Sofeast Knowledgebase Blog

If you’re in a position where you need to find a new Chinese supplier or are moving from an existing one and choose us to source and provide you with them in the new factory identification solution, here’s roughly what … Continue reading →

Hardware startups often ask us: ‘Incubator or accelerator? What’s our best choice?’  The answer depends largely on where you’re at with your product idea, how mature your business/company is, and what kind of investment you are looking for.

When it comes to developing and manufacturing hard goods in China and beyond (be it a plastic case for an electrical product, a new type of metal jewel, a new mechanical part…), making prototypes is an important part of the new product development process. … Continue reading →

You may already have seen our infographic explaining how a random inspection works, if so, you’ll see that it is a good introduction to these inspections. Now, the next step is learning how to report the results in a QC … Continue reading →

Many importers don't organise their product specifications and dealings with suppliers at all well Some importers send information about the product they expect through many different channels: Email threads Skype, WeChat, or QQ conversations In the form of samples or validations of … Continue reading →

We’ve been speaking quite a lot about factory audits recently in our podcast mini-series about vetting Chinese suppliers. In particular, let’s compare quality audits vs process audits. Many buyers will send in a quality auditor. There are advantages to this … Continue reading →

Q: I’m worried that my sensitive product information won’t be kept confidential when it is sent to component suppliers. How can it be kept secure? Answer: There are legal and non-legal approaches here. Non-Legal: Reducing the amount of information being … Continue reading →

Many people come to us and ask: “What are the steps we need to take now that we have decided to manufacture our products in China/Vietnam/SE Asia?” While no two manufacturing projects are the same, I’ve tried to distill the … Continue reading →

I have written extensively about pre-shipment inspections (before, during, or after production), always from the perspective of the buyer checking what a supplier is doing; but I noticed that I haven’t covered what’s known as a receiving inspection (also called incoming … Continue reading →

In this volume, we discuss an unfortunate situation – what happens when your Chinese supplier disappears with tooling or inventory belonging to you! 😱