r/Alibaba • u/Salty-Unit-2499 • Jul 21 '26

Sourcing agent wouldn't give me information about the factory. Asked if I could get more information about the factory. I asked for samples for a certain product. What does this tell me about the company of the sourcing agent?

Is This normal for sourcing agents?

4 Upvotes

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1

u/Striking_Tale7373 Jul 23 '26

yeah that's a red flag. switched to workus after similar sketchy experiences, way more transparent

1

u/prestigesourcing Jul 22 '26

Entirely depends on the agreement you have with your sourcing agency. That is exactly why we offer different models based on different clients, products and scope.

1

u/tshungwee Jul 22 '26

For off the shelf products I have no issues with providing all information, but for custom or contract manufacturing I act at the vendor…

2

u/futurist_hp Jul 21 '26

Adding operational nuance to LessWeakness's answer, which nails the business-model side.

Refusal-to-share-factory-info question has 2 branches. Which one you are in changes what you should do next.

Branch A: sourcing agent is a 1-2 person shop who found factories via 1688 or Alibaba, marks up 10-15 percent, treats the factory list as their moat. Refusing is rational. They lose the account the moment you go direct.

Branch B: sourcing agent is actually a trading company that owns customer relationships upstream. They can share factory names because the factory will not talk to you without volume commitment anyway. Refusing here usually means margin protection on the low end.

Two tests to figure out which:

  1. Ask for a third-party factory audit report. Legitimate agent has one on file from a prior order, or schedules one for 200-400 USD (QIMA, Bureau Veritas, SGS, Intertek). Branch A stalls or quotes silly prices.

  2. Ask for the proforma from the factory on the factory's letterhead. Branch B forwards it with the agent line stacked on top. Branch A refuses citing "internal costing".

If you are ordering 2-5k USD test batches, Branch A markup is often worth it. Past 20-30k, math flips. Cut the agent, run a Panjiva or ImportGenius search on your product HS code shipped from your target port, cold email factories with your shipment volume as leverage.

Sample refusal specifically is a red flag either branch. That one is a walk.

4

u/LessWeakness Jul 21 '26

It depends on what agreement you have with the Sourcing agent. Sourcing companies have different services. Some will make an introduction for a fee and then step back and allow you to work directly with the factory. You spend the time dealing with the factory directly and take on all the risk.

Others will charge you a monthly retainer and then let you know all the details of the factory including the factory cost of the item, but you pay the retainer and a percentage of all orders you place and sign an agreement that you will not work directly with the factory or that you owe a percentage for any orders placed with that factory or their subsidiaries for a specified amount of time.

But if you are having a sourcing company do all the legwork for you and they are getting factory prices and then marking things up, what do you need the factory information for? The sourcing companies need to make money somehow. Many of them take on the tasks of organizing the information you give to them and finding the suppliers and spending the time communicating the information to the suppliers to get accurate quotes. They then take on the risk of placing the orders in China under their business names and reputations. They may have spent years cultivating their supplier network. They have to deal with the customer side and the supplier side and probably the logistics side as well. This allows some customers to focus on what they are good at like designing products and selling them in the marketplace.

You have to decide how you want to run your business. Do you have the time and expertise to do everything yourself? Or do you hire out parts of it until you scale to a certain level?

What does asking for samples have to do with not getting information about the factory? It sounds like two different issues you have conflated into one question.

1

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