Sofeast Knowledgebase Blog

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! 😱

Do you wonder why you still suffer from quality issues, even though the process is quite mature and seems to be well understood? Or are you preparing to launch the production of a new product… or production of an existing … Continue reading →

Is there ever a situation where you’d want your product inspection to be performed away from your Chinese supplier’s factory? Yes! We’ll explain your options in Off-Site QC VS In-Factory QC.

Clients come to us with needs. Some of them know exactly what they need (such and such service) and how to get the most of our work. But most of them don’t, and instead they communicate their challenges. As we … Continue reading →

Some Chinese factories have suffered serious blows recently. Large American companies are moving manufacturing outside of China, often abruptly. Many manufacturers were hit in 2020 by very soft demand and cancelled orders. Their government is becoming more serious in getting … Continue reading →

Michael Michelini wrote about Amazon packaging, and he mentioned the FBA prep services. I discovered a whole industry popped up and is probably growing fast. What do they do? In Mike’s words: Basically, a third-party prep service does everything on your behalf, including: … Continue reading →