1. Do you really trust the factories produce bearings by themselves?

While the customers may have placed the bearing order at the factory, but it doesn’t mean the factory produce these bearings themselves. There are some customers who complain about the quality of the bearings when they receive them, even losing faith in the Chinese bearings, but why is this happening? One reason is that customers are attracted by a cheap low-quality price; the second reason is that customers trust the factories too much; they think the factory can control the quality of the produced product.

In China, many factories do not manage the production themselves; some trade business and buy products from other small individual factories in order to gain a higher profit, but these small factories can’t control the quality very well, so they are faced with ongoing quality problems.

2. No any factory or supplier can produce all types of bearings.

Each factory or supplier will tell you they can do it all and do it well, especially in China, but it’s not true, you need to be aware of what kinds of bearings each factory can produce.

How to solve this problem? You need a partner(KTAI) to help you find the right factory and control the quality.

  • KTAI will compare several factories for the same type of bearing.
  • KTAI will visit and check the factories for you, including processing equipment, testing equipment, workers’ skill levels, management system certificate, production range&quality level, etc.

We will identify the qualified factories, give them the order, and then we will keep on record the customer feedback on the quality of their produced bearings.

3. The material from factory should be high quality, not cut corners.

Some factories cut corners by using cheaper materials. Here are some examples for your reference:

  • steel balls: if the grade should be G10, then the factory can change it to G16.
  • heat treatment: the right operation should put the same type of bearing in one oven, not put different types of bearings in one oven– this can prevent some of the bearings from meeting hardening standards.

4. How the trading companies earn money?

  • export rebates: some trading companies export goods to abroad. In this case, the Chinese government will return some money to the company. The price that the trading company is offering you is same as the price that the factory offered the trading company, so there is no additional cost. Some trading companies will add port charges and some service charges (not much money).
  • Before you give the order to a trading company, they will ask other factories to compete with the price, then they will take the lowest price to discuss with their regular supplier to get the highest profit. Some factories will agree, but they can’t guarantee product quality, as everyone knows, quality is proportional to the price.
  • The third way to place an order is through a purchasing agent, they don’t earn money on goods, so when you have orders, you should give a commission to your Chinese agent, maybe 5%~10%, even a little more. The advantage is that the agent can help you source the right bearing factory and control the quality.