Do you need a China sourcing agent? A UK buyer's guide

What you are actually paying for

Not access. You can find Chinese suppliers yourself in an afternoon, and anyone who sells you access to a directory is selling you something you already have.

What you are buying is judgement and presence. Judgement is knowing which of eleven plausible quotes is the one that will still be plausible after production starts, and what a price that good usually means. Presence is somebody who can be at the factory this week, look at your goods before they are packed, and tell you the truth about them while there is still time to change the outcome. For local sourcing support, see our comparison of agents and your own China office.

Everything else an agent does follows from those two: verification, specification, negotiation, inspection, and keeping the shipment and the paperwork moving.

Signs you would benefit from one

Your product is bespoke, tooled, or has to hit a specification you could not describe in a sentence. The more your product differs from what the factory already makes, the more the gap between what you meant and what they understood will cost you. For requirements still being defined, see briefing an agent with unclear requirements.

Your goods are regulated. Toys, electricals, anything connectable, cosmetics, food contact, PPE: here the paperwork has to be as right as the product, and the evidence has to be in the right name, obtained before you order rather than requested afterwards. For import checks, see our import licence guide. For crowdfunding a product, see our UK crowdfunding approval guide. For chemical imports, see our GB substance notification guide. For fire doors, see our imported fire door evidence guide.

The order is large enough that a bad one hurts. There is a threshold for every business where a container of unsellable stock stops being a lesson and starts being a problem. You know roughly where yours is.

You have been let down already, and cannot afford a second attempt. This is the most common reason people call us, and it is a rational one: the second attempt has to work, and repeating the same process with a different supplier is not a plan. We are a UK China sourcing agent for exactly that situation.

Or your own time is the scarce resource. For an owner-managed business it usually is, and the hours a first bespoke order takes come out of selling, not out of spare time.

What it costs, and how to compare it

Agents charge either a commission on order value or a fee for the work. Neither is inherently better, but an undisclosed model is worse than both, so ask directly: how do you charge, and do you receive anything from the supplier side as well? Get the answer in writing. A margin you cannot see is a margin you cannot negotiate.

Compare on landed cost per sellable unit, not on the fee. Unit price, freight and insurance, duty and any anti-dumping duty, clearance and delivery, samples and tooling spread across the run, expected rejects, and a realistic value for your own hours. A fee that looks large against a unit price often looks small against a rejected batch. For duty relief planning, see our authorised use approval guide.

Then ask the question that actually decides it: what does being wrong cost me, and how much sooner would I find out?

The second-source case

One situation deserves its own mention, because it is the one buyers handle worst. You already import successfully, and you want a second supplier: for price leverage, for resilience, or because a single factory holding your tooling is a risk you have noticed.

It is awkward to do yourself. You need a trial run measured against a standard your current supplier already meets, not against a fresh specification. You would rather your incumbent did not find out while you are still deciding. And you need the comparison to be about capability rather than about the best price someone will quote to win a first order.

That work is quiet, specific and hard to do from the UK, which is why it is one of the most common things clients ask us to run.

How to decide

Write down what a failed order costs you in money, in time and in customer damage. Then write down how long it would take you to find out that it had failed. If the first number is small and the second is short, manage it yourself. If the first number is large or the second is long, buy the shorter feedback loop.

And keep it proportionate. Using an agent is not a permanent commitment or an admission of anything. Plenty of importers run simple repeat items themselves and bring someone in for the products where being wrong is expensive. The published figures, and the two costs bigger than any commission, are in what a China sourcing agent costs in the UK; our comparison of the UK agents names the alternatives. For the sourcing setup decision, see sourcing agents versus buying offices.

For when to buy on Alibaba yourself and when an agent is worth paying for, see Do you need an Alibaba agent in the UK?.

For the whole path from brief to delivery, see sourcing from China: the five steps.