Frequently Asked Questions

FOB Ningbo is our default; Shanghai and Yantian (Shenzhen) on request, and Yantian is usually the better LCL gateway for US West Coast. CIF is quoted to a named port with 110% ICC(A) cover — worth taking if you do not have a forwarder, but under CIF we choose the cover and you inherit whatever claims process comes with it — most large buyers prefer FOB and their own open policy.

DDP is available to a US or EU door through our forwarder, with two conditions stated up front. Duty and import VAT are collected as a separate advance; we do not absorb them into the unit price, because a tariff change would then be our loss on a contract already signed. And on EU DDP we cannot be the importer of record — that requires an EU establishment — so we work through a fiscal representative in Rotterdam at cost, and the EORI stays in your name.

One test for any DDP quote: ask whether duty is included. If the number looks like FOB plus a little, it is not — and the bill arrives at your door with your name on it.

On PP-cotton filled plush we compress 4:1 to 6:1 inside the bag. In practice a 40-foot high cube that takes about 9,000 pcs loose takes 22,000–26,000 compressed — the container gain lands nearer 2.5× than 4×, because carton walls, pallet voids and the payload limit take back the difference, and any forwarder quoting you the bag ratio is quoting a laboratory, not a container.

On a 30 cm toy that is the gap between roughly US$0.42 and US$0.16 of ocean freight per unit. On a 20,000-piece order it is a five-figure saving in exchange for a two-day recovery delay at the warehouse, which is why we compress by default and only pack loose when the product cannot take it.

Four things we will not compress, and will say so before you ask: memory foam (takes a permanent compression set and never fully recovers), PE pellet fill (bags burst and the pellets migrate through the cover), anything with a rigid insert or electronic module, and pile above 8 mm, which keeps crush marks along the fold for weeks.

Recovery is 72 hours at 20 °C, or 24 hours with a ten-minute low-heat tumble. Cartons are marked DO NOT STACK — RECOVER 72 H and carry a recovery card for the warehouse team, because the person who opens the container is rarely the person who read the shipping documents.

Yes. Commercial invoice, packing list, B/L or forwarder’s cargo receipt, and a certificate of origin. We are a CCPIT-registered exporter and can issue a general CO, Form E for ASEAN under ACFTA, and an RCEP declaration of origin where the tariff line qualifies. Test reports, FSC packaging certificates and the declaration of conformity go in the same envelope on request.

On Form A, be careful what you ask for. It only has value where the destination still grants China GSP treatment. The EU removed China from its GSP scheme on 1 January 2015, so a Form A presented at Rotterdam or Hamburg is not usable and will not reduce a cent of duty. A supplier who offers you one for the EU is selling paperwork, not a saving. Ask for a general CO instead and check the duty rate against the TARIC code.

No solid-wood packaging leaves this factory: crates are plywood, and where a customer supplies their own pallets they are ISPM 15 heat-treated and stamped. That removes fumigation from the schedule and one more reason for a container to sit.

Yes — SGS, TÜV Rheinland, TÜV SÜD, Intertek, Bureau Veritas and QIMA, social and technical. Announced audits on any working day with three days’ notice. Unannounced audits need 48 hours’ notice for gate access only, not for the audit itself: client-owned designs run under NDA on shared lines, and we will not let an unbadged visitor walk a floor where a competitor’s unreleased character is on the table.

There is no hosting fee and no per-auditor charge, and we will not steer you toward a particular firm. Current documentation, copies under NDA: ISO 9001:2015, BSCI, SMETA 4-pillar, Disney FAMA, and GSV/c-TPAT for US programmes.

If an audit finds something, we send you the corrective action plan with owners and dates rather than a summary. You are buying the factory that fixes things, not the one with a clean report.

Mutual NDA, two business days, on your template or ours — PRC law or English law, your choice. It must be mutual: we sign confidentiality over your artwork, and we ask the same over our pattern construction and supplier list. Signed before a single file is opened, not after the quote.

Two clauses we will decline. An assignment of our manufacturing process IP — the pattern for your character is yours, the way we build a jointed arm is not. And an exclusivity clause that stops us working with your competitors, which in a factory running 40 designs a year is neither standard nor enforceable under PRC law, so a supplier who signs it is only postponing the argument.

Operationally: files are held under a project code rather than your brand name, tooling is coded rather than labelled, and client work is never displayed without written permission. That is why the case studies on this site name the category and the country, not the customer.

EU: EN 71-1, -2 and -3 plus the technical file behind the declaration of conformity. US: ASTM F963-23 with CPSIA lead and phthalate screening. AU/NZ and parts of Asia: ISO 8124. Physical and chemical both, tested on bulk material from the production run — not on the sample, which is the loophole most reports quietly rely on.

Two details decide whether a report is actually usable. It must be issued in your company’s name, because a report in the factory’s name is rejected by Amazon and by several EU market-surveillance authorities. And it must reference the exact material and colour, because a report on red fleece does not cover your navy fleece, however identical the construction.

Lead time 7–12 working days, cost US$400–900 per SKU depending on the market set. We pay the lab and you own the report; the invoice for it is a separate line so there is no argument later about who commissioned what.

Set-up, not the toy. A prototype is priced by the labour inside it, not by the unit price: a 30 cm plush that bulks at US$3.20 carries a sample fee of about US$130–160 — roughly forty times the unit price, and that figure hardly moves whether the toy is 20 cm or 45 cm. Anyone quoting you “3× the unit price” has not costed the sample maker.

What the fee actually buys: pattern grading and a hand-cut shell, hand-embroidered eyes and nose because the production embroidery file does not exist yet, a dedicated sample maker for two to three days, the courier, and one round of photography on a grey card beside your Pantone chips.

It is not a markup on the product, and it does not fund tooling — there is no mould charge on plush at all, which is exactly why our MOQ is 100 and not 3,000. Where a project needs a carved mascot head, the sculpting is quoted separately and the prototype is a real cost, not a deposit.

For new accounts the fee is prepaid by T/T or PayPal; established accounts can take it on net-15. We do not offer free custom samples — the “free sample” in this industry is a stock item pulled off a shelf, and it tells you nothing about how your character will be built.

Two rounds included in the sample fee: proportions, colour, embroidery placement, trim. A third round is charged at cost, US$40–80 depending on size, because by round three the issue is almost always the artwork rather than the pattern — and charging for it is how we get an honest conversation about the artwork instead of a fourth sample.

A structural change is a new prototype at 60% of the original fee, since the 3D and the pattern already exist: seated to standing, adding a mechanism, swapping a plush head for a carved or PVC one, or changing the filling from fibre to pellet.

Timing: first prototype 7–10 working days from approved artwork, a revision 5–7. Artwork counts as approved when the vector file is final and the Pantone references are on it, not when the concept looks right on a screen. Every sample is photographed from four angles before it leaves, so a colour or proportion argument happens by email within a day rather than by courier within a week.