Deliveries from China for Amazon FBA

Speaking of delivery services from China for Amazon FBA, which qualities a middleman company must possess to add value to the shipping process?

Many foreign companies, operating in China, in reality turn out to be middlemen. In social media you can often see warnings not to deal with this or that company because of the intermediary nature of its services. Some companies try to hide this fact, at the same time accusing their rivals for being agents. Let’s go some deeper into this subject to see whether such concerns are justified and what is implied in all these accusations.

All agent companies anywhere in the world can be divided into two categories:

1. Those, that add value to the services they provide.

2. Those that do not.

Let’s have a closer look on the first category, as there is not much to be said about the second one. As an example, we can take a successful Chinese factory, that produces high quality goods and sells them in the domestic market. Chinese market is so deep because of the large population with wide middle-class segment, and a lot of factories do not see any point in entering international markets. So, the only way to contact such company is to use the middleman’s services. Such situations create competition between agent companies, and their market share depends on the quality and added value of their services.

Speaking of delivery services from China to Amazon FBA warehouses, which qualities a middleman company must possess to add value to the shipping process?

Presence of the company’s employees at the partners’ warehouses and offices – this is the only way to reach and maintain greater levels of interaction and minimize mistakes in cargo handling.

Unified IT system – all the key information about the shipment route, tariffs and the necessary documents should be stored in a unified IT system, synchronized with the partners’ systems. Synchronization and permanent access to information is still the Achilles heel of the majority of forwarders in China. One of the main goals of a middleman company is to correct this.

A middleman company, managing constant considerable amount of cargo transportation has the following benefits:

– Higher level of financial responsibility. If a middleman company arranges several hundreds of shipments a month, It becomes much easier to conduct negotiations for compensation with the transport company in case of damage or loss of the goods.
– Minimizing the chance of potential transportation mistakes due to the use of a specialized IT software, allowing higher level of control over the transportation process.
– Maintaining the same level of tariffs, despite the presence of a middleman company. Provided that there is a significant transport volume, the freight forwarder company will be ready to cut its profit margins to keep its service prices competitive.

The presence of its own legal person on the sender’s country territory.

In conclusion we would like to point out, that the number of foreigners, permanently living in China, is increasing. Any group of foreigners, providing certain services in China for business communities in other countries usually acts as a middleman.

It is a natural order of things, because the actual shipping process for example, as well as sea and avia transportation is controlled by Chinese companies.

Even such major companies as DHL and UPS operate in China via representatives and partners. Being a middleman company, the main idea is not to try to destabilize or brake this system, but integrate effectively into it.

We encourage all agent companies in China to stop this information war against each other and concentrate on enhancing the quality of their own services instead. It would be much more rational and beneficial approach.

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