Sourced direct.
Accountable onshore.

There is no single number, because every product carries its own MOQ set by the factory that makes it. A ceramic pan, a tapware finish and a stainless sink each have a different floor, and the same item can differ between plants. Custom tooling raises it further, because the mould has to be paid for across the run. We give you the actual figure for your specific product and factory at the quoting stage — not after you have committed.

We hold and manage the WaterMark licence. WELS registration can sit with either of us — some clients prefer to register in their own name, and we handle it for those who don’t. Either way the pathway is confirmed before the purchase order is placed. Where a factory already holds certification we verify it covers the exact model, variant and finish you are buying, which is where most importers come unstuck.

Yes — provided they clear the same guidelines we apply to our own network: workplace safety, demonstrated quality control, and modern slavery and labour standards. Those three are not negotiable. A plant that cuts corners on its people is a risk to your brand as much as ours, and it is the kind of exposure that surfaces long after the container has landed. If they clear the audit we will run the program through them. If they do not, you get the reasons rather than a redirect to someone we prefer.

Transparently, against the factory FOB price. You see the factory price, and we apply an agreed percentage on top to cover quality control and the other services around it — so the product cost and our fee are two separate lines you can check. We would rather be judged on a visible fee than hide a margin inside a unit price, because the second approach is exactly what makes trading companies expensive.

Pre-shipment inspection exists to make this rare, but manufacturing is manufacturing. Every program carries an agreed defect threshold: as the importer you carry faults below it, and beyond it the factory is responsible. That threshold is set before the order rather than argued about after it. When a claim does need making, we hold the factory relationship and the leverage that comes with repeat volume — which is the practical difference between a claim that gets resolved and one that gets ignored.

It depends entirely on which of two programs you are running. An off-the-shelf factory product with no modifications is the fast route — there is nothing to design and nothing to tool, so the schedule is sampling, certification and production. A new design needing its own moulds is a different exercise: the tooling has to be cut, sampled and signed off before production can start, and certification usually runs longest where a new pathway is required. We build a dated schedule at the specification stage so you are planning against real dates rather than an optimistic guess.