This knowledge centre is written out of the work itself. It is not trying to sell, and it does not replace professional advice — what it holds are the principles that come up in every import from China, in a form you can use without us.
There are no figures here, for one reason: prices, duty rates, shipping times and exchange rates all move, and a number written once becomes, within months, wrong information that reads like fact. Instead, each guide explains the structure — what makes up the cost, what determines the time, what drives the decision — so that you can put your own numbers into it, which are the only ones that matter anyway.
The guide to start with
The full cost of importing from China
The factory price is the component everyone asks about, and it is also the one that misleads most. This guide lays out all the other components to the shelf — freight, duty and VAT, brokerage, inland haulage, packaging, losses and the cost of money — as a formula you can put your own numbers into. If you read one thing here, this is the one that changes the decision of whether to import at all.
Seven more guides
In the order the work happens: first choosing the factory and negotiating, then samples, then importing, packaging, and the mistakes that recur along the way.
- How to check a factory before you order What separates a manufacturer from a trading company, which documents to ask for, and what to look at on the visit itself.
- How to negotiate with a Chinese factory What is actually negotiated, and why price is the parameter worth opening with last.
- How to order samples properly The sample is the real contract with the factory. How to order one so that it can be measured rather than admired.
- Sea freight against air freight The real difference is not the price per kilo but what each route does to cash flow and to stock.
- Customs, VAT and standards in Israel How the charge is determined, why classification changes everything, and where the official sources are.
- A private label, from idea to product Four levels of branding, what each does to the price and the minimum quantity, and which one to start from.
- Common mistakes of first-time importers Eight mistakes that recur on almost every first import, and what to do instead.
Where the rest of it sits
Much of what we know is written into the service pages themselves, stage by stage.
The eight stages from the first call to the launch, with the decision point in each one and the condition that has to be met before it moves on.
Five service pages, each setting out what happens in it, what we do ourselves and what goes through an outside professional, and what you hold at the end.
A question you did not find an answer to
If something here was not covered, you can simply ask. We answer even when the answer is that it is not a fit for us, or that you would be better off doing it yourselves.