Verification is mostly turning assumptions into documents. What to request, what to look at, and which signals are worth slowing down for.
Published 22 October 2026 · Sabo Furniture, Foshan
Most sourcing failures are not fraud. They are a specification that was never written down, checked by nobody, between two parties who each assumed the other meant the same thing. Verification is mostly the work of turning assumptions into documents, and it takes about a week.
Ask for the business licence first. It carries the unified social credit code, the registered address, the registered capital and the scope of business, and all of it can be checked against the name on the proforma invoice. If the company that invoices you is not the company that was introduced to you, that is the question to ask before anything else.
Registered capital is a weak signal on its own, but a scope of business that does not mention furniture, or an address that is a residential block, is worth a follow-up question.
Any supplier can say they have twenty years and fifty thousand square metres. The useful version of that claim comes with a document: an audit report, a certification, or a factory address you can put into a map and a video call. We cite a CTI audit, report QIP-ASI251108, which verified our business type, trade capacity and CE certification, and we expect buyers to look it up rather than take the sentence on trust.
A tour is theatre. Ask for four specific places and watch how easily they can reach them:
Then ask them to walk to your model and turn it over. The underside of a chair shows more about construction than the front of it.
Sit on it twenty times rather than once. Put a known weight on the seat and leave it there. Try to remove the cushion cover. Look at the weld under the seat and at the foot where it meets the floor. Then put the sample next to the written specification and mark every difference, because the sample is the only evidence you will have of what a repeat order should look like.
Pay the company, to an account in the company's name. Thirty percent deposit and seventy percent before shipment is the standard structure, with L/C available for larger orders. Never to a personal account, and never to a third party introduced by email late in the process, which is the shape most payment fraud takes.
| Signal | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Invoice entity differs from the introduced company | The contract and the remedy point at different parties |
| Bank beneficiary is a personal name | No corporate recourse if the goods are wrong |
| Refuses a video call inside the workshop | The production described may not exist |
| Price far below every other quote for the same spec | Something in the specification has been removed |
| No written specification on the proforma invoice | Nothing to inspect against, so nothing to claim |
| Sample arrives without the finish reference | Batch three will not match batch one |
None of these is proof of bad faith on its own. Two together is a reason to slow down.
The business licence, which carries the unified social credit code and the registered scope of business; the export licence if the entity claims to export in its own name; product test reports for the models you are buying; and any third-party audit report the supplier cites. All four can be checked against the name on the proforma invoice.
Yes, if you ask for specific things rather than a tour. The welding area, the coating line, the packing station and the finished-goods warehouse tell you more in ten minutes than a brochure does in ten pages. Ask them to walk to the model you are buying and show the joint where the leg meets the seat rail.
Sit on it repeatedly rather than once, put a known weight on the seat, check whether the cushion cover can be removed, and look at the weld under the seat. Then compare the sample against the specification in writing, because the sample is your only evidence of what batch three will look like.
Often you cannot, and it matters less than whether they control the specification. What matters is whether they can answer a technical question about wall thickness, cushion density or coating process without checking, and whether the audit report and the business scope match what they claim.
All buying guides — thirteen articles on sizing, pricing, importing and specifying.
