Open-Book Pricing: See the Factory Invoice and Our Fee

Open-book pricing means the factory's price and our fee arrive as two separate lines, agreed in writing before you approve an order. You get the factory's own invoice, not our summary of it. We don't fold the two together into one unit price, and we don't publish a percentage of order value — a fee that grows when your costs grow is the wrong structure, and you'd be right to distrust it.

Below is exactly what a quote from us looks like, the one price we'll state up front rather than on request, and the situations where the number changes.

The short version

Factory price on one line. Our fee on another. You see the factory's invoice.
The quote is broken out by material, tooling, labour and packaging — not a lump sum.
We don't charge a percentage of order value. The fee is quoted per project, written into the contract, and confirmed by both sides before you approve.
The factory audit is the one price we publish: $400–$500, paid by you, done by me.
No supplier pays us commission, which means we're free to tell you your current factory is the wrong one.

Why a single unit price can't be audited

A unit price is the end of a calculation, not the beginning of one. Behind any number a factory gives you sit four decisions — what material, at what grade; how the tooling cost gets recovered; how many hours the run is assumed to take; and what the packaging actually includes. Slide any one of them and the number stays where it is. That's the whole trick.

I spent seven years on the sales side of a Chinese factory - sitting in the same room as production planning and QC every week. Prices were built in that room. When a cheaper resin got discussed, it was discussed as a cost problem, not a quality problem, and the unit price didn't move afterwards — the spec moved and the price held. The buyer got a different product at the same number.

None of it was dishonest. It was arithmetic done from one side of a table. But it's why a single unit price, however reasonable it looks, can't be checked — and why we'd rather show you the parts.

What we keep on separate lines

Two numbers on your quote: what the factory charges, and what we charge. That's it.

The reason is not transparency as a virtue. It's that a fee you can see is a fee you can argue with. A margin folded into a unit price can only be believed. If our fee looks high for the work, say so and we'll talk about the work. If a factory's material line looks thin, say so and we'll pull the grade apart. Neither conversation is possible with one number.

Which is also why we don't represent any factory and no supplier pays us commission. That isn't a moral position, it's the business model — the only thing we have to sell is judgment. The principle holds the same whether you're reading what a garden center order costs line by line, or a quote for a container of flooring.

What the quote looks like, line by line

Every factory in the pool quotes this way, because it's one of the six conditions for being in it. A lump sum that moves after your deposit is a disqualifying answer.

Material. Grade and quantity, not category. Not "PVC" but the resin grade; not "aluminium" but the alloy and temper; not "steel" but the gauge and coating. This is the line where a substitution shows up first.
Tooling. New moulds, fixtures, sample tooling. Whether it's amortised into the units or billed once, and who owns the tooling afterwards. Both get written down.
Labor. What process the price assumes, and what happens to it if the run is shorter than quoted. A price built on 5,000 units is a different price at 800, and a factory that won't say which one it quoted is telling you something.
Packaging. Retail-ready or bulk — UPC barcodes, hangtags, colour boxes or PDQ trays, carton strength, units per master carton. Packaging is where a lot of "cheap" quotes get their margin back, because nobody checks it until the cartons arrive.
Then our fee, on its own line.

Outside the factory price, and shown separately rather than blended into a delivered number: freight, duty, consolidation handling, and the audit.

The one price we'll state up front

A factory audit runs $400–$500, paid by you, and I do it myself — on site, at the registered address, not subcontracted.

It's the only number on this page because it's the only one that doesn't depend on your product. Everything else is quoted against a spec; this is quoted against a visit.

The report covers whether the entity on your contract is the entity running the line, real capacity against quoted capacity, which processes are in-house, and their export history to North America. Including the parts the factory would rather you didn't see. If I wouldn't put my own order into that line, I say so and we keep looking.

You get the written report before you place a deposit, not after.

Why we don't quote a percentage

A fee set as a percentage of order value goes up when the factory's price goes up. We'd earn more by negotiating less, and you'd have no way to tell which was happening. Plenty of the industry runs that way. We don't.

So: quoted per project, written into the contract, confirmed by both sides before you approve the order. No percentage, no published band, no rate card that can be quietly reinterpreted later. If you want the number before you send us anything, that's a reasonable ask — send the product and we'll give it to you in the audit.

When the number moves

It does move, and you should know where before you're looking at an invoice.

Scope. More SKUs, more factories, more drawing work.
Tooling you didn't plan for — or a mould that has to be reworked after first-article comes back wrong.
A re-inspection. If pre-shipment sampling fails and the cartons have to be checked again, that second visit is real work and it's billed.
Spec changes after you approved the sample. Changing a material grade or a finish at that point means re-quoting, not adjusting.
Rush. Expedited production, air freight, a second audit because you want a second factory lined up.
Quantity. This is the common one. A unit price quoted at 800 units is not the unit price at 300, and the gap isn't a penalty — it's changeover time the factory has to absorb.
Daily presence on the production line. If you want someone on the floor every day, that sits outside our two checkpoints — first-article confirmation and pre-shipment AQL sampling. We don't staff it and we don't price as if we do. Tell us at the start and we'll say straight whether we're the right fit, rather than discovering it in week ten.
Bringing several suppliers into one shipment. When multi-vendor consolidation is part of the order, it adds receiving, counting, re-palletising and a second handling point. It's priced as its own line, and it's usually worth it — but it isn't free.

All of it gets confirmed in writing before it becomes a charge. If a cost shows up that we didn't flag in advance, that's our problem, not your invoice.

Two shapes the money can take

You pay the factory directly. You hold the factory relationship and the paper; you pay us our fee separately. Some buyers prefer this on a single-supplier order where there's nothing to coordinate.

We pay several suppliers on your behalf. This is the shape it takes when your order is spread across factories and has to be consolidated into one shipment before it can move.

Which one applies to your order gets agreed before you approve it, and you get the documents either way: the factory invoice, the commercial invoice, the packing list, the bill of lading, and the customs entry paperwork. We're not a licensed importer of record, so your customs entry works the way your broker already does it — and duty and freight sit on their own lines rather than disappearing into a delivered price you can't take apart.

The scope these lines sit inside is set out under China sourcing services.

What we don't do

Six things we don't do, and they're most of what open-book pricing is actually for. A structure like this only means something once the exceptions are named.

We don't take commission from suppliers. No factory pays us, in any form, including the kind that arrives later as a rebate.
We don't own or represent a factory. We're buyer-side, which is why we can tell you the factory you're using now is the wrong one — including when it costs us the job.
We don't fold our fee into the factory price. Not for convenience, not to make a landed number look cleaner.
We don't mark up freight quietly. Freight appears as freight.
We don't publish factory names. Not in case studies, not in quotes, not here. Once a name is public it stops being your advantage and becomes everyone's.
We don't ask you to commit money before you've seen the factory invoice and the full landed breakdown.

And the trade-off, said plainly, because you'll work it out anyway: with the factory invoice in front of you, you could take our spec sheet and go direct. Some people do. We'd rather keep you because the work is worth paying for than because you didn't have the name.

Start with one product

Send us one item you're already buying, and what you pay for it today. We'll break down what you're paying for, show you the lines the way we'd show them on a live order, quote our fee for that project, and tell you straight if we can't improve it. That answer is worth having too.

That's a free sourcing audit: one product, written breakdown, no fee, no deposit, no obligation, no call until you ask for one.

We reply to every inquiry within 24 hours — weekends and holidays included.