The Shortest Route May Be Not The Best

As we all know the international supply chain is becoming shorter and shorter, lots of B2C platforms like Amazon, Ebay, Wish etc allowing Chinese manufacturers / suppliers sell directly to end customers worldwide. Our earth is more flat like a village now.

While we say modern economy boost various of business modes and intensify all the competitions in the global market, but that doesn’t mean the shortest route is the best one.

Let’s give an example, last week a Mid-East potential client contact me on Wechat, we have offered him price early this year. He was in Hangzhou and planed to visit us. But 12 hours later after our contact and before the meeting, all changed.

He firstly sent us a file with products photos to quote first, when I show to my friend, some items he has more advantages, he recognized this customer immediately and saying it’s not a good customer who will never have friendly partnership with his suppliers, and he won’t have friends in China. He told that excel file was made by his partner, and even one of the photos took in his office. Then he told me the story of this customer: their ordering quantity quite normal, averagely 1 container per month, firstly he imports through a trading company, later, he got rid of that trading supplier, and import each products one kind by one kind directly from different manufacturers. The products he hope us to quote are shower accessories, the normal operating is to buy from same shower supplier, and load together, people won’t make too high profit from him, as current market is fierce and price quite transparent.

So I just directly suggest him to buy accessories from his current shower supplier, explained to him as the shower accessories quantity are not big, easier for shower supplier to procure together and convenient for loading and save cost.

We are not the person dislike the small order favor the big order, each order is potential opportunity and the start of a good relationship for us, and we believe even small customers could grow into big. The point is: we don’t like such customers do not value partnership and try to chase even a cent’s profit, and they are not smart enough to know maybe it’s higher cost to purchase one by one than put all at one supplier. Other suppliers and even manufacturers will charge higher for single separate and low volume purchasing, as it’s quite time and energy consuming. Even he cut the supply chain to the shortest, but he won’t win.

So that’s we say sometimes the shortest route is not the best, it specially suits for hand tools and hardware, which always have many different items and many manufacturers involved. If I’m the importer, I would spend more time and energy on sales and marketing, while finding a reliable supplier to consolidate all the tools products purchasing from China the backyard, not the way try to cut every cent and purchase each item by each item and building a very big purchasing team, but sometimes still not work well or inefficiently. As you may know the purchasing cost through trading company may not be higher than direct from manufacturers. What’s more, trading company generally offer better service, as their service is the true value that they could create.

Circa tools are the one your Chinese agent like supplier that worthy you to count on. Surely there are many other options, but for radically true, radically transparent, and radically quality partnership that we would build during cooperation, we are confident we are top in China.