Firstex Industries

Generally, you can expect 15-40% savings by sourcing from China. It varies by the types of the products: the more labor intensive jobs, the more savings: such as machining jobs, and metal assembly jobs. Because of the manpower costs in China is rather low.
Sourcing from China will help to save your purchasing costs and improve your market competitiveness significantly.

What is the general process of sourcing in China? Is it an easy job?

Sourcing from China is quite easy with us, you only need to prepare to send us the inquiry, we will handle the rest.

The general process is:

First you may need to send us inquiries with samples and drawings, and annual usage quantity, we will quote you within 10 days the price and feasibility study for your products.

If the price is acceptable for you, we will build the tooling and mould and do quality checking jobs for you. Initial samples will be offered to you around 20- 60 days. After that, there may be some feedbacks from you and some correction jobs, this will take another 15-20 days. Then we are ready for mass production for your order.

For each order delivery, generally it will take 30-45days for production, then we can ship out the goods for you.

How is your quality level and supply capability?

We are implanting ISO/TS16949 quality systems, and are using numerical controlled CNC to work, all our casting subcontractors are ISO9000 certified shop. We can also do process control as customer requires, PPAP, SPC ect.

I have heard a lot stories about failure in sourcing in China, what is the reason? Is it risky?

The key factors for the success of souring in China include:

1) precise technical translation,
2) good facilities with engineering team having good knowledge about customer's quality requirements
3) deep knowledge and experiences about Chinese local 　     industry, technology level and price level,
4) local on time, at sight technical support and quality control 　　 jobs,
5) shipping service to customer's warehouse and foreign currency transaction service.
　　 We have combined all these factors within our company.

To ensure your sourcing jobs successful, you need a good partner and support system like us.

Without this system, randomly choosing manufacturing plants by searching the internet is generally risky, some failure story may have the following reasons:

• Some times the plant in reality may not be same it is on internet;
• The American technical drawings are quite different from Chinese drawings. Very few plant engineering team have professional English translators. For an English drawing, if only 5-8% of the specifications are mistranslated or not well understood at the beginning, in mass production situation will be out of control.
•  Without local quality control jobs at sight, customer can only see products when they arrive warehouse, 30-40 days after shipment. For a component with 20-30 spec requirements, it is of high possibility that some thing may go wrong when customers finally receive it.
• Without local quality control audit, when something is found to be wrong by customers 1 month after shipment, it is generally not an easy job for the Chinese speaking plant engineers to understand correctly and effect good correction jobs. And for corrections based on feedback from overseas customers after 1-2 month, it is always very time and money costly.

What are your current customers for reference?

Our current customers include world class companies, some of them are:

What kinds of items are suitable for sourcing in China?

The most suitable components are:

• Higher volume parts: develop an new product from far away offshore country will involve a lot of jobs and costs: building new tooling, quality control, new process control, customer feedbacks and confirmation ect. If the purchasing quantity is big and not so many items, it is economic that with limited efforts, customer will save significant purchasing costs.

• Labor intensive parts: If  labor costs such as machining ,welding and assembly are the major costs portion of a component, it is a suitable part for sourcing from China, as the labor costs are low in China, and in this way, it will save good purchasing costs for customers.

How to prepare a good inquiry for you? How long is your quotation time?

It is very helpful for customer to send the inquiries with drawings, expected purchasing quantity, and samples. Samples are always very helpful for us to give a confirmed price and figure out correct manufacturing process.

Generally, it will take 7-10 days for us to send out a quotation and feasibility study report.

How long can you make a sample for approval?

For simple machining, we can send out samples within 7-10 days. For casting and stamping jobs that need new tooling, We can generally finish building the new mould and tooling and submit initial samples within around 45-60 days, with all the material certificates and size and tolerance checking reports.

What is your payment term for tooling costs? Is it a risk for us?

For the tooling costs, customer only need to pay 40% in advance, we will bear the rest of the costs from our side. After sample approval, customer pay the rest 60%. In this way, we will share the risks in development of a product together with customers. If the project turns out failure due to some reasons, we will return the 40% down payment to customers.

How long will you be prepared for production?

When the initial samples are finished and confirmed, mass production is ready. Generally, it will take 45-60 to be ready for mass production from ordering time.

What is the production time for each delivery?

30-45 days.

How do you do your quality control jobs?

• When any new drawings coming to us, we will have professionally trained translator to do all the technical translations, turn all the specifications detailed into Chinese;

• Based on the requirements of the products, we will design the most suitable manufacturing process to work out the parts;

• Before building tooling and mould, our quality engineering team will study the drawings carefully, establish process control and final quality standards, and clarify the potential problems in manufacturing process;

• When the mold and tooling are finished, our engineering team will check the material, make full size checking of the samples, improve the manufacturing process, and offer the initial samples for customer confirmation with full lay out report.

• And if there is some feedbacks from customer, we will ensure that further corrections are made in time. Once the samples are approved, we will be ready for mass production. 

• For mass production, we will have process control quality system to be established, and all products are carefully checked before delivery. SPC can be implanted in mass production.

How do you choose your casting manufacturing plants?

We choose the most suitable plants by: quality, price, previous experiences in similar products, cooperative and honest business behavior. In this way, we will arrange the most suitable plant to work for our castings.

How about the shipping time from China to here?

Generally, 16 days to west coast of US, 28 days to US east coast, 18 days to major European seaport. Another 5 days for import custom clearance, 5 days for inland transportation.

Totally, it will take 30-45 days for goods arrive customers' warehouse.

What is the easiest way for handling the shipment? Can you ship to our door?

We can ship directly to customers' warehouse, and help to handle all the sea and air shipment, import duty and documentations, and inland transportation jobs. So, customers can wait for goods arrive warehouse easily.

We have our own shipping agency, can you ship to them? How is the costs difference between you and them?

We can also cooperate with the shipping agency that customer familiar with, send goods to major Chinese seaport or major US or European seaport, let them do the rest of shipping jobs.

But generally, our total costs from China is 20-30% lower than customer's domestic agencies.

What are the import duties?

Generally, it is around 3%. In some cases, it is 0%.

Is it a complicated job to clear the customs, and all the paper works for import? How to handle with that?

How is your payment term?

We require 80-100% payment against delivery for new customers. But for this payment term, we can consider some price discount for customers.

For trusted long term customers, we can consider payment at receipt of goods.

How about if the quality of your delivered products do not meet our requirements? How will you make compensations?

How would you offer your service to us?

In both US and Europe, we have local representative for customers to communicate with, and we have fluent English speaking customer service people to translate all your requirements into Chinese for engineering team to execute your requirements.

For shipment, to make it easier for you, we can ship directly to your warehouse.