Useful Tools: Getting Started

How to get started with a product search

To help us understand your request and to enable us to approach prospective suppliers with your requirements, we need some basic information about the product that you want to source:

• Product specification: Please provide as much technical information as you can about the product to be sourced. The more details you can provide, the more accurate we can be with our recommendations. Please also let us know whether it’s a new product for you or an established one to outsource. For the latter, it would be helpful to get samples or at least pictures.
• Time scale: Do you have expectations in terms of concrete delivery times or lead-times? Is your product requirement current or are you making an exploratory approach?
• Volumes: Knowing approximate planned order numbers (either per deal or for instance per year) is important for supplier capacity considerations, as well as pre-negotiation inputs. If you cannot provide order numbers yet, please give us two or three scale estimates for which you would like to have the quotes.
• Project scope. How much involvement do you require from us? We can participate in as much or as little as you require from simple supplier contact identification to full supply chain management, it’s up to you!