This page concerns a supplier in Foshan and the question that follows every one: is this a manufacturer, or a company selling what other people make? A verification is US$300 per factory, one-time and fixed, agreed in writing before we travel. Foshan is inside the core Greater Bay Area, so the visit carries no travel supplement and is covered by the fee. The question is hard to answer from outside Foshan. The city is a group of specialised towns, and two, Lecong and Longjiang, behave nothing alike. One sells furniture, the other builds it.
A city of specialised towns
Foshan is not one manufacturing city. It is a group of towns, each with a trade of its own, and the difference between them decides what kind of supplier you are dealing with.
Start with furniture, because that is what Foshan is known for: China's furniture capital, its largest production and export base. The trade sits in Shunde. Lecong, inside Shunde, is the trading and exhibition hub, where large volumes of furniture are sold on behalf of factories that may be elsewhere. Longjiang, also in Shunde, is where the plants are — the workshops, the machines, the loading bays. The two are a short drive apart and behave completely differently. Which one you are dealing with is the first useful question in Foshan.
Shunde does home appliances and woodworking machinery as well as furniture. Nanhai covers aluminium profiles, hardware, lighting and ceramics equipment, with Dali (aluminium, hardware) and Shishan (auto parts, hardware, moulds) inside it. Chancheng holds ceramics, sanitary ware, and much of the trade and headquarters activity. Sanshui runs beverages, building materials and auto parts; Gaoming has textiles, chemicals and building materials; Xiqiao is textiles.
A showroom address and a plant address can both be honest, but they are different businesses, and only a visit tells you which one signed your contract. For furniture, the honest questions are narrow: who owns the machines, whether finishing is done on site or sent out, and whether a supplier sells the same model under several brand names.
What a Foshan visit establishes
The legal entity comes first. We ask for the business licence at the site and check the registered name, credit code, address and business scope against the public company register. The entity you pay should be the one operating there.
Then the address itself. A town address can be a workshop, a warehouse, a marketing office or a showroom, and the buildings look similar from the street. We look at the gate, the work floors, the equipment and who is standing at it, and photograph the entrance with the street and the company name.
Then output. Not a hall with machines in it, but machines in use: material in, work in progress, people at the stations.
Then the structure behind the sample. Who owns the machines; whether the finishing — painting, upholstery, final assembly — is on site or sent out; whether goods are dispatched from this address or another. These separate a factory from a trading company in Foshan, and they have answers. What we were told rather than saw is marked as such.
We leave with the register extract, copies of what we are shown, and an unedited walk-through video of the floors and the packing area. We do not judge quality or price; we report what is there.
What goes wrong in Foshan
None of the arrangements below is illegal, and none is rare here. Each is worth knowing before a deposit moves.
The Lecong showroom presented as a factory. The largest concentration of showrooms is in Lecong, and the display is genuine: full ranges, finishes, samples, staff who know the products. What the address does not tell you is where the goods are made. A visit settles whether they are made behind the display or arrive from a plant in another town.
The shared catalogue. Several suppliers in one hub can quote from a single factory's range, sold through several sales companies. Normal in Foshan, and a problem when you believe you are comparing three manufacturers but are comparing three sales operations.
The subcontracting plant. Many plants cut and assemble and send the finishing out: frames to one workshop, upholstery to another, coating to a third. Often the right way to run a furniture business. It does mean your product passes through gates nobody has described.
The brand-name question. One workshop may sell the same model under several brand names, in different finishes at different prices. Buyers discover this late, when a second quotation arrives for what they thought was a competing product.
Each is settled the same way: asking who owns the machines, where the finishing happens and which building the goods leave from.
Travel and scheduling
Foshan is inside the core Greater Bay Area, within a short drive of our Guangzhou base, so a verification here carries no travel supplement. The US$300 fee covers the visit, whether the site is a showroom in Lecong or a plant in Longjiang.
A visit is usually carried out within one to two working days of agreeing the scope. Two addresses in one day is realistic when they are in the same part of the city: a plant in Shunde and a supplier in Chancheng can both be seen on one trip. Each factory is verified separately at US$300, the same fee whichever one you are looking at, and we take no commission from any factory. We do not negotiate price or place orders.
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.
The published case on this site is the only engagement shown so far, and the factory in it sits in Lecong. A furniture importer in Saudi Arabia sent a single reference photograph and asked us to find a manufacturer for it. We sourced one, and when the sample was made we went to the factory, viewed it and filmed it on site. It is shown unedited, with faces, client names and supplier identities redacted. That is exactly the situation this page describes: a buyer somewhere else, a supplier with a Lecong address, and a plant that had to be located and stood in.
Send the supplier's name, address or website to WhatsApp +86 189 2212 3034 or hello@factoryfinding.com. Verification is US$300 per factory, factory finding US$1,000 per brief, and the scope and fee are agreed in writing before any payment is made.
— common questions
My supplier's address is in Lecong. Does that mean they are a manufacturer?
Not by itself. Lecong is the trading and exhibition hub, where large volumes of furniture are sold on behalf of factories elsewhere, many in Longjiang. The address tells you which trade the town runs in, not what the company operates. A visit answers that.
Does it matter if the factory sends its finishing out?
It matters to know. A plant that cuts and assembles but sends frames, upholstery or coating to other workshops is still a manufacturer, though it controls less of the process than one claiming everything is done in-house. Where in-house finishing is claimed, we look for the finishing area and ask to see it running. Where the work leaves the site, we record where it goes.
Three suppliers in Foshan have sent me the same catalogue. What does that mean?
Usually that one factory's range is sold through more than one sales company, common in a hub like Lecong. We compare what each operates at its address, and the licences show whether you have one production site or three separate plants.
Can you cover a plant in Shunde and a supplier in Chancheng in one day?
Yes. Both are inside Foshan, so one trip, with no travel supplement. Each site is recorded separately: photographs taken on site, unedited video, and a written report on what operates at the address. Each factory is US$300, one-time.