---What do you need to know if you want to customize your products and have them manufactured in China?
As an interpreter and translator, I speak both English and Chinese, and I have been helping business people find suppliers, the suppliers always want an order of minimum 1000PCS, and I need to explain to my clients again and again why the suppliers need so many, that is why I wrote the following explanation.
If you are selling some consumer electronics product, and you want to differentiate from your competitors, you will need to customize your product and make it special and different. However you need to produce 100 or 200 demo samples first to show to your customers, and if your customers like your product, you will place a big order to your suppliers.
Then you start to find and contact some good suppliers (you might want to hire someone who speaks both English and Chinese to help you), the suppliers will tell you that their MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) is 1000 pieces, if you need samples, they can hand-make one or two for you which they would call it “prototype”, and the quality of the prototype is not as good as the one made by machine in massive production, from this prototype, you can only see what your product will look like in reality other than on the computer. A prototype is quick necessary because if there is anything you don’t like, you can change it easily.
Why would the suppliers ask for a MOQ of 1000 PCS?
Because what you need is not exactly what they are currently producing, you need to have something different, you might want to change the mechanical parts, or features and functions, or packaging and printing.
1. If you want to change the mechanical parts,
your manufacture will need to develop a mold or tooling, a mold costs from US$20,000 to US$150,000, when it is done, they will install it on a injection machine, and put some plastic material in it to inject what you need, each part can be finished in just a few seconds. If you are willing to pay for the mold fee, they will be willing inject as many parts as you like, every extra part will cost very little money (mainly the plastic material cost), if you don’t want to pay for the mold fee, you will be asked to place a very big order so that they can earn their mold fee back.
2. If you need to change the features and functions of your electronics product,
your manufacture will need to change the electronics and software, that means that they need to re-design the layout of the PCB (printed circuit board), have a new list of components, and re-program on the chipset. The PCB is done by machine, how they mount the components on the PCB is called PCBA (printed circuit board assembly), PCBA is mostly done by a machine called SMT (Surface Mount Technology) machine. Your suppliers are usually just assembly factories, most of them don’t own the SMT machines, so they have to subcontract this job to the companies who own this machine. The suppliers that own the SMT machines will need to buy or produce PCBs, and buy electronics components from the BOM list, the components are ICs, resistor, capacitors and etc., one PCBA usually consists of 50 to 500 different kinds of components, and most of the components are in reel or bag, each reel or bag has 1000, 2000, 5000 or 10,000PCS. Once all the components are ready (sometimes it takes weeks to find the exact component) and installed on the SMT machine, the machine can produce thousands of boards in one day.
3. If you just want to change the package and printing on the box,
your suppliers will need to subcontract this jobs to a packaging company that they have been working with. The packaging company will convert your printing design in an AI file which is a readable file for the printing machine. The packaging company will need an order of 1000pcs each time.
4. In China, most of the suppliers don’t charge you for the consulting and prototype, but you need to show great interest in placing a big order to them, otherwise they will not be interested in working with you.
In addition, there is not so much difference in marketing and sales cost to the suppliers between 200 PCS order and 2000 PCS order.
As for the customers, you need to get your new electronics certificated your country, in Europe, CE certificate is required, in America FCC or UL is usually required. Your supplier need to submit a sample to a laboratory to get your certificate, and this costs thousands of dollars as well.
If you need someone who is good at electronics manufacture process, please don’t hesitate to contact me, I will be happy to help you by saving you time and money.
Some overseas buyers always want to find the manufacturers, they don't want to go through those trading companies, they think if they deal with the manufacturers directly, they can save money. However, in some cases, you will lose money and get worse services if you deal with the manufacturers directly. If you really want to deal with the manufacturers, and you also don't want to go through the trading companies, why don't you hire a trading agent who know your language and manufacturing process. This is a good website for you to find a trading agent as most of the freelance interpreters here speak good English, and they know the international trading process, they can be your business guides and consultants.
