The Factory Floor: Picking (and Maintaining) a Partner

Great article and great insights. Working with Chinese Manufacturers takes a lot of time and know how. For many hardware companies on HN, they quickly realize what a process manufacturing really becomes. Frequent trips to China and effectively communicating isn't always feasible.

Another option is HD Trade Services (YC S12). We help find factories, manage relationships (including communication and specs translation into Mandarin), and handle Quality Control (Factory Audits, Inspections) and Logistics (including fulfillment in the US). We are currently helping high profile start ups take their prototype to reality. We are based in the US but have boots in the ground in China to handle sourcing, communications, QC and more.

check us out! www.hdtradeservices.com

Thanks so much for this article, it's really helpful. I'm currently setting up manufacturing in China using Seeed Studios for a prototype run of 1000 units, and it's really helpful to see that based on the advice here they're probably a decent partner =)

Maybe not the best match for a million unit run, but for this quantity, and at this stage of development, they seem to be doing a great job!

You can also use objective sources of data like credit reports, inspections, and customs records to verify legitimacy and competence. Panjiva does a good job of presenting this information as well as helping you reach out to a partner. http://panjiva.com/search/global-supplier?q=angle+brackets

(Disclosure: I used to work for and am still friends with them.)

It took a few starts on this to realize that it was really talking about factories, rather than being some kind of cute analogy for startups...