A Frustrating Experience In Seeking Chinese Facemask Suppliers

*To protect the privacy of our client, we have changed his name to an alias.

After the outbreak of the 2019 N-CoV, the selling of facemasks and other medical supplies became a lucrative business. Many international buyers were, and some of them still are, trying to buy medical supplies from China. One of our clients – Tio – put a lot of effort in searching a good supplier of facemasks, but result is frustrating.

Tio is a doctor who runs a small clinic in Malaysia. As a medical professional, he knew the seriousness of the virus and a great shortage of medical supplies in the foreseeable future. He started to search for facemask suppliers on Google, and send out many emails. After a first round of screening by himself, he had 4 seemingly good suppliers at his hand.

However, none of these suppliers seems to be a dependable one. Two of them are clothing manufacturers who had no experience nor proper qualifications in producing facemasks. One of them is a phone-case factory. Since these three companies provided images of their business licenses to Tio, we found who they really are very quickly. The last one of the 4 companies Tio contacted seemed a little different.

The company is called Hangzhou Kingmai Meditech Co., Ltd. Judging from its name, this company seems to be a serious one in the medical field.

However, by searching its name in the Chinese government database, we cannot find any company. This is irregular and suspicious, so we started to look for other clues that can help us determine what the company really is.

One the company’s website, we found its phone number and email. Luckily, the phone number, email, and the company’s website domain are all registered and recorded in the government database.

However, the phone number, email and website domain are registered under “杭州金迈进出口有限公司”. The literal translation of this company’s name is Hangzhou Jingmai Import&Export Co., Ltd, which is the second name in the contact detail on the website. Its official Chinese name has nothing to do with medical supplies.

By crosschecking the information on its website and that in the Chinese government databases, we are sure we found the right company. Here is what we found:

According to its basic registration information, we can find several lies of the company on its website. First, its official name has nothing to do with medical supplies. Second, its business scope does not contain medical supplies, which indicates the company is not specialized in the medical field.

Let’s take a look at the introduction of the company on its website:

The company says it started to do business in the medical field in 2006. However, according to what we found, the company was established in 2016. Also, the company does not have any qualifications, certificates, patents or trademarks in the medical field, which means this company is not an expert in medical supplies.

Tio thought these companies were not dependable ones, and he decided to keep searching till he finds the right one. During this special period, the international business of medical supplies is highly risky, but higher risks can mean higher profits. We can only wish him good luck and try our best to help him.

This is the story of Tio. Did you have similar experiences in international trade? Share them in the comment.