FAQ · Choosing and checking a supplier
Choosing and checking a supplier: 33 answers
How to shortlist, what to demand in writing, how to score delivery, and where buyers actually research a factory. The questions that decide whether this is the right partner. Part of the wholesale FAQ — the 4 groups here are the questions buyers ask in this order, and the answer to each is the one we would put in a quotation rather than the one that sounds best.
Finding a manufacturer & starting your brand
How do I find a factory and start my own adult product brand?
Start by choosing a clear segment — wellness, not novelty — then shortlist OEM/ODM manufacturers that hold the marks your market needs (CE, RoHS, FDA material safety, IPX5 / IPX6 / IP7) and will sign an NDA before sharing specs. Decide your build route: private label puts your brand on a proven mould, white label also rebrands the app and packaging. Slow Duo supplies wholesale, OEM and ODM from one China factory — open at MOQ 300 mixed units, sample in 3–5 days, then scale to private label with buyer-owned tooling. Ask each candidate for certificates with report numbers and a reference letter. Private label vs white label →
Is 300 units a realistic MOQ for a startup brand?
Yes. Standard industry minimums run 300–500 units for stock colours and 500–1,000 for custom colour or packaging; a new mould starts at 1,000–2,000. Slow Duo keeps its stock-SKU MOQ at 300 and lets you mix all 25 models in one order, so a startup can validate two or three SKUs before a large commitment. Reorders drop to 200 units.
How do I tell a real factory from a trading company?
Request the business licence (in the US, the business license), the factory address for a QIMA or SGS inspection, and the actual CE / RoHS / FDA / IPX5 / IPX6 / IP7 certificates with report numbers — a trading company reselling goods it does not make struggles to show all three. Slow Duo is one brand on one Dongguan manufacturing partner with tooling, assembly and QC under one roof, and we welcome a third-party audit and reference letters under NDA. The plant those reports belong to →
How do I check that your certificates are genuine?
Every certificate we issue carries a report number and the name of the testing laboratory, and you can check that lab against the EU's NANDO database of notified bodies before you order — not after. Our silicone is tested to FDA 21 CFR 177.2600 by SGS, phthalates are screened to REACH Annex XVII across six groups with a not-detected result, and restricted substances are measured to IEC 62321 across ten substances. The full report pack goes out with the quotation, not after the deposit. See the compliance pack →
What should I check before placing a first order with any supplier?
Five things, in this order: ask for the business licence and the factory address so your own inspector can attend; request certificates carrying report numbers you can verify against the named laboratory; ask for a live video walkthrough of the production line rather than a pre-recorded tour; order a sample and test it against the specification sheet; and get the defect rate, warranty and resolution timeline written into the agreement. A supplier who declines the first two has already given you their answer. Wholesale terms →
What does AQL 2.5 actually guarantee?
Less than most buyers assume. Under a single sampling plan at general inspection level II, AQL 2.5 sets a sample size and an accept number for that sample — it is a check on the process, not a promise about every unit in the carton. Sample size grows far more slowly than lot size, so a 10,000-unit lot is judged on a sample in the low hundreds. How the numbers are set →
What does IPX7 mean, and how is it tested?
IPX7 means the enclosure survived 30 minutes immersed at one metre, tested to IEC 60529. It is not a general waterproof claim: IPX5 and IPX6 are jet tests, IPX7 is an immersion test, and a higher number does not automatically include the lower test unless the product was tested for both. The rating is stated per model on its specification sheet, not once for the range. The ratings compared →
Questions buyers ask in sourcing groups
How do buyers check a factory before wiring a deposit?
In a consistent order: read the business licence and check the name on it is the name that will invoice you, watch a live walkthrough rather than a showroom video, ask for a per-batch report number you can verify with the issuing laboratory, and ask somebody who has already taken delivery from them. The middle two happen in Facebook sourcing groups and on Instagram — outside a supplier’s own website entirely, which is why a certificate on a homepage settles so little. The vetting checklist →
Can a creator or influencer launch a private-label line?
Yes, and it is now one of the most common first orders we see. The pattern that works is one hero SKU on an existing platform rather than a full line: the creator brings the audience and the brief, the factory brings the tooling and the compliance file. The failure mode is the opposite — several SKUs committed before any of them has sold through. ODM, OEM or private label →
What decibel figure should I ask a supplier for?
The number means nothing without its conditions: the measurement distance, the speed setting, and whether it is a limit or a typical measurement. Ask for all three and compare like with like. Decibels are logarithmic, so the distance between the ends of a published band is a halving of perceived loudness rather than a few per cent. How the figure is taken →
Supplier scoring & delivery performance
How do I turn a supplier questionnaire into a comparable scorecard?
A checklist tells you what to ask; a scorecard lets you compare two answers side by side. Rate each supplier on the same eight dimensions — capabilities, certifications, quality system, samples, production control, commercial terms, communication and references — on a 1–5 scale, then weight them so the dimensions that matter to your market count for more. A weighted total in the 80s signals a supplier you can scale with; anything under 60 needs a second look before a deposit. The eight-dimension grid runs in the vetting checklist. See the scorecard grid →
What is a first article inspection, and when do I require one?
A first article inspection (FAI) is a full dimensional and functional check of the first production units off a new tool or a changed process, before the run is allowed to continue. It catches tooling drift, wrong materials and spec mismatches at unit one instead of at container twenty. Require a new FAI — and a PPAP submission package — whenever the mould, material, supplier or production line changes, not only on the very first order. FAI vs PPAP, and when to trigger it →
What does OTIF mean, and what OTIF should I hold a supplier to?
OTIF — on-time in-full — measures whether a shipment arrived by the agreed date and contained exactly what was ordered, with nothing short-shipped or substituted. On-time and in-full are tracked separately because a shipment can land late but complete, or arrive on time but missing units. For a reorder that feeds a live sales channel, hold the supplier to a high single-line OTIF target — 98% is a common bar — because a missing carton is a stockout the moment it lands. How OTIF interacts with reorder minimums →
Should I require PPAP for a private-label production order?
If the product carries your brand, yes — at least a reduced PPAP submission: the control plan, the FAI report, the material certifications and the process-flow diagram. Full PPAP also bundles capability studies and a parts submission warrant, which matter more when the tooling is new or the volumes are high. The purpose of PPAP is change-point control: you approve a process once, and any change after that goes back through the same gate. What a PPAP package contains →
Where buyers actually research a supplier
Is it worth asking about suppliers on Reddit before shortlisting?
Yes, for one specific reason: Reddit is where buyers post the failure, not the pitch. The recurring threads in r/Entrepreneur, r/FulfillmentByAmazon and the adult-retail trade subs are not "who is the best factory" — they are "my factory sent a different silicone than the sample", "who owns the mould", and "the listing was taken down over a claim". Read them as a list of failure modes to test for, not as a shortlist. The supplier vetting checklist turns the five most common ones into questions you can put in writing.
What is the point of LinkedIn in a sourcing decision?
LinkedIn is where you verify that a supplier is a company rather than a mailbox. A real manufacturer has staff with history — a quality manager, an export salesperson, a mould engineer — and posts that reference trade shows, audits and shipments. A trading company posing as a factory has a page, a generic banner and no people. Search the company, then search the people; the factory audit checklist covers what to do once the people answer.
Why do buyers still ask in Facebook groups if the platform bans the advertising?
Because the groups are peer-to-peer, not advertising. Meta's commerce and advertising policies restrict promotion of sexual-wellness products, which is why this category's go-to-market is search and distribution rather than paid social — but trade groups where retailers, distributors and white-label sellers compare notes are still active, and the questions asked there mirror the ones on this page. It is a research channel, not a sales channel. See import compliance for the part that decides whether a marketplace will accept the listing at all.
Does Instagram research help a B2B buyer at all?
Only for one thing: seeing how a supplier's product is merchandised by the brands already selling it. Look at how a device is photographed, what claims the brand makes beside it, and whether the packaging appears in the shot. What you will not find is a credible MOQ or a certification, and a supplier who answers a specification question with a link to their grid is telling you where their evidence lives.
How do I read Google Trends for a category like this?
Not as a demand forecast. Trends reports relative search interest for terms that are frequently filtered or merged, so a flat line often means the queries are being aggregated rather than that nobody is looking. Use it to compare phrasings — "private label vibrator" against "wholesale vibrator" against "OEM sex toy manufacturer" — and to see which phrasing is seasonal around trade-show cycles. The absolute volume belongs to your own keyword tool, not to Trends.
Which single question separates a factory from a trading company?
"Send me the mould ownership clause and the address I would audit." A factory answers both without hesitating, because the tooling is on its floor and the address is where it operates. A trading company stalls on the first and offers a "partner factory" for the second. The OEM vs ODM vs private label guide explains why the answer changes what you can own, and the OEM programme page states where we stand on it.
How can I tell a trading company from a factory without a site visit?
Ask for three names that must agree: the entity on the business licence, the seller on the pro-forma invoice and the beneficiary of the bank transfer. Then ask whether the sample was made on the supplier own line, pulled from stock, or sourced from a partner, and request a live video walkthrough of the production and QC stations. One weak signal proves nothing; a stack of mismatches does. The document-first audit checklist
What is a golden sample, and why is the first sample not one?
A golden sample is a signed, dated unit retained as the reference for production. The first sample is often assembled with extra attention and from a different material lot, so approving it as the standard locks in a unit the production line cannot reproduce. Ask for a pre-production sample made from the actual bulk material and keep one sealed copy on each side. Where sample control is scored
Does a fast reply to a technical question predict defect handling?
It is the cheapest available proxy, not a guarantee. Send one moderately specific question about a construction or material detail before any money moves and record how long a precise answer takes. A supplier that goes vague or silent at quotation time will usually go vague or silent when a batch is rejected; put the response time and escalation path in the agreement anyway. The other signals worth stacking
Should the deposit be paid before or after the factory audit?
After — and the order of the four steps is the whole protection. Documents, then a scheduled video walk of the line that will make your order, then a sample you can hold, then the audit or a third-party inspection, then the purchase order, then the deposit. A supplier who wants money before that sequence has told you what the rest of the relationship will look like. The deposit buys production time; it does not buy access. Access is free, and it is the cheapest thing you will ever ask a factory for.
How do I compare two quotes that use different Incoterms?
Put both on the same term before comparing a single number, because an EXW price and a DDP price are not prices for the same thing. Ask each supplier to re-quote FOB and DDP at the same quantity, the same packing and the same payment terms, then compare the landed figure rather than the unit price. In most cases the gap between two quotes is a freight and duty assumption rather than a manufacturing difference, and that assumption is the buyer's to make. The seven layers inside landed cost
Can I qualify a factory without travelling to see it?
Three checks get you a long way, and they catch more substitutions than a site visit does because they are boring enough to actually perform. Cross-read the documents against each other — the model number on the report, the quotation and the artwork, and the address on the licence, the audit and the bill of lading. Ask for a live video walk with one request you did not prepare, which is what defeats a rehearsed tour. And resolve the legal entity yourself in China's National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (gsxt.gov.cn), then check any notified-body number in the EU NANDO database. None of the three tells you whether the process is stable; all three tell you whether the trip is worth booking. The three remote verifications
Does AQL 2.5 mean 2.5% of my shipment will be defective?
No. AQL is a property of the sampling scheme, not of your carton: it is the worst tolerable process average at which a lot-by-lot plan still accepts lots most of the time. A lot arriving from a process running at 2.5% and a lot containing 2.5% defective units are two different claims, and only the first is what the plan describes. This is why sampling sits on top of a full function test here rather than instead of one — a plan that draws 125 units from a 3,200-unit lot says nothing about unit 126. What the plan guarantees, and what it leaves open
Social audit, management-system audit, product audit — which one is about the goods?
The product audit, and only that one. A social-compliance audit examines how people are treated. A management-system audit examines whether documented processes exist and are followed. A product or process audit examines whether the thing you are buying is made the way you specified it. Factories quote the three interchangeably because most buyers do not ask which one they are being shown, and a certificate from the first two is not evidence about the third. Ask which type the report is, who issued it, and which of your specification lines it actually tested — then decide whether what you are holding answers the question you have. The three audit types and what each leaves open
The sample was perfect. Why would the first production run not be?
Because the sample and the run are made by different hands. A sample is built by a technician or an engineer, one piece at a time, on a bench, with time the line does not have. The run is built by an operator, on a line, with a fixture, a cycle time and a rate. Neither party has to be dishonest for the two to differ — and the difference is only visible in how the order is written. Close it with three artefacts and one number: a golden sample signed and dated by both sides and kept by each, a first article pulled from the first production run before packing, and a retention sample from the batch you actually accepted. The number is the colour tolerance — ask what ΔE they hold against the signed sample and under what light they measure it. "Looks the same" means there is no tolerance; a figure means there is one you can check. The five stages, with the sample stage in full
Once I have paid for the mould, who owns it?
You do — if the contract says so and the tool carries your number. Ownership and possession are different things, and this is the case where the difference costs money: the mould physically stays in the factory's building, which is normal and not a red flag. What makes ownership real is four things together — a separate invoice line for the tool, a tag number struck on the plate and written into the contract, a stated right to inspect and to retrieve it, and a clause naming who pays when a cavity wears out. The other legitimate model amortises the tool into the unit price, and there ownership often transfers only after the agreed volume has been bought out. Both models are fine; the dangerous state is "tooling included in the price" in the quotation and nothing about it in the contract. Ask the one question that settles it: whose mould is it on the day the last unit of the agreed volume ships? Where the money goes on each of the three routes
Can I move an existing mould to a second factory?
You can move the steel; you cannot move the process. The geometry lives in the tool, but the settings that turn it into a part — melt temperature, mould temperature, pressure, hold and cooling time, gate position — live with the machine and the people running it. So a mould arriving at a second factory is a re-qualification, not a relocation: new first articles, a new colour tolerance against the sealed sample, a new inspection plan, and a first batch that has to be proven rather than assumed. That is exactly why tooling ownership is worth insisting on, and also why it is not a shortcut to capacity — the tool buys you the option to leave, not the ability to leave cheaply. What the second site has to demonstrate before the move pays off
Is a pilot run the same check as AQL sampling?
No — they sit on opposite sides of the run, and neither replaces the other. A pilot run happens before the main run is committed: it proves the line can repeat at speed what one engineer built on a bench, using the same tooling, material, people and packaging the buyer will receive. AQL sampling happens on the finished batch, after the run, and describes how that batch is accepted. Most defects are built into the process, so inspecting harder at the end cannot recover what the line never held; that is the argument for the earlier gate, not against the later one. If a first order genuinely cannot absorb a pilot batch, the first article off the line has to carry that weight, which makes the signed golden sample and its colour tolerance more important, not less. What AQL 2.5 actually measures and what a second site has to demonstrate.
Is one approved factory enough for a first order?
For a first order, yes. For a product line, no — and the difference is a concentration decision rather than a sourcing one. A single approved source means the mould, the material lot and the inspector all sit in one building, so one failed audit, one power cut or one price review stops the product. The practical middle ground on day one is not a second factory: it is a documented second *source* for the three inputs that would actually stop you — the silicone grade, the motor and the packaging — each with a named alternative and a sample on file. That is what a supplier-diversity check consists of: an answer in writing to "what happens if this one stops", recorded next to the primary in the same scorecard and re-tested once a year. The eight scored dimensions and the answers that should stop a shortlist.
Where to take the answer and use it on somebody
- What should I ask a factory, in writing, before a deposit?
Twenty questions, in the order a first order actually raises them — licence, capacity, tooling ownership, sub-contracting, QC staffing, batch records. Printable and designed to be sent to every candidate, including the one you already use.
Twenty questions to put in writing- How do I tell a factory from a trading company?
Not by the website. By whether the answer to "which line moulds this" names a machine, and whether a site visit can be arranged inside a week. The guide covers the shortlist itself; this section covers what to do with the answers.
How to choose a vibrator manufacturer- What does a supplier look like when the answer is walk away?
Twelve specific failures, each with the sentence that betrays it — and three of them are worth ending a relationship over rather than negotiating through. Short, and unpleasant to read about your own incumbent.
The twelve that cost buyers the most
The other three sections
A question rarely belongs to exactly one decision. These are the neighbours.
Not answered here?
Send the question with your market and volume and you will have an answer within 24 hours, Monday to Friday. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.
Where these answers are worked through in full
Each section page answers; the pages below do the arithmetic, quote the standard and show the caveat.