This page covers verifying a factory in Dongguan: we visit the stated address, establish what operates there and check the entity against the public register. You receive photographs taken on site, unedited video and a written report. The fee is US$300 per factory, one-time and fixed, agreed in writing before we travel. Factory finding is US$1,000 per brief. Dongguan is inside the core Greater Bay Area, so there is no travel supplement, and we take no commission from any factory. Dongguan has no county-level districts: it governs its towns directly. It is a city of towns, each with its own trade, and the differences between them matter more than the city name on a contract. The urban core of Nancheng and Dongcheng holds offices, showrooms and headquarters and little manufacturing, so a supplier registered there may have no plant in the core at all. The real question in Dongguan is usually not "is this a factory", but "which parts of my product does this factory make, and which does it buy in".
A city of specialised towns, and a core that makes nothing
Dongguan is one of the world's densest manufacturing bases, arranged town by town rather than district by district, each town doing one thing long enough that the equipment and workforce around it are tuned to that trade.
Chang'an is electronics and hardware: connectors, components, metal parts, tooling. Humen is garments. Houjie and Dalingshan are furniture, and Houjie also makes shoes. Liaobu makes auto parts and electronics. Qingxi and Tangxia are electronics, Tangxia also strong in connectors and cables. Zhangmutou is printing and plastics, packaging in particular. Chashan is toys. Shijie and Shipai make electronics and components. The urban core is the exception: Nancheng and Dongcheng hold offices, showrooms and headquarters, and make very little.
An address in a town known for a trade makes it likely the equipment and the people for it are there. A trading company in an office in Nancheng is not a fraud, but the plant is elsewhere.
Even a genuine factory in the right town may not make the whole of your product. It usually does the part that suits its equipment and its margin, and buys in the rest: the mould, the coating, the printing, the internals inside a plastic housing. The address can be real, the line can be running, and half your product can still come from two towns away.
What we verify on a Dongguan visit
A verification works through five things.
The legal entity. We see the business licence at the site and check the registered name, the credit code, the address and the business scope against the public register. Anyone can print a licence; the register entry has to match. Where the licence, your contract and the entity on site name different companies, we name each.
The site. Is this a factory, or an office, showroom or warehouse? We look at the building, the gate, the halls, the equipment and who is at it: in a manufacturing town usually an industrial estate, in the core usually a tower floor.
Production running. Machines being used, not a hall with machines in it: material in, work in progress, people at the stations, equipment matching your product.
What is made here and what is not. We ask which operations are done on site and which are bought in: moulds, tooling, printing, finishing, assemblies, packaging. Where the supplier names the outside workshops, we record them; where they will not, we record that.
Packing and dispatch. Where goods are packed, what the cartons and shipping marks say, and who handles export packing.
The walk-through takes an hour or two: photographs of the entrance with the street and company name, the halls and the packing area, unedited video, and the register extract. We report what is there; we do not judge quality or price.
What goes wrong in Dongguan
None of the patterns below is illegal, and none is unusual. Each changes who you are buying from, and each is settled by standing at the address.
A core address presented as a plant. The registered address is an office in Nancheng or Dongcheng, a flat or a serviced unit. Little is made there; the visit establishes where production happens.
A showroom with no line behind it. Polished floors, samples, staff and a meeting room are convincing, and all of it can be rented. Walking past the showroom into the back settles whether there is anything to see.
Subcontracting that nobody mentions. A Humen supplier may pass your garment order to a workshop in another town, or a Zhangmutou printer may send the finishing elsewhere. Fine, but you should know it is happening, and which company makes the part that decides whether the product works.
A real factory making less of the product than you assumed. The site is genuine and the line is running, and it still may not make the mould, the coating or the internals: each a second supplier and a second set of tolerances you have never seen.
Two towns, one day. Chang'an and Qingxi sit at opposite ends of the city; a morning in one leaves no useful afternoon in the other.
Where the fee applies. Everything within 150 km of our Guangzhou base is included: Guangzhou, Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Zhongshan and Zhuhai. Beyond that we add a travel supplement, agreed in writing before we set off — Huizhou and Jiangmen +US$100; Yangjiang, Shaoguan and Chaoshan (Shantou, Chaozhou, Jieyang) +US$200. Anywhere else in China is quoted separately. This visit is inside that radius.
Send the supplier's name, address or website to WhatsApp +86 189 2212 3034 or hello@factoryfinding.com. The only engagement published on this site so far is a furniture importer in Saudi Arabia who sent one reference photograph: a manufacturer was sourced for it, and the resulting sample was viewed and filmed on site. It is shown unedited, with faces and supplier identities redacted, and we make no claim that it took place in Dongguan. Scope and exact fee — US$300 for a verification, US$1,000 for factory finding — are agreed in writing before payment.
— common questions
Can you visit two towns in Dongguan in one day?
Usually, if the sites are close — Chang'an and Humen, or Houjie and Dalingshan, are within a sensible drive. Towns at opposite ends, such as Chang'an and Qingxi, are better treated as two visits. Each factory is verified separately at US$300, one-time, and the plan is agreed in writing before we travel. Dongguan is in the core Greater Bay Area, so no travel supplement applies.
My supplier's address is in Nancheng. Is that a problem?
Not in itself. Nancheng and Dongcheng are the urban core, where offices and showrooms sit, and many honest companies trade from there. It means the address is unlikely to be where anything is made. We visit it as given, check the entity against the register, and say what it is: an office, a showroom or a plant. If production is in another town, that is a separate verification at the same US$300.
How do I know whether they make the whole product or subcontract part of it?
We ask, then look. On site we establish which operations are done in the building and which are bought in. Where the supplier names the outside workshops, we record them; where they decline, we record that. You receive the list either way.
Can you visit the smaller workshops behind a supplier?
Yes, and often that is the more useful visit. Many suppliers here are the commercial face of one or more workshops that do the actual production, and that workshop is where your order will physically be made. If the supplier will take us, or give us the address, we verify it in the same way at US$300. If not, that is a finding.