What a factory visit proves, and what it does not

A supplier can send you a factory tour on video, show you a workshop floor, and still be buying the product you ordered from somebody else. Here is what a visit establishes, and what it does not.

What the paperwork can tell you

A Chinese company's business licence records a registered address and a business scope. Both are public. Neither is proof of anything on its own.

• The registered address is where the company is registered, not necessarily where it operates. Plenty of manufacturers are registered at an office or at an industrial park's central address.
• The business scope lists what the company is permitted to do. A scope that includes manufacturing is a good sign; a scope limited to wholesale, retail and import/export is a different kind of company, whatever its name says.
• The name proves nothing. Companies are free to call themselves whatever they like, and “factory” is a popular word.

What a video call establishes

A live video call is better than nothing, and it is a genuinely useful first filter. What it establishes is that somebody has access to a workshop and is willing to walk around it while you watch.

What it does not establish is the link between that workshop and your order. A trading company can be given access to a partner factory's floor, or can film a facility it has no production relationship with. The viewer cannot tell the difference, because the camera only shows what it is pointed at.

What a physical visit establishes

A visit by someone who goes to the address on the contract — the address that would appear on your bank transfer — answers a narrower and more useful question than “is this a good factory”:

• Is the address on the contract an operating production site, an office, a showroom, or nothing at all?
• Is the equipment present that the quoted process requires?
• Are goods of the type you ordered actually being worked on?
• Do the people at that address know about your order?

Those four answers, with photographs taken on the day, are worth more than any number of video calls. They are also the kind of thing a buyer cannot obtain from a desk eight time zones away.

What even a visit does not establish

This matters as much as the list above, and it is where a lot of inspection marketing overpromises.

A visit does not tell you whether the product is any good. It does not test the goods, does not grade them, and does not certify anything. It does not guarantee the order will be delivered on time, and it does not make anyone responsible for quality. Judging whether a chair is comfortable, or whether a finish will survive a season outdoors, is the buyer's call — not a visitor's.

What a visit produces is facts: this address, this equipment, this activity, these photographs. What you do with them is your decision.

The one thing to ask before you pay a deposit

Ask the supplier to state, in writing, the full legal name of the company that will manufacture the goods, and the address where that happens — separately from the company that will invoice you.

Those two are often the same. When they are not, you have learned something important before any money moved, and you have the name and address that a visit can be arranged against.