A supplier's website proves almost nothing. A WeChat chat history proves a little more, and not much. The only thing that proves a factory is a factory is someone standing inside it, looking at the machines, on the day you ask.
Most buyers never get that someone. A flight to Guangzhou or Yiwu costs a week and a few thousand dollars — hard to justify for an order you haven't even placed yet. So the deposit gets wired on the strength of a video call, and the video call was recorded last year and re-broadcast. I run field visits for a living; here is the checklist I work from, and what a real verification should leave you with.
1. The licence exists — but check what it actually says
Every Chinese company has a Unified Social Credit Code, and it can be looked up on public registries before anyone travels anywhere. This is the cheap first filter, and it kills a surprising number of suppliers already: company registered last month, registered capital unpaid, business scope that says "trading" where the pitch said "manufacturer."
Registry data is paperwork, though. Paperwork is exactly what a middleman forges or borrows. Everything below exists because paperwork alone is not verification.
2. The address is the whole game
This is where fabricated suppliers fall apart, and where an on-site check earns its keep. Walk to the address on the licence and on the quotation and look at the sign above the gate. A real factory has its registered name on the building — usually in large blue or red characters — matching the licence character for character.
- Address is a residential tower or a co-working floor → you are buying from a trading company. Sometimes fine; know what you're paying.
- Address is an industrial park, but the gate sign shows a different company name → they are sub-contracting, or worse.
- Address doesn't resolve to any building at all → stop the conversation.
Photograph the gate sign, the street plate and the building, and put them side by side with the licence. That comparison is worth more than any certificate PDF.
3. The production line is running your kind of product
"We manufacture silicone kitchenware" can mean anything from twelve injection machines to one guy with a heat gun and a catalogue. On-site, the questions are physical: Are the relevant machines actually running, warm, with operators? Are there raw-material stock and work-in-progress bins — the two things a photo-only factory never has? Do finished units of the category you buy sit on the floor?
A short handheld video answering these beats a hundred-slide company profile. Timestamped, shot on the day, of the machines — not of the showroom.
4. The packing floor tells the truth the salesperson won't
Showrooms are staged; the back of the factory is not. Cartons waiting to ship carry labels — look at what product, what destination, what brand. If they're exporting to your market already, you're hiring proven capability. If the "factory" has an empty packing corner and shrink-wrap sealed since the lunar new year, you learn that here, not at your own cartons' first shipment.
5. The human test
Ask the operator on site, in person, for one small thing not in the plan: open a random carton and count it, weigh one finished unit, photograph the QC station's daily log. A real production floor absorbs a request like that without drama. A rented lobby cannot.
- Registry checks are the cheap first filter — they are not verification by themselves.
- The nameplate on the gate must match the licence character for character.
- Raw material and work-in-progress are the fingerprint of a running factory.
- The packing floor, not the showroom, tells you who they really ship for.
- Demand same-day, timestamped photo and video evidence — staged files prove nothing.
What you should receive afterwards
Whoever does the visit — an agent, your own employee, or me — a verification is only worth its evidence. The minimum honest package: photos of the licence gate and street plate, a video walking the actual production line, a dozen photos of the packing area and finished goods, and a short written report answering one blunt question — is this company what it claims to be, and should the deposit go out?
This kind of visit fits inside one on-site day at $239 — the specifics are on the pricing page. If it's within reach of where I am, you'll have a fixed quote within 24 hours of asking. If the risk doesn't justify even one day's fee, I'll tell you that too; a verification scam you avoided costs less than any invoice.