What we buy
Six categories, six different ways to lose money
We buy gifts and promotional products from 1688, Taobao and the Yiwu market. This page is about scope: what each category actually demands of a buyer, and the orders we decline.
The categories
These are not shelves in a shop. They are grouped by what goes wrong, because that is what decides how an order has to be run.
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1688 tote bags wholesale
Bags fail in three places — the zip, the strap anchor and the seam under the base — and none of them show in a listing photograph.
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1688 water bottles wholesale
Drinkware touches food, which means the material paperwork matters more here than in almost any other gift category, and it is the part sellers are least prepared for.
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1688 stationery wholesale
Stationery is a low unit price category where the quality difference is entirely in things a photograph cannot show: paper weight, binding, ink flow.
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1688 candles wholesale
Candles and reed diffusers look like one category and fail in completely different ways: the wax one is a goods-quality problem, the liquid one is a transport problem.
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1688 custom t-shirts wholesale
Two things go wrong with apparel bought from China: the fabric is not what was described, and the sizing is not what your customers expect.
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1688 promotional products wholesale
A promotional order is a manufacturing job, not a purchase, and the difference shows up in the sample stage. Everything expensive that goes wrong here goes wrong because someone skipped it.
What each one really demands
| Category | The thing that fails | What settles it before production |
|---|---|---|
| Tote bags and backpacks | The zip, the strap anchor and the seam under the base — none of which appear in a listing photograph | Fabric weight in gsm rather than a denier number, named zip brand and gauge, bar-tacked stress points, and a branding sample on the actual coated fabric |
| Water bottles and drinkware | Food contact paperwork, and a cheaper steel grade on the inner wall than the outer | A test report that names your market and this product, the inner-wall grade specifically, and a leak and heat-hold test on sampled units |
| Stationery | Binding — a glued notebook that sheds pages is the most common complaint in the category | Paper weight in gsm, stated binding method, refill specification rather than a pen model name, and a printed colour proof |
| Candles and diffusers | Wax blend substitution, and a fragrance flash point that changes which carriers will take the shipment | Blend percentage and melt point, wick type sized to the vessel, the safety data sheet read before quoting, and a burn to a full melt pool |
| Custom t-shirts and caps | Chinese sizing, and fabric that is "cotton feel" rather than cotton | Fibre composition and gsm, your own measurement chart in centimetres with tolerances, a lab dip, and a washed pre-production sample |
| Promotional products | Tooling cost and a minimum that is per variant, not per order | Vector artwork with outlined fonts, the branding method matched to the material, tooling priced as its own line, and the real minimum across your full breakdown |
Outside the categories
The six above are where we have done the most work, not a fence. If your item is a gift or a promotional product and it is sold on 1688, send it. Small electricals, ceramics, lanyards, packaging, event and party goods all run through the same process. What changes is which rules apply, and we establish that before quoting rather than after.
What we turn down
Saying this plainly is cheaper for both of us than finding out at the border.
- Someone else's brand. Putting a third-party logo or a licensed character on a product requires permission from the rights holder. Customs does not accept "it was a gift" as an answer, and the goods are seized rather than returned.
- Recognisable designer silhouettes. A bag that copies a protected shape is detained on the same grounds as a copied logo, even with no name on it.
- Goods no route will carry. Some fragrance concentrates, aerosols, and loose lithium cells above certain ratings. We will tell you this at step three, before you have spent anything.
- Orders where the paperwork cannot exist. If your market requires a certificate and no supplier in the category holds one, the honest answer is that the order should not happen — not that we will try.
Quantities
There is no floor we impose. The floor comes from the factory, and it is almost always stated per colour and per size rather than per order — which is the single most common reason a budget buys a third of what someone expected. We establish the real minimum across your full breakdown before you commit, and where a stated minimum is soft we say so.
Not sure if yours fits?
Send the link anyway. Reading it and telling you whether it is worth ordering costs nothing, and takes about a day.
Get a quote