Ask questions that have checkable answers
Most supplier question lists fail the same way: they collect answers that cannot be verified and would not change anything. "Do you have quality control?" invites "yes, we have strict QC" — a sentence containing no information, because no supplier has ever answered it differently.
Good pre-order questions share three properties: the answer is specific (a name, a number, an address, a document), checkable (against a registry, a visit, a sample or a later answer), and consequential (a bad answer changes your terms or your supplier). And the meta-signal matters as much as any answer: a supplier's pattern of answering — precise and documented versus vague and deflecting — is one of the most reliable early reads you get.
Identity and structure
"What is your registered company name in Chinese, and your unified social credit code?" The foundation. Routine for any exporter; checkable in minutes against the public registry. Friction here is a finding in itself.
"Which legal entity will issue the invoice, and which name will be on the bank account?" Forces the three-name question — storefront, invoicing entity, beneficiary — into the open before the PI arrives, when a mismatch is a conversation rather than a crisis.
"Are you the manufacturer? If you are a trading company, that is fine — how does your relationship with the factory work?" The explicit no-penalty framing is the whole technique. Honest traders often simply say so once told it will not end the conversation; evasion after this framing means much more than evasion before it.
"What address would a factory visit go to, and whose name is on the building?" You do not need to be planning a visit for this to work. The commitment is the point: a specific address is checkable later, and hedging ("we have several facilities…") tells you the factory claim needs testing.
Production and capability
"Which processes for my product are done in-house, and which are subcontracted — and to whom?" Every real factory outsources something (plating, PCBs, packaging print). "Everything is in-house" is usually the weakest answer; a specific division of labour is the credible one, and it maps your actual supply chain.
"What equipment would run my order?" — machine types, tonnage, line count, and "could you send a photo of it today?" Same-day photos of specific equipment are cheap for a real factory and awkward for a reseller. Vague deferrals here, from a claimed manufacturer, are worth weighing heavily.
"Who owns the tooling for my product, where is it stored, and what happens to it if we stop working together?" For any moulded, stamped or die-cast product, the question that protects the most money. The answer belongs in writing on the PI, not in a chat log.
"What is your realistic lead time for my quantity — and what is running on your lines right now?" An honest capacity answer has texture (current load, holiday effects, material lead times). A frictionless "no problem, 15 days" to every quantity is the answer of someone not looking at a production schedule.
Quality and inspection
"At what point can we or a third party inspect, and what happens if the batch fails?" The single most consequential question on this list, because the answer should become a PI clause: balance payable after pre-shipment inspection, with a defined remedy for failure. Resistance to third-party inspection on a first order is a serious signal.
"How will you check my goods during production, against what document?" Better than "do you have QC" by being anchored: the credible answer references your spec sheet, an AQL level, in-process checkpoints. Also establishes which document governs — which you want settled before production, not after.
"What were your most recent quality problems, and what did you change?" Every real factory has scrap, rework and customer complaints. A supplier who can describe a specific past failure and its fix is describing a functioning quality system; "we have never had problems" is describing a marketing document.
Commercial terms
"Why is your price where it is?" — especially if it is the lowest you received. A manufacturer can decompose a price: materials, process, tooling amortization, volume assumptions. A price that cannot be explained is a price that will be recovered from you later — in materials, in quantity, or in a renegotiation once your tooling is captive.
"What happens if you cannot ship on time?" You are not expecting penalties on a first order; you are watching whether the supplier engages with the scenario at all. "That will not happen" is a non-answer to a question every factory lives with.
Reading the answers
Across the whole list, score the pattern rather than each item:
- Specific, documented, prompt — even when the content is unwelcome ("that process we subcontract"; "your quantity is below our sweet spot") — is the signature of a real operation used to professional buyers. Unwelcome-but-honest answers are the most valuable ones you will receive.
- Fluent but generic — every answer is yes, fast and frictionless — usually means you are talking to a sales layer with no view of operations. Push one level deeper on anything technical and watch what happens.
- Deflection on identity or payment questions specifically is a different category from deflection on capacity questions, and should end or pause the engagement until resolved. Capability vagueness costs you quality; identity vagueness costs you the deposit.
Finally, keep everything in writing, in one thread where possible. The answers to these questions are not small talk — they are the record you will rely on if the relationship goes wrong, and the raw material any professional verification of the supplier will start from.