Most sourcing problems are visible before the deposit is paid. The checks below are ordered from cheapest to most expensive, so you stop early if something does not hold up.
1. Confirm the legal entity
Ask for the business licence and check three things on it: the registered company name in Chinese, the registered scope of business, and the registration date. The Chinese name is what matters — English trading names are not registered and can be anything. The scope tells you whether the entity is licensed to manufacture or only to trade. The date gives you the real company age, which frequently differs from the age claimed on a platform profile.
Then check that the bank account you are asked to pay into is in that same registered company name. A mismatch between the licence name and the beneficiary name is the single most common red flag in this trade, and it has an innocent explanation often enough that people ignore it. Do not ignore it.
2. Separate factory from trading company
Neither is inherently worse. A good trading company with a stable factory base can outperform a factory that has never handled export documentation. What matters is that you know which one you are talking to, because it changes who you escalate to when a sample is wrong.
Useful questions: Which building are the sewing lines in? How many machines run this product type? Can I see a video walkthrough of the line running my kind of product, not a showroom? A factory answers these immediately. A trading company usually has to check — which is fine, as long as they say so.
3. Ask for evidence that is inconvenient to fake
Photographs of a tidy showroom prove nothing. Ask instead for things that only exist if the work is real: a photo of the production board with this month's orders, a short unedited video of the line running, test reports with a report number you can verify with the issuing lab, and the name of the third-party body that last assessed the site.
For reference, the credentials this site publishes are an Intertek on-site assessment, RoHS test reports, Alibaba Trade Assurance and 100% finished-product inspection — and third-party inspection by SGS, TÜV or Intertek is welcome at any production stage. That last point is the one worth testing with any supplier: a factory confident in its own process does not resist an inspector.
4. Test them with a real specification
The cheapest capability test is to send a genuinely detailed brief and read the reply. A supplier who can make your product will come back with questions — packed dimensions, fabric weight, closure clearance, artwork format. A supplier who returns a price immediately without asking anything has either made assumptions you have not seen, or is quoting a standard item and will substitute later.
5. Book the inspection before you need it
Agree the inspection standard while you are still negotiating, not after production starts. Specifically: what is being inspected against (the approved sample), who inspects, at what stage, and what happens if the lot fails. Retro-fitting this conversation onto a finished order rarely goes well.
What good looks like
A supplier worth working with will give you the licence without hesitation, tell you plainly whether they are a factory or a trader, answer capability questions with specifics, ask you questions back, and agree to inspection terms up front. None of that costs them anything if the operation is real.