One of our customers asked for our help in sourcing coffee-making appliances like a manual coffee grinder, electrical coffee grinders, WDT distribution tools, and wine bottle openers with a foil cutter set from China. The main reason for buying from China was to save money and cut costs by consolidating purchases and buying directly from the manufacturers there. Our experts worked with the client to understand their specific needs, and based on that, we made a supply analysis. In this analysis, we used different sources to come up with a list of possible suppliers in China who sell these items. Once we collated the list of suppliers, we did a pre-screening process through a telephone interview to further prune this list.
We sent our RFI/RFQ to the shortlisted suppliers. It had certain criteria that we had talked about with the client, like the minimum size of the company and whether it could make the item. Once we received the reply to our RFI/RFQ, we plotted the suppliers on a balanced scorecard and gave them points for their financials, background, product experience, quality certification, R&D capability, and others. Out of the 52 suppliers who replied to our RFI/RFQ, we recommended 10 for the sampling step. At the end of the project, we submitted all our reports, statistical charts, and other related documents to the client.