How To Find A Good Yiwu Agent?

Have been in Yiwu exporting business for 2+ years, I'm pretty sure this How To Find A Good Yiwu Agent article can help buyers make good decisions to appoint a right agent for their business, from the right beginning.

I also hope Yiwu agents people don't take this article as a "pain-in-ass".

You Need A Serious And Trustworthy Agent

From my understanding of what the agents people are doing here, you should be careful with the following agents:

#1 Claiming they're THE BEST AGENT in Yiwu, the TOP1 or TOP3 AGENT in Yiwu.

In fact, there is no such organisations can offer the awards who is the best. Only the customers can have their saying on this. Unfortunately, there is no such thing exists so far.

Everyone can say they're the best, but there is simply nothing to support this. Even these people who say they're the best don't know why they can say this.

For TOP1 or TOP3, i think the only way can prove that is how many shipments and how much value they export each year.

But I know one friend's company only has several customers. His African customer can order up to 50 full containers each visit!

This doesn't mean my friend's company is better than another company who has 20 customers but each of their customers can only order one container each visit.

#2 Saying they only charge a 1% commission, or they offer FREE service, free cars, free everything.

I don't even recommend saying charge "low to 1% commission". (This is misleading.)

This too bad for the entire export agent business in Yiwu. I mentioned this earlier on Yiwu agent commission rate. 1% is just too good to be true.

From my observation, these companies who offer better opportunities and salaries usually have better and more experienced staff. The fact is that all your work will be done by staff. Not the general manager or boss.

If a company can't have descent profit, they can't offer descent salary, then they can't keep better staff. Quick change of staff is a disaster to service agents business.

Imagine your doctor who took care of you in the last 5 years suddenly took a French leave last week. The new doctor doesn't have anything about you...

In my opinion, the companies who keep a best experienced and professional staff resource, for the longest, can be THE BEST AGENT in Yiwu.

#3 Don't have a clear and straight forward way with their service and charges, but just want you to contact them or chat with them.

This is a waste of everyone's time. Of course, if you waste some time with one guy, you won't have the same time for another guy. You just have 24 hours a day.

Usually, these people who can state all their service and terms at the beginning clearly, have a better "awareness-of-rules" than those who don't say anything but just want you to discuss with them.

Believe it or not, lots of agents in Yiwu just don't have any rules, both as a company and as a staff.

Company add extra costs to customers, staff earn side money from suppliers. Of course, it's the customer who will pay all the bills in the end.

I recently visited one of my suppliers for card holder laces, she showed me her notebook of how much money she wired to agents' staff and how much money she gave to agents' staff directly. I was surprised that it's more than 30 pages already in last 11 months.

It worked like this:

Agent staff lead customers to the suppliers, then tell suppliers to add 5%, later after order placed, this staff will send 1% or 2% or 3% to her company and keep the rest for her own. When this order closed and payment was sent to the supplier, the supplier then send these percentages directly to the agent staff's own personal bank account, or the agent staff go to collect the money by themselves... No rules at all.

#4 See how they're making their sites.

If a website respect their visitors enough, they should be very careful about what they're saying on the web pages. Provide the visitors indeed USEFUL and FRESH information, as much as possible.

If you come across a website that just put on lots of "junks", copy and past other people's work on their own site, or just change a bit here and there. You already have an idea for what kind of person are there behind web pages.

Are you ready for putting your business in such people's hands? I guess not!

Having above info in mind, you can properly filtered out lots of noises, and now it's time to select a few and talk:


===CONTACTING A FEW OF THEM===

#1 How are they responding?

Here, of course, you will have different ways to find out if someone is right for you. Are they honestly telling about what they can do? Are they able to communicate well via emails? Are they doing what they're saying? ...

#2 Ask for reference from their site

Some companies now put reference on their site publicly. This is good to see what other customers said about them. But you need to see if these reviews are REAL.

You can just ask them to offer contact information about their customers who wrote them the review, then go and find out.

I bet you have more ways here, so let skip to the next step.

===VISIT THEM AND WALK WITH THEM===

By above 2 steps of checking their sites and talking to them. Now comes to the big step: visit them to find out.

Here is my advise: always select 2 or 3 potential agents, NOT ONLY ONE! Meet them and talk to them. Walk with them for one day in the market. Then point out your finger for the winner.

From meeting them and walking with them, you will have a clear picture of are they doing what they were saying on their website and what they told you previously in emails.

Walking in the market for one day (only for browsing market purpose), you will find out who seems like care you more and who is putting more extra cost on you.

After going through above steps, i'm sure you're very close to a trustworthy, serous and reliable agent.

You Need A Professorial And Experienced Agent

Many agents claiming they can source thousands different products for you from Yiwu. This is true. But can they do a good job with thousands different products? Here is a big question mark.

An agent who is exporting a lot of plastic containers means nothing when they need to QC jewelry for "nickel free". An agent ships hundreds of containers to US doesn't means they know well enough customs requirements of Croatia or Fiji.

You'd better find an agent that is specialized in your products, or at least is familiar with your type of products. These people will be more confident with QC in the end. They can also talk to suppliers before placing orders. They learnt from mistakes.

Also because they're more experienced with a certain type of products, that means they are more familiar with the suppliers. They probably know which supplier can deliver what they promise and which supplier may only deliver air in the end.

You Need An Agent With Sufficient Facilities

For an agent in Yiwu, the two most important facilities are office and warehouse.

In Yiwu, a good office is an office that close to market. Almost every day,agents staff need to go to market. A close location to the market means the staff won't need to take a bus or get stuck in traffic jam. This makes their life easier. They can also be more efficient with your work.

Warehouse must be spacious.

Considering the fact that sometimes products need to be repacked or checked throughly. This job will be impossible if there is not enough space.

Also a good warehouse should be easy for container loading. If fragile items are carried up to container door each time. There is risk that these fragile cartons can fall off.

Of course, this can be found out easily when you're in Yiwu. You can drop by their office in the morning for 10 minutes and go to their warehouse in the after for another 10 minutes after market visit.

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