Are you looking for a buying agent in Shenzhen to take care of your China electronic sourcing, manufacturing verification, prototyping, quality control and shipment so you can shift more focus on product development and marketing? Buying agent in Shenzhen seems to be the ultimate choice. However, before committing to a China sourcing agent or individual, there’re many precautions we’d love to share with you.
1. Know about the salary of an experienced sourcing employee
If you’re looking for Shenzhen based individuals with at least 5 years of experience working full time for you, expect to pay around CNY ￥8,000 – 15,000 per month. The minimum salary of a worker in Shenzhen is CNY ￥2,000, but a skilled workers makes at least 3 or 4 times more. Of course you can find some fresh graduates or graduates with one or two years of experience working at around CNY ￥4,000 – 8,000 but few of them are capable of managing all the sourcing process, mistakes tend to occur due to lack of experience. They might not be taken serious or being highly valued by suppliers.
2. Opacity and kickbacks
While we’re on a business trip to Yiwu, we ran across some ads in Yiwu international city touting “Free sourcing”, “Commissions as low as 1%”, we don’t say for sure that it’s a trap but going with such cheap sourcing agents there’re more chances that they take black commissions from the suppliers. If something is too good to be true, then it probably is. It’s deeply rooted in business practices in China. Not only buying agent in Shenzhen take black commissions, Hong Kong sourcing agents and western sourcing agents are no exception. Black commission not only increases the costs of importers but also contributes to the situation that the sourcing agent would stand on the suppliers’ side and defend for them if something bad happens like quality issues, delay of productions, etc.
Besides, sometimes the sourcing agents might act more like trading companies if they’re unwilling to disclose the suppliers to importers. This would cause some consequences.
* The importer has no control of the supply chain. Even if the price goes up they can’t stop using the agent.
* The importer is left in the dark, not knowing how much commissions the sourcing agent takes even there might be 50% margin on some products.
3. Legal responsibilities
If you’re paying full-time “sourcing employee” or “contractor” in China without setting up a China company, doing accounting, tax reports, paying company income tax, employer tax, etc, it’s illegal. You might end up getting the business shut down, worse, you might not be able to leave the country. Besides, your sourcing agent is in an advantageous position to steal your designs and sell to your competitors. Even though, there’s nothing you can do like suing her/him in China even though you sign a contract since what you’re doing is illegal in the first place.
The solution to tackle with all these problems is to work with a professional and reliable Shenzhen sourcing agent. Don’t hesitate to contact the team of sourcing experts from Business in Shenzhen with 12 years of experience electronics manufacturing in China and exporting worldwide.
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