Targeted sourcing in China

Service focus: Product and supplier sourcing in China

The client runs several established businesses and was looking at scooters as a possible new direction — not petrol, not pure electric, but hybrid. He had heard such machines existed and wanted to see the supplier side before going further. The request was targeted sourcing: three to five solid manufacturers of hybrid scooters in China.

The risk in a request like this is rarely the list itself. Names and quotations are easy to collect. The question that decides the money is whether there is real production behind the category — and that only becomes visible once you start talking to the factories.

The sourcing produced an answer rather than a supplier list. I contacted every supplier whose listing carried "hybrid" in the title — about ten of them. Not one turned out to make hybrid scooters as a real product. Some did not make them at all; for the rest it was a trial attempt with no serious production behind it. The word "hybrid" in the titles was there for search, not for the product.

I prepared the key notes and conclusions and provided them to the client. He reviewed the findings and changed his request from hybrid to electric — before any sample was paid for and before any order was placed. Sometimes the most useful result of sourcing is a purchase that does not happen.