This page is for buyers who have a supplier in Shenzhen and want to know what is actually behind the name before any money moves. We visit the stated address in person and report what is there, for a one-time fee of US$300. The most useful thing to understand about this city is that Shenzhen sells design, sourcing and trading as convincingly as it manufactures. A site visit separates the two.
Where Shenzhen still manufactures, and where it only sells
Shenzhen has little land to spare, so its industry is stacked into multi-storey buildings and its districts have separated over time.
The four districts of the original special economic zone, Luohu, Futian, Nanshan and Yantian, are now mostly offices, research floors, housing and port logistics. Futian holds the CBD and the Huaqiangbei electronics markets, where stall after stall sells components and finished goods. Nanshan holds the high-tech park and the headquarters of large technology firms. Neither is where things are made at volume, yet companies are routinely registered in a Nanshan incubator or a Futian office tower and described online as manufacturers.
Production sits mostly outside the old boundary line. Bao'an, against Dongguan, is the industrial heartland: Xixiang, Fuyong, Shajing and Songgang are dense with industrial parks and stacked factory buildings running electronics assembly, connectors, moulds and packaging. Longgang, in the east, is similarly large: Bantian, Henggang and Pingdi cover electronics, eyewear, plastics and furniture. Longhua carries the big assembly campuses and a garment and fashion cluster at Dalang. Guangming, north of Bao'an, is where panel display, medical devices and new materials were sited. Pingshan, in the far northeast, is the newest and most planned: new-energy vehicles, batteries and biotech in purpose-built parks. Yantian has the container port and its logistics, not general manufacturing.
Two things follow. A factory here is often several floors of an industrial tower rather than a walled plant, so an address proves less than it appears to. And a very large share of impressive-looking suppliers are design houses, trading companies or brokers. That is why a site visit matters in this city.
What a Shenzhen visit establishes
We start with the legal entity. The business licence shown on site is compared with the public register: the registered name, the unified social credit code, the address and the business scope. The entity you would contract with and pay should be the one actually operating there.
On site, a walk-through at an electronics supplier runs in this order. The address itself, photographed. The production floor: whether surface-mount lines exist, whether they are running and what is on them; whether assembly benches, soldering, test benches and ageing racks are in use. The warehouse: incoming components with their labels, finished goods, and whether stock matches the product the supplier claims to make. Testing and packing: what equipment is there, whether it is switched on, and whether cartons, foam and pallets are packed in-house or arrive ready-made.
Then the question that decides the most. Is the product made here? We ask to see the item you are buying and follow where it comes from: the line, the tooling, the mould store, or someone else. If your sample came from this building, the tooling or the paper trail should be somewhere in it. If not, we record that. We report what was there on the day; we do not judge quality or price.
What goes wrong in Shenzhen
None of this means anyone is acting in bad faith. These are ordinary arrangements in a city with expensive land, but each changes who you are really buying from, and each is settled by standing in the building.
The office address. The contract address is a serviced office or a tower floor in Futian or Nanshan, presented as the factory, while production is subcontracted to Dongguan or Huizhou. A visit establishes what that address actually operates as.
The market stall. A supplier whose address resolves to a floor of a component market building is a broker. A visit shows whether the unit is a desk with samples or a manufacturing operation.
The design house. A capable team that develops the product and places the order elsewhere. Nothing is wrong with that, but your price carries a margin and your production is invisible to you.
The assembler with one unknown part. A real Shenzhen assembly house that buys the critical module, whether the power supply, the battery pack or the board, from a company it will not name. The finished product is genuinely made there; the part you cannot see is decided elsewhere.
The showroom. Polished displays, samples, a meeting room, and no line behind them. Walking past the showroom into the back settles it.
A visit does not settle everything. It settles what is physically at the address, and whether the entity claiming to be a manufacturer is operating as one.
Travel and scheduling in Shenzhen
Shenzhen is inside the core Greater Bay Area, so the visit is covered by the US$300 fee. There is no travel supplement for Shenzhen, and nothing added for the drive from our Guangzhou base, which is short enough for a same-day visit and back.
A verification in Shenzhen is usually carried out within one to two working days of agreeing the scope. The furthest parts are the east and northeast, Pingshan and the port area around Yantian, and the western edge of Bao'an at Shajing and Songgang. Treat those as a full day. If you want a second site seen on the same trip, say so when you send the scope. The fee is the same whichever factory is involved, and we take no commission from any of them.
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. Shenzhen is within 150 km of our base, so no supplement applies.
Send the supplier name, the address or a photograph on WhatsApp at +86 189 2212 3034 or by email to hello@factoryfinding.com. Verification is US$300, factory finding US$1,000, and the scope and exact fee are agreed in writing before any payment.
— common questions
My supplier says they are in Shenzhen, but the address is an office in Futian. Can you still help?
Yes, and that is a common case. We visit the address as given, establish what operates there, and compare the licence with the public register. If production happens elsewhere, the report says so and where the trail leads, often Dongguan or Huizhou.
Can you tell whether the goods are actually made in Shenzhen, or bought in from somewhere else?
We establish what is made there and what is not. We ask to see your product and follow it to the line, the tooling or the outside supplier. Where the critical module comes from, we say so if the supplier will name it, and record it if they will not.
Do you visit factories in Bao'an and Longgang on the same trip?
Yes, if the scope covers two sites. They sit on opposite sides of the city, so the day is planned around the traffic. Each factory is verified separately at US$300, and Shenzhen carries no travel supplement. Send both addresses and we will schedule it.
Can you verify a component supplier as well as a finished-goods factory?
Yes, in the same way: the entity, the address, what operates there, and whether the part is made or resold. Shenzhen has real component makers in Bao'an and Guangming, and many brokers in the market buildings. The visit establishes which you have.