Ask HN: Advice on Finding Manufacturers?

Finding the right manufacturer is never an easy process. My approach varies depending on how tight my budget is and what I'm trying to manufacture.

If I have significant investment capital or lined up buyers on a high-margin product, I'd look for a US supplier on ThomasNet, at least to start, once you go through the small-run back and forth you can look to moving manufacturing overseas. I've had poor experiences with the "Alibaba Method" (finding a Alibaba seller w/ a similar product and then trying to get yours made or white label their existing product). Often times the sellers on Alibaba aren't the actual manufacturers.

For Electronics: Go right to China. https://www.pcbway.com/ is a great company for rapid, small-run prototypes. They are also reasonable at volume.

Injection-moulding, Extrusions: You often won't save significantly by looking overseas. Find a U.S supplier to start. Prototype with small-batch methods (3d printing, laser, milling).

What type of product and where overseas? Is this a a North American or European product looking to be manufactured in Asia? Or is this designed in Asia and wanting to be manufactured in North America or Europe?

My experience is from North America manufacturing in China.

1. You get what you pay for. If you don’t want to pay for quality, don’t expect quality. If you squeeze the manufacturer, they will cut corners.

2. I only have experience with low cost Chinese manufacturing, so this applies to that. - You need to get the entire process proved out and dialed in before sending overseas. In my experience, they were either not able (or we weren’t paying enough) to go from drawing + 3D model to a fully operational production process. We had to make all tooling and checking fixtures and ship them overseas for production. - get first part inspection documents. Receive those exact parts and repeat that first part inspection on your side - you need to specify inspection plans, which should include at a minimum: what to check, how to check, with what measuring device, inspection frequency - if you require specific machining or processes, that needs to be specified. Don’t leave it open to the manufacturer - you need to get good documentation from them and make sure they aren’t dependent on one person... after one lunar new year we received new parts that weren’t up to specification. It turns out the one person who knew what paint to use didn’t return from vacation - I would specify some sort of acceptance sampling plan to either accept or reject the entire lot

3. If your product needs to adhere to some quality standard (e.g., ISO, IATF, etc.), make sure they have the certificates and can prove documentation.

4. Don’t be surprised if your product ends up on eBay or some other site. If you’ve heavily invested in development and it’s novel, consider getting it manufactured locally where you can maintain a direct relationship.

5. Have someone that speaks that language fluently and knows the local culture and customs working with you.

6. If you don’t have manufacturing or quality experience, find someone that does

Your question does not provide much detail to go by... but three important, general principles to go by are:

1) make sure the manufacturer you are talking to is already manufacturing comparable products - efforts to make them manufacture a type of product they are not already familiar with are likely to fail;

2) make sure the manufacturer you are talking to is already manufacturing at a level of quality that is in line with the quality you want - efforts to make them manufacture at a higher level of quality than the manufacturer is accustomed to are likely to fail;

3) familiarize yourself with regulations for the manufacturing, import/export, and sale of the product you want to develop before you talk to the manufacturer - regulations will always eventually catch-up with you and you risk wasting effort, money and time not covering them in advance.

Read China Law Blog.

Many of the points are still valid even if you are not manufacturing in China.

https://harrisbricken.com/chinalawblog/

I have tons of research on the topic and I sorted through it all to find the few pieces I thought would be most relevant. So HTH:

1) This first piece is by Richard Lazazzera of A Better Lemonade Stand. I think he actually works/always worked for Shopify. No big issues there...they appear to be using a content-first growth strategy.

https://www.abetterlemonadestand.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-s...

2) This is a link to Sourcify.com. They help people navigate Alibaba and the entire process. I haven't used them yet, but I hope to in future.

HTH

1 Work with a local party during development. We worked with a local party that co-owns a factory in CN. Will not do it again. Even they had trouble communicating the right information and requirements. It took at least 6 to 8 weeks before we had a next iteration in our hands. We had to do about 8 iterations before the product was OK and 12 before it was exactly right... We will develop our next product locally and only when the mould tooling is finished will we possibly look for remote manufacturing. 2 Have non-manufacturer eyes on the floor in the factory do checks during production. 3 Request certification of the materials and coloring.

After working with lots of different sized suppliers in the aerospace industry, the quality of your product really depends on your suppliers' culture. If they take it seriously, are willing to work with you and already ship good stuff you will have much better outcomes vs the opposite. Your best bet is to meet and talk with them a lot. Can you your their facility? To turn around a company that ships trash, you may have to acquire them... and not even that is a guarantee.

Beyond that it really depends on what you're manufacturing, and what you can spend. Look into PPAP (Product Part Approval Process) and take ideas from there. It is the process automotive manufacturers follow and will soon become an aerospace standard.

Move temporarily to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, or Ningbo, depending on the industry, and have a founder who speaks the language fluently. It's much easier than dialing phone numbers and then visiting, because you can visit more factories immediately and evaluate samples faster.

What kind of manufacturing are we talking about? Plastics? Metal? Assembly? Electronics?

We manufacture SoloKeys in Italy and are very happy. Feel free to reach out if you'd like an intro, details in my profile.

Maybe find a manufacturer of a similar type of product that has good reviews. Alibaba (Ali direct or express or something) might be a good place to find them.