How it works

From a link you found to cartons you can sell

A gift order is a manufacturing job wearing the clothes of a purchase. This page is the actual sequence we run, including the parts where you have to decide something and the parts where waiting costs you money.

Before anything: what makes gift orders different

Ordinary wholesale is a buying problem — find the product, check the seller, ship it. Gifts and promotional products add a second problem on top: the thing you are buying does not exist yet in the form you want it. It has your logo on it, in your colour, in a box with your name. Everything expensive that goes wrong goes wrong there.

So the sequence below spends most of its effort between "we agree what it is" and "production starts", and comparatively little on the shipping. Shipping is arithmetic. Branding is judgement.

The seven steps

1. You send a reference

   A 1688 or Taobao link, a photograph of something you saw, or a sketch with dimensions. With it: the quantity, the destination country, and whether it carries your branding. Those three decide almost everything downstream, and guessing at them wastes a round trip.

   Time: your side. Cost: none. We do not charge to look.

2. We read the listing properly and tell you what it actually is

   Chinese listings describe materials in ways that do not survive translation. "600D polyester" is a yarn thickness, not a quality grade. "Soy wax" is very often a blend nobody states the ratio of. We pull the real specification out — fabric weight in grams per square metre, steel grade of the inner wall, wax blend and melt point, paper weight and binding method — and tell you plainly which claims the seller has documented and which they have only asserted.

   We also say when a listing is a trading company reselling someone else's production, because that changes who you can hold to a specification.

   Time: usually same working day. Cost: none.

3. Rules that apply to your market, established before price

   This is the step people want to skip and the one that cancels orders. Drinkware touches food, so it needs a food contact report that names your market. Candles with metal-cored wicks are a banned hazardous substance in the US unless the core is under 0.06 percent lead and the shipping carton is marked accordingly. Anything with a lithium cell restricts which carriers will take the shipment at all. Apparel needs fibre content and care labelling.

   We work out which of these apply to your specific item, ask the seller for the documents, and report what exists and what does not — rather than repeating a claim back to you.

   Time: one to three working days, longer if a test report has to be requested from a lab. Cost: none unless you ask us to commission testing.

4. Specification written down, branding method chosen

   Everything agreed goes into the order in writing: materials, weights, hardware, colours with a colour-system reference, quantities by variant, and the branding method matched to the surface. Pad print, screen, laser, embroidery, debossing and UV each suit different materials and different run sizes, and factories default to whatever they already have set up rather than what suits your product.

   If your item needs custom tooling, it is priced here as its own line, and so is the question of who owns the mould afterwards.

   You decide: branding method, colour references, and whether a stated minimum is per order or per variant — it is usually per variant, and that changes the total.

5. Pre-production sample, and the part you must not skip

   A physical sample of the actual product with the actual branding, photographed, and shipped to you if you want it in hand. For candles we burn one. For drinkware we fill it, invert it and time it. For apparel we wash it and measure the shrinkage against your chart.

   The approved sample is what inspection later measures against. Without one there is nothing to hold the factory to, and "it does not look like the picture" is not a claim anyone will honour.

   Time: three to ten working days depending on tooling. Cost: sample and its courier, quoted before we order it.

6. One itemised quote, then your approval

   Goods, branding setup, tooling, sampling, our service fee, inspection, consolidation and freight — each on its own line, on a route that will actually accept the goods. Nothing is bought until you approve it. If fragrance or batteries restrict the route, that is reflected in the freight line rather than discovered at the forwarder.

   You decide: whether to proceed, and which shipping route. We give you the cheapest that works and the fastest that works, and the difference between them.

7. Production, inspection, consolidation, shipping

   Sampled units from the run are inspected against the approved sample — print position, colour, registration, measurements — and photographed. Goods from several sellers are received into one warehouse, repacked to cut volumetric weight, and shipped as a single consignment with one set of documents.

   A failure found in China costs a reprint. The same failure found at your door costs the order.

   Time: production is whatever the factory quoted plus inspection; freight depends on the route you chose.

What this costs

Our service fee is a percentage of goods value, quoted on the same sheet as everything else. Steps one through three cost nothing — we would rather tell you early that an order is a bad idea than take a fee for discovering it late. Sampling, testing and tooling are real third-party costs and appear as their own lines, never folded into a margin.

Where orders actually go wrong

In order of how often we see it: the minimum turns out to be per colour rather than per order, so the quantity you budgeted buys a third of what you thought. The branding sample is skipped to save a week and the whole run comes back with the logo in the wrong position. The item contains a battery nobody mentioned and the booked route refuses it. And the box — which for a gift is half the product — is treated as an afterthought and arrives crushed.

All four are decidable before production. That is what steps three to five are for.