[PragmaticPulp]

> I am an entrepreneur & a small business owner in India. I did a small manufacturing in China & was blown away by their professionalism. The article mentions - `Chinese suppliers had a totally different attitude, aiming to exceed the Cupertino company’s expectations` - this is so true.

This varies massively from one CM to the next.

If you can get your foot in the door at the higher tier CMs, the professionalism and attention to detail will be exactly as you described. If you can get in contact with an ambitious smaller CM looking to grow with you (their customer), you can also find great attention to detail.

OTOH, some of the smaller CMs in China will gladly tell you whatever you need to hear in order to send the wire transfer, then you'll get back whatever they feel like delivering. That is if you don't get bumped by a higher paying customer taking your spot on their schedule. You might also get great first articles and have great success on the first prototype run, but then they'll take the A team off of your line and have the night shift run it next time with much less attention to detail.

[kalesh]

Not my experience. I was working on my clothing startup with initial investment of about ~$30,000 USD.

INDIA - Met at least 12-15 manufactures in India (medium to large scale, $1m ARR to $50m ARR). Only a 1-2 of these had any catalogs or samples of different fabric compositions. Most wanted an advance to kick-start the process. Sampling was a total failure with three of these.

CHINA - Contacted about 10 manufactures in China via Alibaba. Each one of them had a very detailed catalog of anywhere in between 10-50 fabric compositions. Shipped to my home in a week for just $100.

It was Peru where I got the garments manufactured. It did cost me about 20-30% more but it was very satisfactory.

[esperent]

Surprising twist at the end there. How did the professionalism and quality in Peru compare to the other places?

[nequo]

Why did you end up going with a Peruvian supplier instead of a Chinese one?

[kalesh]

Peruvian supplier could produce the pima cotton fabric.

[crote]

I've got the same experience.

Chinese manufacturers can do absolutely amazing work - provided you can get them to care. In general they'll manufacture exactly what you ask them to. They are also very happy to do manual labour to get the job done.

But for most stuff, don't expect too much feedback. Asking for feedback on a design to optimize it for production didn't really produce anything useful, and they manufactured designs which contained obvious mistakes.

In general, you simply get what you pay for!