Importing from China: How can I find out who the manufacturer of an item I bought from a local supplier is?

Specify here what the item is and see if any knows its source. Alternatively find somebody like myself who has biz experience in places like Guangdong and Zhejiang and ask them to find out for you.

What approach you take will depend on the item. I assume you want to sell this item yourself. If it is in retail, they probably got it from a distributor and sell it for a small markup. The distributor - depending on the item - possibly bought a batch or a lot from a manufacturer. That raises two questions - what is your financial ability to buy the minimums required, and your distribution capacity to place large inventory once you buy it? Buy one from this guy and try to sell it - no profit, just learning, see if it works as well as you think. If it passes the sanity check, your decision is based on facts now. It's worth spending your time and effort to find one or more manufacturers.

One thing that you can do is to check on Alibaba and see who manufacturers a similar product. The factories that manufacture these sorts of products tend to be small, so it's likely that they will contract with several factories. The other thing is if the product comes in a box, you can look for labels that will tell you who the product is from.  If you can get the name of the Chinese distributor then you might find that they would be quite happy to talk with you. One final thing is that one of the businesses that I'm in is to use bitcoin to do escrow with Chinese factories, and to deal with financing.  If you need me to track something down, let me know.

Aha! This is the perfect question from my company, Tradesparq: http://www.tradesparq.com Why is this perfect? We have this awesome free thing called US Shipment data. What you can do is, you can type in your supplier, let's take Walmart for example, enter them into our shipment data system, and you can see who their manufacturers/exporters are! http://www.tradesparq.com/Customs/10790672/Customs-Data-Walmart-Whse-6087-Tabloid?lang=en-US#sthash.9kugqMri.dpbs  Hope this helped!*Disclaimer: I work for Tradesparq where we believe in trust and transparency in international trade.

I used to have the same trouble. Now I ask http://www.chinadivision.com/ to help me find out the real manufacturer rather than a trader. They are falimar with China factory and easy to help you connected with hundreds of manufacturers in China.What's more,  this does not conflict with their business, is just a leading provider of crowdfunding and ecommerce order fulfillment. They're happy to reveal their sources in this area.

If the local importer has done their homework and properly certified and imported the product themselves you will most likely be unable to tell who the actual manufacturer is.  No one will tell you either. Trade secrets and all.  Also a warning, products on alibaba and made in china might look the same but they might only share common toolings and be completely different "under the hood".  As well, you cannot tell texture and feel and strength properties through pictures.

You can find a broker in China,he is falimar with China factory,who can help you find the product manufecturer but not trader.like the factory ,and get more competitive price. As a chinese,I would like to help you if you need.