Follow this link to explore the factory audits that we offer, and learn more about what they include, their cost, and how long they take.
Category:Factory Audits
Everything you need to know about Sofeast and our solutions:
Quality assurance, production engineering, supply chain management, and more.
Factory Audits
Factory audits are detailed investigations by Sofeast’s auditors which qualify suppliers and highlight key risks that might prevent them from meeting your needs.
Yes, we can!
However, re-auditing suppliers often only covers the same points repeatedly, but in our experience, we’ve found that this doesn’t always drive improvements in a supplier. Rather, it creates a mountain of paperwork to deal with and more/better excuses for the supplier.
A better approach is to perform a layered process audit on the quality systems and on the operational & support processes in a systematic monthly re-auditing cycle for a period of time where each audit focuses solely on one theme, in more depth. This is especially important for key suppliers with whom you want a long-term relationship.
By focusing on one process or system per month, the auditor maximizes the chance that your supplier can make meaningful improvements incrementally, rather than trying to handle multiple points (on top of their usual work) which can lead to exhaustion and failure.
Factory audits are one of our core solutions and we provide them throughout China, India, Vietnam, and SE Asia.
Here are the individual audits for your information. Hit the links to explore them and get a quotation if you like:
No, it’s possible for us to conduct a remote audit for you.
Traditional audits where our auditor visits the factory are always recommended. However, a remote audit allows the auditor to obtain a lot of useful information about the supplier’s processes, systems, and capabilities for you (as well as things they’re not doing so well at), providing fast and convenient answers.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, factories and countries are increasingly limiting access for visitors, so remote audits using video calling, email, photos, and phone interviews are a good workaround and complement on-site audits well.
Follow this link to explore the factory audits that we offer, and learn more about what they include, their cost, and how long they take.
For new/customized products
No, we can’t help with this. But if you need a good law firm to help you draft an NNN agreement, look at our partners page.
Some of our clients need a bilingual NNN agreement or a full manufacturing contract with an NNN section.
‘NNN’ stands for:
Please note that some suppliers may be reluctant to sign a strong NNN agreement at the quotation stage.
What we do most often is a hybrid approach:
Learn more about how we can help with product design and development here.
If you’re developing and manufacturing a new product this table will show you your options when working with our R&D team compared with doing it yourself or leaving it to your supplier’s factory, and some of each approach’s key pros and cons.
If you only have the design of your product and you still have all the development work ahead of you, you will generally need to go through these 6 NPI steps:
We provide a comprehensive new product introduction framework and support throughout.
You can explore our NPI process in detail in this video walkthrough:
We employ software engineers who can write the firmware for your product. However, when it comes to mobile apps for users, our Indian subsidiary, Serenial, can provide this service.
We do not lock you into R&D projects by requiring a fixed price.
For the design phase, you can pay block by block, for example starting with a number of hours of industrial design work, seeing what we provide, and then, once you’re satisfied, paying for the following block of work, and so on.
Paying step-by-step or paying a fixed amount per week during the feasibility and early prototyping phases is usually the best approach for our clients as there is a lot of ‘discovery’ to be done at this stage.
Here are 2 reasons why paying for work in blocks and proceeding one step at a time is appropriate at this early stage of your project:
At any point, as long as you have paid for everything we have done and all the expenses we have incurred (and that you know of) you can decide to stop the project, and the intellectual property of our work belongs to you alone as specified in our contract.
Sometimes the discussions about a new project between a new customer and Sofeast takemany weeks. In cases like this, while we were waiting for clarifications on the scope of work etc. from a new customer, some other projects get confirmed and work starts on them. Therefore, to avoid over-committing and then under-delivering (asking a customer to keep waiting and waiting), we sometimes have to refuse the original project until such a time that more technical resources are once again available.
The Sofeast group is actively trying to hire more technical project managers to lessen the chances of such a refusal, by the way.
Yes, we can.
We own a contract manufacturing subsidiary, Agilian Technology, near Hong Kong where we provide comprehensive assembly and manufacturing services.
If we’ve already worked with you on sourcing, product development, prototyping, etc, we can go on and manufacture many types of consumer and electromechanical products at Agilian.
You can also explore our various contract manufacturing solutions here.
This is a really difficult question to answer as every new product launch project is different, however, we’ll try to give you some ballpark figures.
Note: we typically help clients after the industrial design has been completed.
Not directly, however, we do have a list of partners including law firms and companies who specialize in Chinese business matters such as trademark registration whom we can put you in touch with.
No. We work on a purely on-demand basis.
You select which of our solutions you want to purchase, pay, and we do the work. We don’t do work in return for equity shares in hardware startups’ businesses.
Please note, any product IP generated belongs solely to you as you have paid for that. We do not retain your product IP after you have finished working with us.
If you need support to move your hardware startup and product idea forward in return for equity shares, finding an incubator or hardware accelerator could be the right move for you.
Yes, we can!
Our in-house R&D team has experience in designing and testing packaging.
We will either source the designed packaging from local manufacturers or may be able to manufacture it ourselves, too.
Packaging actually shouldn’t be an afterthought – it’s an important part of the new product launch project, as it both protects and advertises your product. With this in mind, we created this guide to common packaging types to help you decide what’s best for your products.
Yes, for several reasons.
Because you might need to make changes to your design to make it easy to manufacture in China or to have a chance at hitting your budget & timing targets.
Our product engineers are ready to help if you need assistance with product design and development.
And because you need to know what type of supplier you should work with even before starting the search:
Listen to this episode of our podcast about supplier selection.
Yes. And this should be planned from the design stage. Many projects have gone very far into prototyping and even production, only to be dropped because they had to get back to square 1… a new iteration of the design that takes certification constraints into account.
We have experience with the most common types of certification for the US and Europe.
Learn more about certifications and compliance here: Compliance Testing Consulting
First, you will need more than an idea. At the very least, get a first version of the design, as well as a general description (intended use, etc.) on paper.
Second, before sharing the design with anybody, make sure to have a solid agreement in place that targets all the usual risks (not your standard non-disclosure agreement).
Third, you might go in the wrong direction and spend many months working with the wrong type of suppliers and, in the end, get nowhere. Talk with a company like ours. We have worked with a number of people who were in your situation.
You may also like our guide to manufacturing a new product in China.
You pay for that work and you own all the resulting deliverables.
The only exception is the templates we have developed over the years — you do not have the right to re-use them.
Our liability is limited to the amount of fees you paid to us for the particular job that led to that issue.
The most important thing to focus on is to find ways to avoid such issues or to detect them through reviews and reliability testing. As a general rule, all design changes have to be approved by your side and their impact has to be evaluated with a proper testing plan.
You understand that, if we provide services for 1,000 USD, we can’t accept liability for 1 million USD. We are not aware of any company that accepts this level of risk. However, naturally, we will do the design work to correct any mistake for free.
China offers creators, entrepreneurs, and hardware startups the manufacturing infrastructure to handle new product manufacturing, but it’s the preparation and management of mass production that often leaves hardware startups & SMEs over-budget and running behind on delivery.
One only needs to visit Kickstarter or Indiegogo to see the abysmal proportion of projects that are not delivered on time due to unexpected problems and extra costs.
Inexperienced founders are overly optimistic about the capabilities of Chinese manufacturers and about the ‘readiness for production’ of their new product design.
99% of Chinese manufacturers want to go to mass production as soon as possible, even if this has relatively high-quality risks. They are consistently over-enthusiastic and tend to under-deliver on their promises.
Subsequently, hardware startups don’t see all the risks, don’t challenge predictions and reassurances, and don’t enlist the assistance of people who have done it before. They also have pressure to get first to market and increase the product ROI (Return on Investment) by an early introduction.
We’ve seen people in this position in our home city of Shenzhen and the rest of China get burnt too often, so this is why Sofeast’s production engineers and project managers specialize in new product introduction (NPI) and design for manufacturing (DFM).
Logistics
Yes, we are a 3PL (third-party logistics warehouse) among the many other things we provide such as product quality inspection, product engineering, sourcing, and more.
In our fulfillment facility in China we provide all of the types of activities that companies who are manufacturing products in China need to ship them to customers globally:
Take a look at our 3PL services and see pricing here:
Yes, we use one of China’s most popular dropshipping management platforms which offers:
Our team will help integrate your platform with our dropshipping management software, taking this task out of your hands.
We will also consult you on the best delivery methods depending on your customers’ locations, and will provide advice on:
When working with us to handle your logistics management, we’ll be doing this either from our 8,000+ SQM contract manufacturing subsidiary in Dongguan, Agilian Technology
Shipping insurance may be suitable for you if your business has a low tolerance for risk, loss of packages, or you are shipping high-value products.
It is not normally not included in quotations.
The average cost is 0.3% of goods value.
If you need help arranging shipping insurance, please speak to us, we can help.
The formula you should use to calculate import taxes is as follows:
Import Duty ($) = Customs Value ($) x Duty Rate (%)
US – Goods value (FOB)
EU – Good value + Insurance + Shipping (CIF)
These import duties are to be paid by the importer (you) at the destination, following customs clearance.
To help you:
For US – https://hts.usitc.gov/?query=9503
For EU – https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/taric/taric_consultation.jsp?Lang=en
For Canada – https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/trade-commerce/tariff-tarif/menu-eng.html
The minimum weight of air cargo is 45 kg.
We recommend using air freight when:
In the international shipping industry, “peak season” refer to months leading up to holiday seasons resulting in shipping costs to increase and warehouses to blast.
Shipping costs can also increase if the carrier is on strike or due to bad weather.
Costs for air freight are based either on volume or weight using the below formula:
Length (m) x height (m) x width (m) multiply by volumetric factor*
*If volumetric weight > actual weight, volumetric weight is applied to the shipping rate OR If volumetric weight < actual weight, actual weight is applied to the shipping rate.
Lead-time given is only for international transit time, customs clearance at the destination is excluded from this and may vary.
Product Engineering Solutions
Our pricing is competitive for the services offered in comparison to finding someone on Upwork.
However, if you have a very clearly documented project, you are used to developing new products for manufacturing in Asia, and you are comfortable managing all the technical work, Upwork may be a great place to find engineers. We will still be happy to provide reviews and guidance where and if you need.
If your product really is very simple, we are probably not a good fit. Our R&D department is used to working on relatively complex products that are designed from scratch. The design, sourcing, prototyping, and testing work takes significant resources.
Therefore, we require these minimum budget requirements for projects:
(*) Note that “total budget” means it is fine if only a small fraction of that amount is spent with us. We are happy to contribute to a portion of the design work rather than to the entire project. And we are happy to take over at the DFM stage when everything before that has been done.
Our own checklist formulated by our in-house product design engineers includes 70 points for mechanical design and 20 points for electrical/electronic design, as a starting point. It documents how your product can be designed for better manufacturability.
Here’s an excerpt of our DFM review checklist so you can see some of its detail and the checkpoints our engineers cover:
What kinds of design file adjustments will Sofeast engineers suggest?
Following the DFM review, our engineers will suggest some design improvements that will make your product more manufacturable. Here’s an example design improvement we’ve made before about improving ultrasonic welding on a product:
In terms of deliverables aside from the checklist, our engineers will typically:
We will also sign an NNN agreement for your peace of mind to protect your IP.
To learn more about how and why Sofeast can help you perfect your product design and make it more feasible to manufacture without being too costly or difficult, for example, take a look at our DFM review solution.
When you’re designing your new product you need to find a way to work out what is and is not realistically feasible. Industrial designers are often concerned that their products are manufacturable, and so they choose to work together with manufacturing experts who will suggest what is more or less difficult or expensive when it comes to product design in a ‘DFM review.’
Our product engineering team provide you with such a DFM review, which will hopefully allow you to avoid unpleasant surprises such as expensive and lengthy product redesigns or products being shipped which have problems or defects that could have been found and fixed at the design stage.
Working with us on a DFM review provides you with the following benefits:
Before you get a reliability & durability testing quote from us, we need to know what your needs are.
Maybe you already have a testing plan. We will also need to know what your product is.
Our lab requires the following info:
Maybe you also need us to work on a testing plan. We will need to know not only the product information but also the typical use case and the expected lifetime (until failure) of the product.
By the way, we’re happy to sign an NDA to protect your confidentiality.
Please understand that, if we have no product information, we can’t quote because the question would be what are we testing? An airplane or a mobile phone? Both may require the same tests but are very different.
We need to review your product idea, and how mature it is. If you don’t have a design yet, we can put you in contact with a design house. What we can do at an early stage is a review of your project in order to identify the main risks and challenges you will encounter.
Pre-production reliability testing such as components and suppliers testing, testing to failures (design limit test), drop testing, thermal testing, and vibration testing, usually happens on parts off tooling (if tooling is involved), and, if possible, on products put together in the same conditions as mass production.
The objective is to validate that the final pre-production samples meet the ‘useful lifetime under expected usage and conditions’. It is a big milestone, usually taking place in parallel with compliance testing and/or certifications.
Once these hurdles have been cleared, it is a green light for proceeding with mass production. A lot of money is at stake and it is important to validate the product and the process design before that.
Many companies do ORT (ongoing reliability testing) on every batch, in a systematic manner.
It helps confirm that the reliability of the product didn’t change as a result of manufacturing. (From one batch to the next and even from one production shift to the next, little variations in materials or processing parameters, and sometimes changes in product or process design, can hurt the products’ reliability.)
For most product categories, there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ reliability testing plan. It takes an experienced reliability engineer and an understanding of the expected usage type & usage conditions of your product to create a relevant plan.
When it comes to packaging, there are widely-used standards (such as ISTA 1A), but they are probably far from replicating the stresses endured by your products throughout your supply chain.
We are happy to quote for preparing a reliability and durability testing plan that is customized to your product and its intended usage, and for the testing work itself.
There are 7 logical steps when investigating the causes of product failure:
If one of your products is experiencing failures, we are happy to quote based on a description of those failures.
Typically, well-experienced development teams conduct highly accelerated testing on prototypes, all the way to failure.
The objective of this kind of reliability testing is to discover the weaknesses of the design and to make improvements (which are then confirmed by a new round of testing).
There are also a lot of good practices to “design for reliability”, as we explained in this video.
Outside of medical/pharma/auto/aerospace applications, we have observed that only the top 0.5% of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indian manufacturers ensure product reliability without their customers requesting it.
There are two main reasons for this:
First, they might have never been exposed to it, and they don’t suffer from after-market complaints directly.
Second, showing that the design has weaknesses slows them down on the road to mass production (which is where they make money), so they prefer to skip all sorts of validations.
Then, the buyer may be surprised by customers complaining about partial or total failure. The buyer also may not be able to make the difference between quality and reliability issues.
Poor manufacturing and non-compliance to specifications leads to quality issues and it can usually be detected during or right after production. The typical consequence is the disposal of or rework of some/all products.
Poor design and poor choice of materials lead to reliability issues, and they usually appear once the product is being used, often 3 to 12 months after shipment. Depending on the product application and warranty terms, this can lead to major customer dissatisfaction, poor reputation, extremely high costs and/or a recall, a class-action lawsuit, and/or injury or death of some users.
Product Inspections
Medical face masks have become an increasingly popular product type for importers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As such, we have been inspecting them regularly, have plenty of experience with medical devices in general, and can help you. We are ISO 9001 certified for product inspections, and one of the process steps in that activity is random sampling.
We put our generic checklist for surgical masks online, so this will give you some idea of how we approach these inspections.
The price for 1 inspector to go to a warehouse in most major manufacturing areas in China and perform a final random inspection on the completed masks is 299 USD all included (we also provide inspections during production if you prefer).
In terms of timelines, we need about 2 days’ notice after we’ve received all of the necessary project information from you.
You may find these resources useful:
When sourcing a product quality inspection provider you have these 2 options:
Sofeast is the latter, and you can read more about why this is beneficial in comparison to regular quality inspection companies here.
Unfortunately, some product inspections fail for whatever reason/s, as the products don’t reach your quality standard. A positive of this is that you found out before products were shipped to you all the way from China!
We will help you take the next steps to solve the issues. Here’s how…
As we’re a 2nd party firm, you can expect us to provide some guidance on why the quality issues are occurring and how to fix them in the future. Our supplier performance management solutions can be very helpful if you need help in pushing suppliers to reach your standards.
Sofeast provides you with product inspectionsin numerous countries around the world.
Please note that our key operating areas are China, most of SE Asia, and Turkey, but we can provide inspections in many global countries thanks to our regional offices in China, India, and Italy (different costs, quoted in advance, may apply depending on the country or area, so please ask us):
You can learn more about our operating areas, and please note that different solution costs and travel fees, quoted in advance, may apply to countries outside of our core operating areas in Asia.
In general, we use random sampling inspections where the inspector will use AQL tables to produce the correct sample number. This allows us to randomly select a sample of products from a given batch which will be representative of the overall quality of the batch.
Not all inspections benefit from this method, though, and so other inspections, such as 100% inspections (where every piece is checked), are also provided.
If you’re interested in defining your own sample sizes, try our free AQL calculator tool. to work out your own.
Follow this link to explore the product inspections that we offer, and learn more about what they include, their cost, and how long they take.
This video also introduces Sofeast’s product inspection solutions further, too.
Here’s a list:
We also produced this interesting infographic explaining more about Final Random Inspections, and also an infographic providing examples of common inspection findings, too.
We always look at product safety during inspections. For example, we know the difference between Class I vs. Class II for the hi-pot test and their parameters, conduct incline tests for furniture regularly, and know that drawstrings on children garments are dangerous. We perform these kinds of tests every day in our organization.
And of course, we do look at certificates. In particular, for electrical products, sometimes the client sends us a certificate or requests that we check the certificate provided by the factory, and we use it. For example, we look at the CDF (Constructional Data Form) and we compare it with what we see on the critical components (same appearance, same marking, etc.), and that’s quite typical.
However, our inspectors are not compliance consultants. They won’t call the issuer of a certificate or report in order to confirm authenticity or ask for missing results on key standards. That has to be documented in advance by the compliance/quality manager of the importing company. The compliance/quality manager has to know what is required and has to archive all that information in a technical file for years to come.
Importers need to know what the safety requirements of their products are. We do not pretend we can replace your compliance manager.
If you are a new client, contact us and give us the product details & photos, as well as the order quantity breakdown. We will suggest an inspection plan and, once we know what city the factory is located in, we will confirm a quotation.
If you are a new client, simply log in www.sofeast-booking.com and schedule the inspection. We will get back to you shortly.
If you need guidance on how to use the system to set up your inspection, please read this page.
Once you have selected the product inspection that you require, you will need to use our simple booking system to organize your inspection.
You first need to create your company’s private account.
Then, you need to log in at https://sofeast-booking.com, select the right service, and fill out the form.
It is all explained in How To Use Sofeast’s Booking System For Product Inspections.
Yes, we work with you to create your checklist as per your requirements so suppliers are very clear on what’s expected. Explore this affordable solution here.
When we build out your QC checklist we use our in-house IT system to create it.
The QC technician carrying out your inspection then uses the system to input results against your standards, results are fed back to you in a PDF report, and they’re also saved for traceability.
Learn more about how we use our IT system to create your QC checklist.
Most inspections are done within 1 day (sometimes with several QC technicians working alongside each other). Sometimes it takes longer, depending on the number of products and the complexity of the work.
We can inspect the quality of most product types, in particular:
Click here to explore our product inspection solutions.
Product inspections are one of our most popular solutions and we perform throughout China, Vietnam, India, and SE Asia.
Explore them all on this page, or hit the individual inspections below to go to their page and get a quotation:
Product quality inspections can’t guarantee 100% perfect quality, because a product’s quality comes from its initial design, the inputs used, and the production processes, as well as other factors, too. Rather, inspections will help you reduce risks and find quality issues early enough to make a difference (such as before a production run is completed).
We see ‘quality’ as a continually improving concept (a robust Quality Assurance Plan can help this happen) and inspections are a part of that.
But to truly guarantee better quality, work needs to be done at an earlier stage with product design (DFQ), reliability testing, and controlling risks in your supply chain. We can help with reliability testing and lab testing, so contact us to discuss these.
After we conduct product inspections for you your inspector will provide you with a detailed inspection report which outlines the results.
Take a look at some real sample reports here:
The reports include:
Yes. The rate we’ll charge for clients who consistently use us for product inspections is negotiable starting at 5 regular man-days per month.
If you are a current client and have any questions about this, contact us or speak with your project manager who will be happy to come to an arrangement with you.
Let’s take a quick example question.
If Sofeast conducts a product inspection on a batch of our goods in China, passes them as reaching acceptable quality, and then upon arrival to us in the USA it’s found that there are unacceptable defects; does Sofeast bear liability for these defects and have insurance?
As a quality inspection agency, we have a cap on our liability in case there are clear signs of negligence in doing our work. Basically, that cap is not high, so it never makes sense to sue us. It’s the same for everybody in the industry.
The only circumstance in which this will change is if you book many thousands of inspections a year through a company like ours. If so, you can probably negotiate for a high liability and force the inspection agency to contract liability insurance. Below that level, no inspection agency will accept to be associated with “insurance”. In this business, we are paid to do a job, not to be responsible for some risks.
For very high-risk products where defects can put lives at risk, we suggest contracting insurance for your company or working with a manufacturer that has a liability insurance policy. Inspection companies can provide some extra assurance here, but not in the form of insurance.
Fundamentally, this is why it is so important to work with good manufacturers and to ensure they have solid systems & processes in order to reduce the risks of ever needing to litigate due to product defects causing dangers when in the field.
Here’s how we can help you reduce risks…
As you know, we conduct product inspections, but in order to reduce supply chain and product quality risks some key parts of our business are:
Product Reliability
Our pricing is competitive for the services offered in comparison to finding someone on Upwork.
However, if you have a very clearly documented project, you are used to developing new products for manufacturing in Asia, and you are comfortable managing all the technical work, Upwork may be a great place to find engineers. We will still be happy to provide reviews and guidance where and if you need.
Pre-production reliability testing such as components and suppliers testing, testing to failures (design limit test), drop testing, thermal testing, and vibration testing, usually happens on parts off tooling (if tooling is involved), and, if possible, on products put together in the same conditions as mass production.
The objective is to validate that the final pre-production samples meet the ‘useful lifetime under expected usage and conditions’. It is a big milestone, usually taking place in parallel with compliance testing and/or certifications.
Once these hurdles have been cleared, it is a green light for proceeding with mass production. A lot of money is at stake and it is important to validate the product and the process design before that.
Many companies do ORT (ongoing reliability testing) on every batch, in a systematic manner.
It helps confirm that the reliability of the product didn’t change as a result of manufacturing. (From one batch to the next and even from one production shift to the next, little variations in materials or processing parameters, and sometimes changes in product or process design, can hurt the products’ reliability.)
For most product categories, there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ reliability testing plan. It takes an experienced reliability engineer and an understanding of the expected usage type & usage conditions of your product to create a relevant plan.
When it comes to packaging, there are widely-used standards (such as ISTA 1A), but they are probably far from replicating the stresses endured by your products throughout your supply chain.
We are happy to quote for preparing a reliability and durability testing plan that is customized to your product and its intended usage, and for the testing work itself.
There are 7 logical steps when investigating the causes of product failure:
If one of your products is experiencing failures, we are happy to quote based on a description of those failures.
Typically, well-experienced development teams conduct highly accelerated testing on prototypes, all the way to failure.
The objective of this kind of reliability testing is to discover the weaknesses of the design and to make improvements (which are then confirmed by a new round of testing).
There are also a lot of good practices to “design for reliability”, as we explained in this video.
Outside of medical/pharma/auto/aerospace applications, we have observed that only the top 0.5% of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indian manufacturers ensure product reliability without their customers requesting it.
There are two main reasons for this:
First, they might have never been exposed to it, and they don’t suffer from after-market complaints directly.
Second, showing that the design has weaknesses slows them down on the road to mass production (which is where they make money), so they prefer to skip all sorts of validations.
Then, the buyer may be surprised by customers complaining about partial or total failure. The buyer also may not be able to make the difference between quality and reliability issues.
Poor manufacturing and non-compliance to specifications leads to quality issues and it can usually be detected during or right after production. The typical consequence is the disposal of or rework of some/all products.
Poor design and poor choice of materials lead to reliability issues, and they usually appear once the product is being used, often 3 to 12 months after shipment. Depending on the product application and warranty terms, this can lead to major customer dissatisfaction, poor reputation, extremely high costs and/or a recall, a class-action lawsuit, and/or injury or death of some users.
Quality assurance solutions
Medical face masks have become an increasingly popular product type for importers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As such, we have been inspecting them regularly, have plenty of experience with medical devices in general, and can help you. We are ISO 9001 certified for product inspections, and one of the process steps in that activity is random sampling.
We put our generic checklist for surgical masks online, so this will give you some idea of how we approach these inspections.
The price for 1 inspector to go to a warehouse in most major manufacturing areas in China and perform a final random inspection on the completed masks is 299 USD all included (we also provide inspections during production if you prefer).
In terms of timelines, we need about 2 days’ notice after we’ve received all of the necessary project information from you.
You may find these resources useful:
When sourcing a product quality inspection provider you have these 2 options:
Sofeast is the latter, and you can read more about why this is beneficial in comparison to regular quality inspection companies here.
Unfortunately, some product inspections fail for whatever reason/s, as the products don’t reach your quality standard. A positive of this is that you found out before products were shipped to you all the way from China!
We will help you take the next steps to solve the issues. Here’s how…
As we’re a 2nd party firm, you can expect us to provide some guidance on why the quality issues are occurring and how to fix them in the future. Our supplier performance management solutions can be very helpful if you need help in pushing suppliers to reach your standards.
Sofeast provides you with product inspectionsin numerous countries around the world.
Please note that our key operating areas are China, most of SE Asia, and Turkey, but we can provide inspections in many global countries thanks to our regional offices in China, India, and Italy (different costs, quoted in advance, may apply depending on the country or area, so please ask us):
You can learn more about our operating areas, and please note that different solution costs and travel fees, quoted in advance, may apply to countries outside of our core operating areas in Asia.
In general, we use random sampling inspections where the inspector will use AQL tables to produce the correct sample number. This allows us to randomly select a sample of products from a given batch which will be representative of the overall quality of the batch.
Not all inspections benefit from this method, though, and so other inspections, such as 100% inspections (where every piece is checked), are also provided.
If you’re interested in defining your own sample sizes, try our free AQL calculator tool. to work out your own.
Follow this link to explore the product inspections that we offer, and learn more about what they include, their cost, and how long they take.
This video also introduces Sofeast’s product inspection solutions further, too.
Here’s a list:
We also produced this interesting infographic explaining more about Final Random Inspections, and also an infographic providing examples of common inspection findings, too.
We always look at product safety during inspections. For example, we know the difference between Class I vs. Class II for the hi-pot test and their parameters, conduct incline tests for furniture regularly, and know that drawstrings on children garments are dangerous. We perform these kinds of tests every day in our organization.
And of course, we do look at certificates. In particular, for electrical products, sometimes the client sends us a certificate or requests that we check the certificate provided by the factory, and we use it. For example, we look at the CDF (Constructional Data Form) and we compare it with what we see on the critical components (same appearance, same marking, etc.), and that’s quite typical.
However, our inspectors are not compliance consultants. They won’t call the issuer of a certificate or report in order to confirm authenticity or ask for missing results on key standards. That has to be documented in advance by the compliance/quality manager of the importing company. The compliance/quality manager has to know what is required and has to archive all that information in a technical file for years to come.
Importers need to know what the safety requirements of their products are. We do not pretend we can replace your compliance manager.
If you are a new client, contact us and give us the product details & photos, as well as the order quantity breakdown. We will suggest an inspection plan and, once we know what city the factory is located in, we will confirm a quotation.
If you are a new client, simply log in www.sofeast-booking.com and schedule the inspection. We will get back to you shortly.
If you need guidance on how to use the system to set up your inspection, please read this page.
Once you have selected the product inspection that you require, you will need to use our simple booking system to organize your inspection.
You first need to create your company’s private account.
Then, you need to log in at https://sofeast-booking.com, select the right service, and fill out the form.
It is all explained in How To Use Sofeast’s Booking System For Product Inspections.
Yes, we work with you to create your checklist as per your requirements so suppliers are very clear on what’s expected. Explore this affordable solution here.
When we build out your QC checklist we use our in-house IT system to create it.
The QC technician carrying out your inspection then uses the system to input results against your standards, results are fed back to you in a PDF report, and they’re also saved for traceability.
Learn more about how we use our IT system to create your QC checklist.
Most inspections are done within 1 day (sometimes with several QC technicians working alongside each other). Sometimes it takes longer, depending on the number of products and the complexity of the work.
We can inspect the quality of most product types, in particular:
Click here to explore our product inspection solutions.
Product inspections are one of our most popular solutions and we perform throughout China, Vietnam, India, and SE Asia.
Explore them all on this page, or hit the individual inspections below to go to their page and get a quotation:
Product quality inspections can’t guarantee 100% perfect quality, because a product’s quality comes from its initial design, the inputs used, and the production processes, as well as other factors, too. Rather, inspections will help you reduce risks and find quality issues early enough to make a difference (such as before a production run is completed).
We see ‘quality’ as a continually improving concept (a robust Quality Assurance Plan can help this happen) and inspections are a part of that.
But to truly guarantee better quality, work needs to be done at an earlier stage with product design (DFQ), reliability testing, and controlling risks in your supply chain. We can help with reliability testing and lab testing, so contact us to discuss these.
After we conduct product inspections for you your inspector will provide you with a detailed inspection report which outlines the results.
Take a look at some real sample reports here:
The reports include:
Yes. The rate we’ll charge for clients who consistently use us for product inspections is negotiable starting at 5 regular man-days per month.
If you are a current client and have any questions about this, contact us or speak with your project manager who will be happy to come to an arrangement with you.
Let’s take a quick example question.
If Sofeast conducts a product inspection on a batch of our goods in China, passes them as reaching acceptable quality, and then upon arrival to us in the USA it’s found that there are unacceptable defects; does Sofeast bear liability for these defects and have insurance?
As a quality inspection agency, we have a cap on our liability in case there are clear signs of negligence in doing our work. Basically, that cap is not high, so it never makes sense to sue us. It’s the same for everybody in the industry.
The only circumstance in which this will change is if you book many thousands of inspections a year through a company like ours. If so, you can probably negotiate for a high liability and force the inspection agency to contract liability insurance. Below that level, no inspection agency will accept to be associated with “insurance”. In this business, we are paid to do a job, not to be responsible for some risks.
For very high-risk products where defects can put lives at risk, we suggest contracting insurance for your company or working with a manufacturer that has a liability insurance policy. Inspection companies can provide some extra assurance here, but not in the form of insurance.
Fundamentally, this is why it is so important to work with good manufacturers and to ensure they have solid systems & processes in order to reduce the risks of ever needing to litigate due to product defects causing dangers when in the field.
Here’s how we can help you reduce risks…
As you know, we conduct product inspections, but in order to reduce supply chain and product quality risks some key parts of our business are:
Factory audits are detailed investigations by Sofeast’s auditors which qualify suppliers and highlight key risks that might prevent them from meeting your needs.
Yes, we can!
However, re-auditing suppliers often only covers the same points repeatedly, but in our experience, we’ve found that this doesn’t always drive improvements in a supplier. Rather, it creates a mountain of paperwork to deal with and more/better excuses for the supplier.
A better approach is to perform a layered process audit on the quality systems and on the operational & support processes in a systematic monthly re-auditing cycle for a period of time where each audit focuses solely on one theme, in more depth. This is especially important for key suppliers with whom you want a long-term relationship.
By focusing on one process or system per month, the auditor maximizes the chance that your supplier can make meaningful improvements incrementally, rather than trying to handle multiple points (on top of their usual work) which can lead to exhaustion and failure.
Factory audits are one of our core solutions and we provide them throughout China, India, Vietnam, and SE Asia.
Here are the individual audits for your information. Hit the links to explore them and get a quotation if you like:
No, it’s possible for us to conduct a remote audit for you.
Traditional audits where our auditor visits the factory are always recommended. However, a remote audit allows the auditor to obtain a lot of useful information about the supplier’s processes, systems, and capabilities for you (as well as things they’re not doing so well at), providing fast and convenient answers.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, factories and countries are increasingly limiting access for visitors, so remote audits using video calling, email, photos, and phone interviews are a good workaround and complement on-site audits well.
Follow this link to explore the factory audits that we offer, and learn more about what they include, their cost, and how long they take.
Sofeast quality engineers and technicians can help reduce your quality risks in a preventive manner. They put in place processes that are better controlled, resulting in more consistent quality products. The ultimate goal is to lower your costs and reduce unexpected delays.
Explore this solution further here.
If you work with us on a manufacturing project we commonly provide a customized Quality Assurance program for you covering all of the QA/QC activities that fit your project’s needs.
What is a QA program?
The program will vary from project to project as we understand that your product and needs are unique, but it is a plan that guides activities throughout the manufacturing project in order to reduce risks that could lead to poor quality and will, roughly, include the following sections:
Why you need one…
By implementing a Quality Assurance program you will:
To get a better understanding of what the QA program includes, take a look at an example on this page and get a quotation for yours if you like:
Sofeast quality engineers and technicians build robust quality processes and preventatively reduce your quality risks.
Follow this link to explore quality consulting, and learn more about what it includes, the cost, and how long it takes.
Quality Consulting
Sofeast quality engineers and technicians can help reduce your quality risks in a preventive manner. They put in place processes that are better controlled, resulting in more consistent quality products. The ultimate goal is to lower your costs and reduce unexpected delays.
Explore this solution further here.
If you work with us on a manufacturing project we commonly provide a customized Quality Assurance program for you covering all of the QA/QC activities that fit your project’s needs.
What is a QA program?
The program will vary from project to project as we understand that your product and needs are unique, but it is a plan that guides activities throughout the manufacturing project in order to reduce risks that could lead to poor quality and will, roughly, include the following sections:
Why you need one…
By implementing a Quality Assurance program you will:
To get a better understanding of what the QA program includes, take a look at an example on this page and get a quotation for yours if you like:
Sofeast quality engineers and technicians build robust quality processes and preventatively reduce your quality risks.
Follow this link to explore quality consulting, and learn more about what it includes, the cost, and how long it takes.
Sofeast 3PL (Warehousing & Fulfillment)
The best way to describe how Sofeast can help you with fulfillment, including warehousing, is to look at it in a visual format:
You have parts or products coming in from your suppliers to our facility (the Agilian Technology facility in Dongguan, near Shenzhen airport).
Then these services may be appropriate in the order you’d use them from warehousing through to them being shipped out to you (or your customers).
Dongguan facility fulfillment services
Read about our warehousing and consolidated shipping services from Dongguan, too.
We try to be flexible on MOQs as we work with businesses that place both small and large orders.
For kitting and assembly we have an MOQ of at least 500 pieces per batch of products. If under 500pcs, we have an extra fixed cost of $300 for setup.
For dropshipping we have an MOQ of 500pcs per batch at least for dropshipping projects.
For co-packing, product repair and rework, and fulfillment, if an order is less than 1,000 pieces it’s unlikely we’ll be able to take this job.
A section of our warehouses is temperature and humidity-controlled. Sensitive materials such as lithium batteries and other electronic materials are kept between 20 and 27 degrees C. (Highest cost applies when materials need to be controlled this way.)
Our 3PL facilities provide both heat shrinking and vacuum sealing machines that can help you to select the packing that fits your requirements.
We have a riveting machine that can be used when assembling products and components that require this method of fastening.
There are 2 cases.
Materials coming from outside mainland China
These MUST be sent by following these rules:
Materials coming from mainland China
These have to be exported by your supplier (it means your supplier needs to complete all export formalities) and to be delivered FOB Pingshan.
[Last update: Feb. 2021. please, contact us for confirmation before you send us anything.]
Sofeast Overview
Sofeast is a professional service provider that helps importers work more productively with, and get better results from, their Asian suppliers. Our main presence is in China, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh.
We are not a “sourcing agent”, but we provide many of the functions of traditional “agents”. Our business model is closer to that of engineering firms and auditing companies — offering competent people’s time and a proven process.
We are organized in three departments that offer different solutions:
Tel: +852 2245 3111 | Site: www.sofeast.com
Contact email: inquiries@sofeast.com
Please also leave us a message by using our contact page form.
On some occasions, you may need to visit our Shenzhen office.
The address is here in English and Chinese (so you can show a taxi driver):
Room 2105, 21st Floor, TianAn Cyber Times Tower A, No. 6, Tai Ran 4th Road, Shatou Street, Futian District, Shenzhen, China
顺意远东兴隆（深圳）贸易服务有限公司
深圳市福田区 沙头街道 泰然四路 6号 天安数码时代大厦 A座 2105室
Please contact us first before visiting so we can arrange to let you into the office and prepare for your visit. If you’re unsure about how to locate us, we can also provide more detailed information after you’ve contacted us, too.
How to get here?
We have created a comprehensive guide to visiting the office. Read it here.
If you’d like to visit us, this is our Shenzhen office address.
Tian’an Digital Times Bldg, Block A, 2105, Chegongmiao, Futian District, Shenzhen, PRC
Please always contact us in advance to arrange your visit OR before you send us a package.
Invoices and contracts bear mention of our head office (5 Tai Mong Tsai Road, Sai Kung, N.T., Hong Kong).
Get full directions to our office by following this link.
Yes, we operate a testing laboratory for reliability, durability, and performance testing on electro-mechanical products and their packaging. Follow this link to visit its site: RSQ-Labs.
We handle many reliability & durability testing jobs in-house in our lab. We have a specialized electrical engineer who worked as a reliability engineer & manager in companies such as Nokia, LG, and GoPro.
We also plan and manage a lot of certifications and testing for compliance, in trusted outside labs, too, if they provide the expertise and facilities required for a particular job.
Yes, we have our own contract manufacturing subsidiary, Agilian Technology, near Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Agilian works seamlessly with Sofeast as a part of our group and there we provide product R&D, assembly, manufacturing, kitting, co-packing, warehousing, and logistics.
When it comes to mass production, we provide you with dedicated lines, flexible manufacturing for many types of consumer and electromechanical products, expert product engineers, in-house quality assurance, process engineering, and strong IP protection. Because it’s all ‘under one roof,’ the full capabilities of the Sofeast group support your manufacturing.
We work with hardware startups, entrepreneurs, SMEs, and larger organisations that usually don’t have a buying office close to their suppliers’ operations and don’t work with the very best contract manufacturers.
Our clients typically need help on the ground from seasoned professionals, want a clear compensation model (no complex or hidden fees), and solutions to their issues (not just a menu of standard services).
Since we are client-centric and we have lined up a broad range of solutions over the past 14 years, we have a long list of competitors.
We are organized in separate departments, and each department aims at being among the best service providers on its market. And, at the same time, you can work with one of our project managers who will pull resources throughout the company in order to match your needs. This is a unique approach that we haven’t seen in “quality control agencies”, in “sourcing companies”. or in “new product development shops”
Supplier Identification
Even if you’ve validated a supplier (such as by performing due diligence checks), due diligence needs to be performed on a product (or component) that is already developed (or is being developed) to ensure that it won’t lead to costly safety issues or recalls later on.
For this, select the 360-Degree Product Risk Assessment service.
Yes, absolutely. Any importers who are afraid that their potential suppliers may misrepresent information about their company (including scammers, but also simply ‘creative sales people’) need to conduct supplier due diligence before agreeing to work with a new supplier.
This can be done in various ways. The easiest and fastest way is to simply check their registration status with the government. We can do a more in-depth background check. We can also put you in touch with a lawyer who can drill down on the legal side, or a consultancy that can gather extensive information about their operations. See our due diligence checks in our supply chain management services.
P.S.
If the potential supplier you’re vetting turns out to be unsuitable, and if you are struggling to find an alternative, we can work on listing and screening alternative candidates for you.
For this purpose, use our new factory identification solution, in which we locate and provide the best possible export-ready supplier for your needs.
Yes, although most customers request this for Chinese suppliers.
We can also check companies in India and Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, too.
If you’re unsure whether we can check your chosen supplier, ask us!
If your product design is confidential, you should at least do some basic due diligence, such as a Legal Records Check, before sharing any information.
If you are buying a supplier’s product (or making changes to one of their existing products), due diligence might come after initial sourcing discussions but before deep discussions. Checking their product’s certificates/reports is useful, as well.
During the sourcing and new product development and manufacturing process you’ll receive a BOM (Bill Of Materials) and this document will be adjusted and referred to a lot.
Your BOM is a complete list of parts that make up your product, and the document will usually include supplier, cost, and quantities purchased. It may also include second and third supplier options, too, as redundancies against supply chain disruption.
The BOM may evolve over time, but it’s recommended to ‘lock’ it before production and not to change it, otherwise, the products being made may wind up using non-approved parts that could lead to quality, reliability, and safety issues.
Listen
: Learn more about the BOM in this episode of our podcast.
When sourcing suppliers, we usually help our clients get a reasonable price and optimize for low risk, high R&D capability, or something of that nature. We are probably not the best fit for this situation.
If your main goal is sourcing products or components at the lowest possible price, Alibaba will probably be the best option.
Please Note: Buying cheaply from Alibaba usually doesn’t mean it’s the lowest cost in the long run, though, when ‘surprises’ such as quality issues, delays, etc. come up. They end up costing a lot more to the buyer.
Here is how we usually proceed:
1. Collect product requirements (from the client)
2. Run a quick market study to evaluate the time we will have to spend
3. Provide a quotation for the first service, and get approval from the client
4. Identify a list of suppliers from various sources
5. Provide a report in Excel with information collected and full contact details.
When working with us to identify new suppliers, this is basically the process we follow for you.
First, we need to know what your needs are, including quantity, quality standard, special requirements, etc. We encourage our clients to look on Alibaba.com and GlobalSources.com and to point some potential suppliers to us, as it clarifies your expectations.
Then, if we see this is something we can help you with, we start our proven process for searching and screening suitable suppliers. From experience, taking a shortcut is a mistake in most cases.
Please keep two things in mind. We don’t get paid a percentage of the order value like most agents do. We charge based on the time we spend. And we can’t share with you the information we gathered for other clients (we have a strict confidentiality policy).
Please go to this page for more details about our supplier identification service.
New Factory Identification
To determine the average market price, we typically request quotations from 5-10 suppliers (depending on the product/component) and compare prices. We also encourage our clients to look on Alibaba.com and GlobalSources.com, to see what offers they get first-hand.
Based on the short list of the top 3 suppliers, we request samples to check the quality and review their capabilities, as well as clarify some critical points further.
Yes. We can quote, source, and manage the purchasing process, based on your Bill of Materials.
Price and payment terms are linked to your order quantity, and to the supplier’s motivation to get your business.
What we can say is, we have a proven process to find what the market price is. If you can “sell” your project to a potential supplier, it is often a good idea for you to talk to the short list we came up with, and to try and get their price down.
However, for many importers, the search of the ever-lower FOB price often leads to issues that raise the total cost of ownership of the goods. It is not always a good idea.
China is blessed with the world’s best manufacturing resources for complex products, such as consumer electronics.
The tech hub of Southern China (where we’re based) is known as ‘China’s silicon valley.’
There are too many suppliers to count here, but before you start searching on Alibaba or Global sources, give this list of recommended contract manufacturers a try:
Supply Chain Management Solutions
Sofeast carry out these checks to assure you that a potential supplier is not a ‘scammer’ and has their story straight, is offering competitive pricing, and is a good match for your business.
If you are concerned about being scammed or employing a middle-man posing as a factory to produce your orders (and you should be) then you should run background checks.
Yes. If you’re getting plastic injection molds made in China we can send an engineer who is experienced in tooling fabrication and usage to your toolmaker’s shop to supervise their final testing and validation of the molds. This means that the risks of you or your plastic injection parts supplier receiving defective tooling are vastly reduced as it’s confirmed that your tooling has reached your standards.
Since tooling is such an expensive investment, it pays to thoroughly check it at the toolmaker before it’s sent to be used in mass production.
Here’s the solution you can choose: Mold Capability Validation Supervision (in China)
Yes, we can!
As you know, leaving your tooling, which is an expensive investment and important IP, at your supplier’s facility opens you up to certain issues:
So in order to prevent your supplier from holding all of the cards, we provide a tooling custody and management solution where we pick or receive your tooling and store it safely and securely at our Dongguan facility, returning it to your supplier only when needed once more.
Yes, we can help you to source export-ready components suppliers in China, Vietnam, India, or SE Asia.
You need to choose our New Supplier Sourcing / Factory Identification solution.
We’ll need to know information such as:
P.S.
If you’d prefer to take a hands-off approach, we can also act as your procurement officewhere we not only source suppliers, but also take delivery of components or products, inspect them, pack and ship them, and pay the suppliers on your behalf.
Take a look at our supply chain management solutions page, but here’s a list of individual solutions, too:
If you work with supplier in China who keep raising the costs of materials unexpectedly you can check actual costs using www.sci99.com. Please note, it’s not cheap, though.
Follow this link to explore our background checks, and learn more about what they include, the cost, and how long they take.
No, we have never done this. Think of us as a professional service provider. We always have to be paid for our work. We can sometimes propose flat fees for specific deliverables, but we never do work on a contingency basis.
First, what is a good factory for importer A may not be a good factory for other buyers.
Read why there is no such thing as “a good factory” in this blog post
Second, we can probably help you source a supplier, and you can select this solution here. We will activate our network of suppliers, get them to confirm they are interested in your business and screen them to ensure they are a good fit for your project.
We fulfill many of the same functions, but our business model is a bit different. We keep our clients by providing value, not by making ourselves indispensable, and certainly not by keeping certain information close to our chest (our clients know everything).
Note, that we do provide a solution where we take on the role of your procurement office.
Even if you’ve validated a supplier (such as by performing due diligence checks), due diligence needs to be performed on a product (or component) that is already developed (or is being developed) to ensure that it won’t lead to costly safety issues or recalls later on.
For this, select the 360-Degree Product Risk Assessment service.
Yes, absolutely. Any importers who are afraid that their potential suppliers may misrepresent information about their company (including scammers, but also simply ‘creative sales people’) need to conduct supplier due diligence before agreeing to work with a new supplier.
This can be done in various ways. The easiest and fastest way is to simply check their registration status with the government. We can do a more in-depth background check. We can also put you in touch with a lawyer who can drill down on the legal side, or a consultancy that can gather extensive information about their operations. See our due diligence checks in our supply chain management services.
P.S.
If the potential supplier you’re vetting turns out to be unsuitable, and if you are struggling to find an alternative, we can work on listing and screening alternative candidates for you.
For this purpose, use our new factory identification solution, in which we locate and provide the best possible export-ready supplier for your needs.
Yes, although most customers request this for Chinese suppliers.
We can also check companies in India and Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, too.
If you’re unsure whether we can check your chosen supplier, ask us!
If your product design is confidential, you should at least do some basic due diligence, such as a Legal Records Check, before sharing any information.
If you are buying a supplier’s product (or making changes to one of their existing products), due diligence might come after initial sourcing discussions but before deep discussions. Checking their product’s certificates/reports is useful, as well.
During the sourcing and new product development and manufacturing process you’ll receive a BOM (Bill Of Materials) and this document will be adjusted and referred to a lot.
Your BOM is a complete list of parts that make up your product, and the document will usually include supplier, cost, and quantities purchased. It may also include second and third supplier options, too, as redundancies against supply chain disruption.
The BOM may evolve over time, but it’s recommended to ‘lock’ it before production and not to change it, otherwise, the products being made may wind up using non-approved parts that could lead to quality, reliability, and safety issues.
Listen: Learn more about the BOM in this episode of our podcast.
When sourcing suppliers, we usually help our clients get a reasonable price and optimize for low risk, high R&D capability, or something of that nature. We are probably not the best fit for this situation.
If your main goal is sourcing products or components at the lowest possible price, Alibaba will probably be the best option.
Please Note: Buying cheaply from Alibaba usually doesn’t mean it’s the lowest cost in the long run, though, when ‘surprises’ such as quality issues, delays, etc. come up. They end up costing a lot more to the buyer.
Here is how we usually proceed:
1. Collect product requirements (from the client)
2. Run a quick market study to evaluate the time we will have to spend
3. Provide a quotation for the first service, and get approval from the client
4. Identify a list of suppliers from various sources
5. Provide a report in Excel with information collected and full contact details.
When working with us to identify new suppliers, this is basically the process we follow for you.
First, we need to know what your needs are, including quantity, quality standard, special requirements, etc. We encourage our clients to look on Alibaba.com and GlobalSources.com and to point some potential suppliers to us, as it clarifies your expectations.
Then, if we see this is something we can help you with, we start our proven process for searching and screening suitable suppliers. From experience, taking a shortcut is a mistake in most cases.
Please keep two things in mind. We don’t get paid a percentage of the order value like most agents do. We charge based on the time we spend. And we can’t share with you the information we gathered for other clients (we have a strict confidentiality policy).
Please go to this page for more details about our supplier identification service.
New Factory Identification
To determine the average market price, we typically request quotations from 5-10 suppliers (depending on the product/component) and compare prices. We also encourage our clients to look on Alibaba.com and GlobalSources.com, to see what offers they get first-hand.
Based on the short list of the top 3 suppliers, we request samples to check the quality and review their capabilities, as well as clarify some critical points further.
Yes. We can quote, source, and manage the purchasing process, based on your Bill of Materials.
Price and payment terms are linked to your order quantity, and to the supplier’s motivation to get your business.
What we can say is, we have a proven process to find what the market price is. If you can “sell” your project to a potential supplier, it is often a good idea for you to talk to the short list we came up with, and to try and get their price down.
However, for many importers, the search of the ever-lower FOB price often leads to issues that raise the total cost of ownership of the goods. It is not always a good idea.
China is blessed with the world’s best manufacturing resources for complex products, such as consumer electronics.
The tech hub of Southern China (where we’re based) is known as ‘China’s silicon valley.’
There are too many suppliers to count here, but before you start searching on Alibaba or Global sources, give this list of recommended contract manufacturers a try:
Yes, we are a 3PL (third-party logistics warehouse) among the many other things we provide such as product quality inspection, product engineering, sourcing, and more.
In our fulfillment facility in China we provide all of the types of activities that companies who are manufacturing products in China need to ship them to customers globally:
Take a look at our 3PL services and see pricing here:
Yes, we use one of China’s most popular dropshipping management platforms which offers:
Our team will help integrate your platform with our dropshipping management software, taking this task out of your hands.
We will also consult you on the best delivery methods depending on your customers’ locations, and will provide advice on:
When working with us to handle your logistics management, we’ll be doing this either from our 8,000+ SQM contract manufacturing subsidiary in Dongguan, Agilian Technology
Shipping insurance may be suitable for you if your business has a low tolerance for risk, loss of packages, or you are shipping high-value products.
It is not normally not included in quotations.
The average cost is 0.3% of goods value.
If you need help arranging shipping insurance, please speak to us, we can help.
The formula you should use to calculate import taxes is as follows:
Import Duty ($) = Customs Value ($) x Duty Rate (%)
US – Goods value (FOB)
EU – Good value + Insurance + Shipping (CIF)
These import duties are to be paid by the importer (you) at the destination, following customs clearance.
To help you:
For US – https://hts.usitc.gov/?query=9503
For EU – https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/taric/taric_consultation.jsp?Lang=en
For Canada – https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/trade-commerce/tariff-tarif/menu-eng.html
The minimum weight of air cargo is 45 kg.
We recommend using air freight when:
In the international shipping industry, “peak season” refer to months leading up to holiday seasons resulting in shipping costs to increase and warehouses to blast.
Shipping costs can also increase if the carrier is on strike or due to bad weather.
Costs for air freight are based either on volume or weight using the below formula:
Length (m) x height (m) x width (m) multiply by volumetric factor*
*If volumetric weight > actual weight, volumetric weight is applied to the shipping rate OR If volumetric weight < actual weight, actual weight is applied to the shipping rate.
Lead-time given is only for international transit time, customs clearance at the destination is excluded from this and may vary.
Supply chain management solutions pricing
No, we have never done this. Think of us as a professional service provider. We always have to be paid for our work. We can sometimes propose flat fees for specific deliverables, but we never do work on a contingency basis.
First, what is a good factory for importer A may not be a good factory for other buyers.
Read why there is no such thing as “a good factory” in this blog post
Second, we can probably help you source a supplier, and you can select this solution here. We will activate our network of suppliers, get them to confirm they are interested in your business and screen them to ensure they are a good fit for your project.
We fulfill many of the same functions, but our business model is a bit different. We keep our clients by providing value, not by making ourselves indispensable, and certainly not by keeping certain information close to our chest (our clients know everything).
Note, that we do provide a solution where we take on the role of your procurement office.
Working with Sofeast
We invoice based on the time we spend, and on any expenses incurred (typically, traveling costs). Different employees’ time is billed at different rates, based on their expertise. The minimum amount of work billed is 1 man-hour for office activities, and 1 man-day for on-site operations.
What is the first step when I reach out to Sofeast?
We start with a high-level understanding of your project and schedule a call (usually on Zoom or Teams call). This helps us clarify your goals, timelines, target markets, and the current maturity of your design.
What do you need from us early on?
Ideally, you’ll share documented product requirements. If you only have user requirements, that’s also fine; we can help translate these into engineering terms and identify gaps early.
Do you sign an NDA?
Yes. We typically sign an NDA early, and when needed, we include additional protections such as non-use and non-circumvention provisions.
Will you review our existing design files?
Yes. We usually need to review your design files early so we can understand the design intent and assess feasibility, risks, and the path to industrialization.
What if we are starting from scratch (white-page design)?
For white-page projects, we bring in industrial designers and/or R&D engineers early for a technical feasibility study. We aim to define a clear scope and then begin with a smaller paid block of work before expanding into the next phase.
What if most of the design is already done?
If your design is largely complete, we typically start with a paid DFM (Design for Manufacturing) review. This helps identify risk, cost, reliability, and production issues before the design is frozen.
How do design changes and follow-up reviews work?
After the initial review, you can choose to have Sofeast implement design changes or have your internal team do so. We then conduct follow-up reviews as needed until all parties are confident the files can be frozen. These reviews are billed.
When do we “freeze” the design?
We aim to freeze the design once the changes from DFM and other technical reviews have been addressed and the engineering is validated. The goal is to avoid costly late-stage changes when tooling and production planning begin.
What happens after design and engineering are validated?
We help you plan and execute the next steps:
Tooling strategy and oversight
Validation builds and testing
Pre-production planning
Ramp to mass production
How do you structure commercial engagement?
We prefer clear, phased scopes with defined deliverables. Early on, that often means starting with a smaller paid block (especially for white-page design), or a paid DFM review if your design is already advanced.
What’s the benefit of this approach?
It reduces risk, improves design and manufacturing outcomes, and provides you with a clear, accountable path from concept to mass production, without overcommitting before the fundamentals are validated.
This is obviously a key concern, since our clients often make important decisions based on our reports. We mitigate this risk by avoiding certain psychological profiles in the hiring process, by having a strong code of conduct, through internal management practices, by communicating what is unacceptable to suppliers early on, by rotating inspection staff, through random audits, and by logging many data during inspections. Clients are welcome to ask for more details.
We need to know where the factory is (which city, and if possible which district), what you are buying and in what quantity, and what your needs and requirements are.
We are happy to share some information about product compliance based on our experience and hope it is helpful.
However, we are not lawyers. Any information we share is based only on our understanding of legal requirements and regulations. Sofeast does not present this information as a basis for you to make decisions, and we do not accept any liability if you do so.
Always consult a lawyer first if you feel that this is necessary.
Yes, we are prepared to sign an NDA/NNN agreement before starting work in order that you feel secure that your product IP is protected as we understand how important that is to our customers.
We often offer our regular agreement* for you to use if you wish…we find that it addresses most of our customers’ concerns, as well as our own, and provides a sound basis for our relationship.
What does our NDA agreement include?
Our CEO Renaud produced this walkthrough video of the agreement explaining its sections and what the different clauses and wording mean:
Watch here https://youtu.be/vwSUJB43qv4
*Note: The template is suggested as a basis for an agreement with our customers, in our particular business context.
Let’s say you’re just starting to design a new electro-mechanical product that is very new and relatively complex and want to outsource its design, testing, and prototyping for eventual manufacturing in China. You are no doubt concerned with IP protection of your idea, too. You have not selected a supplier yet.
Now is probably too early to engage us.
We recommend getting your product design ready first Why You Need Mature Product Designs BEFORE Working With A Chinese Manufacturer!
You need to source and vet your supplier and we can help you in the following ways at this very early stage:
These solutions all constitute a thorough vetting process.
How Sofeast can help you when your design is more mature
We are good at making the link between a product idea and a good production batch. But the “idea” needs to be somewhat formed. And some of the best ways to make an “idea” more mature are working on the aesthetic design, working on the user manual, etc.
It may help you to see some testimonials here.
No problem, we don’t lock you into using suppliers that we source.
However, it is advisable for us to audit your suppliers to assure that they’re truly capable and have the capacity to reach your requirements. Audits are well worth it, as they will ensure you receive good quality, cost, delivery times, and safety in the longer term.
If it turns out that the supplier’s you’ve been using or have sourced independently have issues, we can source reliable suppliers for you that exceed the performance of the old ones.
Usually, we do not work with medical products.
By all means, check with us by sending us an inquiry via our contact page, but in general, we do not provide many of our solutions for medical products.
Depending on the scope of work, we may accept to provide an offer and perform the work or we may put you in contact with another service provider who has the experience to help you.
If you have key suppliers and you want to work with us to assure that production processes are optimized and they are able to produce your orders at the quality you expect consistently we will, roughly, propose the following activities to monitor and improve their processes:
In many cases, new Sofeast clients will benefit from choosing to work with a dedicated project manager who we can provide to handle your project on the ground in China. This takes away the stress of battling with time-difference, language barrier, and fire-fighting issues as they arise.
We provide your project manager at an affordable cost. This person acts as your single point of contact and works as a part of your team to assure that your project is kept on track, with costs, delays, and quality kept at an acceptable level.
You can learn even more about how Sofeast’s project managers can help you by reading this blog post and read the Sofeast client charter to get our guidance on how to work most effectively with your project manager and the rest of our team, too.
Yes, we can! As you probably know, to transfer tooling and molds between your old supplier in China to a new one isn’t as easy as just picking it up and delivering it to the new location.
We provide a tooling custody and management solution where we pick or receive your tooling and store it safely and securely at our Dongguan facility, returning it to your supplier only when needed once more.
Our process is split into two phases:
You can read in detail about the entire 13 step tooling transfer process here.
Non-food consumer goods (from textiles to electronics) and mechanical products (for industrial or automotive use).
First, we need to know what your needs are, including quantity, quality standard, special requirements, etc. Then, we start our proven process for searching and screening suitable suppliers. From experience, in most cases taking a shortcut is a mistake.
Please keep two things in mind. We don’t get paid a percentage of the order value like a typical agent does. We charge you for our time. And we can’t share with you the information we gathered for other clients (strict confidentiality policy).
Our new factory identification solution for souring suppliers may be suitable for you.
We are a professional services company and we get paid based on the amount of work we provide. This eliminates the temptation of taking shortcuts (‘let’s see if that supplier that we already know can do a good job’) and all the usual suspicions of typical sourcing agents (who often get a hidden commission from the supplier side too).
No. We are a professional services company. We only get paid when our assistance is needed. Once we are no longer needed, there is no need to pay us.
We do not ever hide information from clients, since they pay us for doing the work of gathering that information.
Let’s say you have a product idea that you want to work with us on development and then production. The good news is, we CAN help support at every stage as we have our own in-house R&D team and production/assembly facility.
Here’s what we’ll usually do:
Learn more about how we support new product development projects.
We’re sorry, this usually isn’t possible as we work under strict agreements with clients that prohibit us from identifying them in order to protect their identity.
However, some clients have kindly agreed to share testimonials on this page:
Many services of our Quality Assurance department are billed based on the number of man-days. A man day includes approximately 5 hours of productive work on site, but also accounts for transportation, lunch break, and the time to study the files before and to complete the draft report afterwards.
Learn more about what a man day is in this blog post
Extra expenses will only be incurred if, for instance, a lot of travelling is required – in these cases we are up front with you about these beforehand. We usually invoice only 50% of the man-day cost for a day spent travelling.
We are happy to start working with you without a contract if you want to keep the process ‘light’ on your side (our terms & conditions apply, in any case).
We can provide a service provision contract for those clients who see the potential for long-term cooperation and want their requirements to be documented. (That’s what we always advise buyers to do with their Asian suppliers.)
The most common payment methods are:
Yes, we have created this client charter which outlines what should be expected from each other when working with our project managers from the Supply Chain Management department in order to make projects run as smoothly as possible and get the results you need.
Yes. Our engineers can go to a factory and study the issue (there is usually no alternative to going on site). We can investigate the root cause(s) of the issue, explain it to the manufacturer, and help set up an action plan. Depending on the exact source of the issue, we can often provide guidance along the way to ensure the problem is really fixed and won’t come back. See our production problem management service.
Please contact us. Typically, Kate, Renaud, or Fabien will respond to you within 10 hours. We welcome your inquiries and always try to respond quickly, however, please bear in mind that we are usually in the China/Hong Kong time zone and may be many hours ahead of your time which could result in a reply on your following day.