I almost built a whole product line around a factory that wasn’t a factory. Here’s my verification routine now

Confession: I almost committed an entire product line to a supplier whose listing said manufacturer.

Everything looked “right”: factory photos, great English, super responsive, clean answers. In hindsight those are… not green flags. They’re just polish. And polish is cheap.

What saved me was a habit I’d just started forcing on myself: verify before committing. Every time. No exceptions. Trading companies leave fingerprints if you look for them.

My quick reality checks:

Business registration / scope: does it read like manufacturing, or like trading/wholesale/import-export?

Export/shipment footprint: do they consistently ship one category, or is it 50 unrelated categories that scream “middleman”

Photo authenticity: “factory” images that reverse-image back to stock sites / other companies

This supplier failed 2 out of 3. I dodged it.

Now I run the same logic faster and more consistently: I drop the shortlist into accio sourcing expert and ask one very specific thing: factory vs trading company — and show the evidence for the call. The “evidence” part is non-negotiable. A verdict without receipts is worthless. If it can’t find enough proof, I want it to say “insufficient evidence,” not guess.

To be clear: I’m not anti–trading company. Sometimes they’re the smarter choice (consolidation, communication, smaller orders, they can be great). The problem is not knowing what you’re dealing with, because it changes your pricing and negotiation math completely.

My personal red flags lately:

suspiciously wide product range across categories

factory photos that look like a showroom brochure

“we are factory” volunteered multiple times unprompted

registered capital that seems tiny relative to the operation they claim

What are your red flags? And has anyone found out a “factory” was actually a trading company after placing orders? I feel like everyone has a story, but nobody has numbers.