Sourcing from Europe

A request that reaches us as “I need packaging machines” cannot be sourced. A large number of European suppliers sell something answering to that description, at prices that are not close to each other, and the one you would have chosen is not necessarily the cheapest or the nearest.

So we start by talking. Not a form. A call — video or voice, whichever works where you are — long enough to get past the product name and into the thing behind it. What are you making. Who buys it from you. What does your current supplier do badly. What happens to your business if a delivery arrives a month late.

Out of that conversation comes something written. It sets out what you are looking for: the specification, the quantity, the quality you will accept and the quality you will not. It also sets out what we charge. Both are agreed before any work starts.

• A first conversation costs you nothing and commits you to nothing
• We write down what we understood and send it back, so you can correct it before it counts
• The agreement names the specification, the quantity and the budget you are working to
• The agreement names our fee — either a fixed amount for the assignment or a share of the order value, whichever suits the job, settled in advance
• Nothing is sourced until you have agreed that the description is right

We would rather spend an extra week on the description than send you a quotation for the wrong machine.

Searching from Kampala for a supplier in Europe, you can see the website, the catalogue and the reply to your email. You cannot see how long the company has existed, whether the bank details on the invoice belong to it, or whether anyone there has shipped outside the EU before.

We are in the Netherlands, and those are the things we go and check.

• Building a shortlist from manufacturers, wholesalers and stock holders — not only the ones who advertise for export, because the best price often sits with a company that has never thought about Uganda
• Confirming the company is registered and trading, and that the account you are asked to pay into belongs to the company you are buying from
• Asking, before anything is ordered, what the supplier can actually put on paper — an invoice with enough detail to clear customs, a packing list, a statement of origin
• Establishing whether they will sell your quantity at all, and on what payment terms
• Speaking to them in Dutch, in their own time zone, which changes what you get told

You get the shortlist with the reasoning attached, including the ones we rejected and why. The decision stays yours.

One supplier quotes a price at their factory gate. Another quotes a price that includes carriage to the port. A third quotes the first and describes it like the second. Put the three numbers side by side and the cheapest is whichever supplier was vaguest.

We take the quotes apart before you compare them: what is in the price, what is not, what the payment terms are, what happens if the delivery is late, and what the price does if you order more or less than you said.

• Every quote restated on the same basis, so the comparison is a comparison
• Samples requested and inspected before a volume order — and photographed, so you see what we saw
• Specification and tolerances fixed in writing before money moves
• Negotiation on your behalf: price, quantity, payment terms, lead time
• A small buyer is often quoted as a small buyer; a Dutch company asking on your behalf frequently is not

If the samples are wrong, that is a cheap discovery. If the container is wrong, it is not.

Two weeks becomes five. The machine ships without the spare part that was in the quotation. The invoice arrives with a line on it nobody discussed. None of this is unusual, and none of it announces itself — it surfaces when you chase, and a buyer eight time zones away chases slowly.

We chase in the same country, in the same working day.

• A fixed point of contact at the supplier, and a fixed one here
• Production and dispatch dates checked against what was promised, not against what was hoped
• Changes to the order caught while they are still changes rather than surprises
• The invoice checked against the agreement line by line before you pay it
• You get told about a delay when we hear it, including when the news is bad

If a delay is coming, the useful moment to know is the moment it becomes likely — not the week the goods were meant to arrive.

There are two ways to work with us, and the agreement says which one you chose.

We introduce, you handle it. We find and check the supplier, agree the specification and the price, and hand you a supplier you can buy from directly. From that point the order is yours. Some buyers already have a forwarder they trust, and they only ever needed the part we did.

We handle the export too. The goods come to us as a job, not as an introduction. We book the freight, prepare the export paperwork, and stay with the shipment until it is where it is supposed to be.

What that covers for your order — documents, freight, insurance, delivery — is set out in the agreement, because it depends on what you are moving and where it is going.