If you want to work on LED lighting business, it is important to know where to get high-quality products.
China has a whole industry chain of LED lighting production, including light source, PCB board, housing, driver and so on. Most oversea LED lighting importers like to import LED lighting products from China, for the competitive price, full product range, good quality, high efficiency and so on.
It is not an easy job for a newbie in the international trade business to import LED lights from China, especially at the beginning.
There are thousands of LED lighting manufacturers in China, with different quality levels. How to choose a good & reliable LED lights manufacturer, and make the import? As all sales are trying to sell their products and everybody say their products in good quality, customers need to be careful on choosing a supplier.
Today, we will share with you how to import LED lights from China step by step. After you get the basic skills, you will be not so confusing as now.
1. Do research about your local market
Before contacting Chinese suppliers, it is important to do research about your local market. Such as follow:
- What kinds of LED lights are sold well in the market? There is a wide range of LED lights, including LED street light, LED flood light, LED bulb light, LED down light, solar LED street light and so on.
- What’s your advantage on selling the LED lighting products?
- How is the product price in your local market?
Normally, the offering price directly from Chinese LED lighting manufacturers is only 50% of the price in your local market, even only 30%. That’s why most big wholesales or retailers like to import directly from Chinese LED lighting manufacturers. It makes great profit for them.
2. Find LED lights suppliers online through Google
If you want to find the best LED lighting suppliers within a short time, Google search would be the quickest way for you. As known, Google is the biggest and most advanced search engine in the world. For example, if you want to buy LED street lights from China, you can enter the keyword of “LED street lights from Chinese manufacturers”. Do not forget to add “China”, which helps to narrow down the range of the results.
3. Search in B2B Platform
Alibaba is the biggest B2B platform in China, and it is very famous in the world.
Similarly, you can also get thousands of LED lighting suppliers by enter the keywords. Then you can get contact with the suppliers for further communication.
The drawback is that you may get the poor-quality products. There is a fierce competition on the Alibaba platform, and every supplier wants to win the order and try to quote low price. In China, there is no lowest price, but lower and lower price.
In addition, before searching the LED lights in the Alibaba platform, below you need to know:
- There are thousands of LED lighting manufacturers on the Alibaba pages, who pays more and who gets the top position in the search results. It is not relevant to quality levels.
- When you submit your email address on the Alibaba platform, you will get many spam emails from the Alibaba platform and Chinese LED lights suppliers. They will email you every day and try to cooperate with you.
Besides Alibaba, there are other B2B platforms, such as Made-in-China, Globalsources, and so on. They are similar in operation. You may take some time to find a reliable supplier.
4. Attend LED lighting exhibition
Every year, there are many LED lighting exhibitions and trade shows. It is another way to find the Chinese LED lights suppliers. In the exhibitions, hundreds of LED lighting manufacturers show their LED lights. You can touch the products and talk with the suppliers face to face.
In addition, you can also collect catalogues, contacts from the interested exhibitors.
Below some top LED lighting exhibitions information for you:
| Venue | LED Lighting Exhibition |
| UK | LuxLive |
| Germany | Light + Building |
| India | Light India |
| USA | LIGHTFAIR International, NAB Show |
| Pakistan | Light Pakistan Expo |
| Guangzhou, China | Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition |
| HongKong, China | Hong Kong Lighting Fair |
| Thailand | LED Expo Thailand |
| East Africa | Kenya LIGHTEXPO |
| Brazil | International Lighting Industry Exhibition |
For more LED lighting exhibitions information, you can check with this:
https://10times.com/lights-lighting
You can try to find the nearest exhibitions to attend.
5. Visit Chinese factory in person
After you have got contact with some Chinese LED lights suppliers by Google or lighting exhibitions, and you have selected the interested suppliers, you can fly to China to meet them in their factory.
You can check their production lines, test room, labor quantity, manufacturing process and so on. It is good for you to know their quality control.
6. Tips for inquiry
- Before sending inquiries to the suppliers, you need to make sure what kinds of LED lights you want.
Tell them your requirements, including wattage, input voltage, color temperature, beam angle, possible order quantity and so on.
- Pay attention to the trade terms the suppliers offer.
Usually, there are trade terms with EXW, FOB, CNF, CIF and so on. Different trade terms with different prices, rights and obligations.
More details about the trade terms, you can get from below link:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/13-international-trade-terms-exw-cif-fob-cfr-muhammad-murad/
7. Place a sample order
For safety, we sincerely advise you to place a sample order before bulk order. From the sample order, you can check the product quality, delivery time, service and so on. It helps you to know more about the suppliers, which is extremely important for future cooperation.
If you feel the sample is not good, you can turn to another supplier only with small cost.
8. Place bulk orders
After you testing the samples, you should have a rough idea about the suppliers. You can select one or two LED lights manufacturers as your main suppliers. Now, you can future cooperation with them, and place bulk orders.
9. Payment Methods
There are many kinds of payment methods in international trade, including pay by bank(T/T), PayPal, Letter of Credit (L/C), Western Union and so on.
We advise as follow:
- Small amount is paid with PayPal or Western Union, like sample order.
- Bulk orders are paid by T/T or L/C.
Before making payment to a new supplier, be careful about the whole list of account information, including beneficiary’s name, account number, bank name, address and so on.
10. Avoid low quality products
Trust me, don’t choose the lowest price product. Price is always based on material parts. If one supplier quote with very low price, which is lower much than other suppliers, you should be careful about it. The product they quote is not the one you needed.
Even it seems to make much more profit, but a serious buyer would never trust the quality of its products. These kinds of lower quality products may will eventually bring you in a lot of trouble, such as a lot of complain from your customers.
11. Shipping Methods
Before the goods finished, you have to prepare for the shipping. Generally, there are shipping methods of UPS/DHL/FedEx/TNT, by air and by sea.
For a newbie, it maybe a little confusing to handle. You can ask your suppliers to arrange the shipping. Of course, all these will be paid by the importers. In addition, you should hire an experienced import agent in your country to operate the import procedures for you. It will save a lot of time for you.
If everything goes well, goods will be released soon from the customs in your country, and then delivery to your warehouse soon.
12. Have plan B for your order
In the international trade, it takes a long time from placing orders to get the goods. It is from 10 days to 65 days. Such as the ocean shipping from China to Chile port takes 35-45 days. In addition, the import clearance may take 1 week and then shipping from Chilean port to clients’ warehouse may take 3-4 days.
In addition, everything may happen and delay the delivery during the process. Such as material parts can’t be reached on time, shipment not booked on time, goods can’t be finished on time, goods can’t be released from customs on time…
What’s more, most Chinese factories are very busy before important holidays, such as China National Day, Chinese Spring Festival and so on. These will make the production time longer than usual.
So, always thinking about plan B if there is another order to place.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that importing LED lights from China directly makes more profit for you. Chinese LED lights manufacturers make high quality LED lights with competitive price. If you want to work on LED lighting business in your local market, finding a good supplier will help you a lot.
We SEIPRO have more than 10 years’ experience on LED lighting manufacturing and exporting. Will try to be your best partner in China. Sincerely welcome to contact us:
Website: www.seiprolight.com
E-mail: info@seiprolight.com
