside the halls needs a companion badge, and only you — the overseas buyer — can apply for it. You are allowed two accompanying staff per phase, one assistant and one interpreter, and the interpreter badge requires a recognised Chinese interpreting qualification. Applications close two days before the day you attend, and misuse carries a permanent ban.
Companion badge fees are set by the fair: RMB 300 per person per day plus a one-time RMB 50 badge fee, non-refundable once scanned. We prepare the application and tell you who can legally be beside you — you file it. Many interpreters advertised online cannot be badged at all.
Rules published by the Guangdong Provincial Foreign Affairs Office, verified 6 August 2026.
What we handle
- Buyer badge and official invitation letter — both free, applied for early
- Companion badge application prepared for you to file, with eligibility checked first
- Hotel booked early — Pazhou rooms near the complex sell out before rates peak
- Driver and transfers across Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Foshan
- Appointments confirmed with the suppliers worth your time, before you land
Hotels, badges and factory slots all tighten as a session approaches. We ask for six to eight weeks. Booking later narrows what we can arrange, not what we charge.
Pricing
A preparation fee, a day rate, and your costs at cost
Three lines, no fourth. You see the estimate before you commit and the reconciliation after you leave.
Preparation
Per project, quoted upfront
from $1,200
Prospection, knock-out filtering, certificate verification, scorecard, locked agenda, trip file. Scope and price depend on how technical your product is.
Days on the ground
Per working day
from $450
Fair halls, factory visits, negotiation in Mandarin, product tests, and the written debrief that closes each day. Travel inside Guangdong is included.
Your travel costs
At cost
+ 12%
Hotel, driver, rail, badges, business meals — receipts attached. The coordination fee applies only to what we book and pre-fund for you, and is shown as its own line.
A formal Factory Audit — the structured audit day with a written report and a verdict — stays a separate service at its published price, whether or not you are in China. A day on the ground buys you the visits, the questions and the negotiation, not the audit file.
The preparation fee is credited back
If you place a production order through NovaLink within 12 months of the trip, the preparation fee is deducted from our commission.
No margin you cannot see
Travel costs are rebilled at cost with receipts. Our sourcing commission is charged on the ex-works product value only — never on freight, never on duties — and it is degressive, so a larger order never pays a smaller total fee. Every figure appears on the Proforma before you sign it.
What this is not
Where our work stops
Being clear about the edges is part of the service.
This is not an interpreting service
Interpreting happens throughout, but it is not what you are buying. If all you need is someone to translate in the fair halls, the fair's own interpretation service is cheaper and we will tell you so.
We do not certify products
We verify a supplier's certificates against the issuing body and tell you what we could and could not confirm. Accredited testing and certification are arranged through partner laboratories — never claimed as in-house.
We are not regulatory consultants
For regulated categories — medical devices, children's products, anything requiring a technical file — you need a qualified regulatory adviser. We will say so early, before you commit development costs, not after.
We are not a travel agency
We book hotels, drivers and rail because a locked agenda depends on them. We do not sell tourism, we do not handle your flights, and we do not advise on your visa beyond pointing you at the official rules.
We cannot promise a supplier exists
For some specifications, no supplier in China meets every requirement. If that is the answer, you get it with the evidence behind it — knowing this in October is worth more than discovering it in March.
We take a limited number of trips per session
One buyer at a time, with the same person running the preparation and the days on the ground. During fair weeks that caps how many trips we accept, and we would rather decline than double-book you.
FAQ
Sourcing trips, answered
Come to China. Leave with a decision.
Tell us the product and the dates. A written answer within 24h on business days.
Import from China with costs you can verify.