Factory due-diligence reports · On demand
Know the factory before you fund it.
Your first Alibaba order, a trade-show lead, or a factory an agent introduced you to. Before the deposit leaves your account, Sourcing Diligence rebuilds that factory's public record — registration, sanctions, lawsuits, news, web history, and who really owns it — and hands you a sourced PDF with one plain verdict.
Free PDF, no card. The $99 report is the verdict on your factory.
From a real report · September 2026
One factory looked clean. Its owner was on a U.S. government watch list.
A mid-size consumer-electronics manufacturer in Shenzhen passed the obvious checks: registered, publicly traded, no lawsuits, no bad press. The record underneath told a different story about who controls it. Identifying details removed from this extract.
risk
How it works
Three entries in the ledger.
You name the supplier
Company name and country — a website or product category helps but is optional. That is all we need from you.
We check the record
Corporate registries, 200+ sanctions and watch lists, U.S. court dockets, offshore leak databases, 180 days of global news, domain and breach history, seismic and storm data, and bilateral trade flows.
You get the verdict
A sourced PDF in your dashboard: findings marked confirmed or unverified, a red-flag register, a pre-payment verification checklist, and one unambiguous recommendation.
Free download
The Pre-Deposit Playbook.
The method we use, written out in full: twelve checks to run on any overseas factory before you wire money. The registry fields that matter, the five sanctions lists, the certificate traps, the payment structure that caps a loss, and the six things your contract must contain before money moves.
Twelve checks
Each one names the exact register, list, or document to look at, and what an ambiguous answer means.
The red-flag register
Eight signals that end a deal on their own, including the one that most often costs sellers their deposit.
Where DIY stops
The four questions public records cannot settle, and the point where guessing becomes expensive.
The playbook teaches the checks. It does not run them on your factory, and it will not tell you whether that one supplier is safe to pay.
A four-to-six hour pass in your own hands. A Desk Check runs the same pass on one named factory and returns a sourced verdict in 48 hours.
Why buy the check
Three reasons the playbook is not the report.
An answer is easy. A sourced answer is not.
Ask any AI assistant to check a factory and it writes something confident. Ask it for the registry record, the sanctions hit, and the date each was read, and you find out whether it looked. Every line in a report carries a source, a link, and the date it was seen — and a coverage gap is printed, never passed off as a clean record.
The reading is the expensive part.
Running the twelve checks is four to six hours across registers, dockets, and shipment indexes, much of it in a language you do not read. Deciding what an ambiguous match means for a deposit already going out is the part nobody can hand you in a PDF.
You are buying a date.
A factory changes: new owner, new lawsuit, a sanctions listing, a shipping lane that goes quiet. The verdict is true on the day it is signed. Supplier Watch is what keeps it true while you keep reordering.
Products
Price of a report. Pocket change next to a bad deposit.
Every report is delivered to your private dashboard. You create it with an email, name the supplier, and the PDF arrives there. Checks run the same day, within 24 hours of your order. Five a day is the cap, which is what keeps that promise true.
Pre-Deposit Playbook
$0.00 · one-time
Free — instant PDF, no card
- Twelve pre-deposit checks, written out in full
- Red-flag register and the six contract terms to demand
- The exact point where the free method stops
The method, not the verdict
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Deposit Protection Pack
$29.00 · one-time
Instant download — no waiting
- Day-of-payment protections checklist
- Six copy-paste contract clauses
- Escalation ladder
- Delivered instantly with a report purchase
Usually added to a report at checkout — the most-bought add-on
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Single Report
$99.00 · one-time
1 Desk Check, delivered the same day
- Seven checks on any one factory, any country
- Verdict in plain English: proceed, verify first, or do not proceed
- PDF to your dashboard; email when it lands
Most buyers start here — one supplier, one decision.
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Deposit Cover
$149.00 · one-time
One Desk Check, the protection pack, and 30 days of monitoring
- Everything in the Single Report, delivered the same day
- The Deposit Protection Pack: day-of-payment checklist and six contract clauses
- 30 days of Supplier Watch on the same factory, so a change after the check reaches you
The one to pick when the deposit goes out this week. $187 bought separately.
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Three-Report Pack
$249.00 · one-time
3 Desk Checks — check a whole shortlist
- Everything in the Single Report
- Compare candidates side by side, or spread across orders
- Use one per factory as you vet new options
Three factories at the depth of one report — $83 each
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Enhanced Report
$299.00 · one-time
1 pre-deposit investigation — within 72 hours
- Everything in a Single Report
- US shipment and import history
- The factory's own critical input suppliers
- Site and address plausibility verification
- Deposit-risk scorecard for your planned order size
- Alternate-source and protection recommendations
For a deposit over $10,000 — shipments, ownership tree, input suppliers, and a scorecard for your order size
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Pre-Deposit Investigation
$499.00 · one-time
1 full investigation and a call with the analyst, delivered within 72 hours
- Everything in the Enhanced Report
- Ownership tree and the factory's own input suppliers
- Deposit-risk scorecard built for the full order value
- A 30 minute call before you wire, to walk the verdict and your options
For a deposit over $50,000: the same investigation with a person on the phone before the money moves.
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Supplier Watch
$59.00 · per month
Standing watch on one supplier — add it after your first check, cancel anytime
- Monthly memo: what changed, what it means, one action flag
- Sanctions, watch lists, court news, ownership and status shifts, shipment drops
- Escalation alert within 48 hours on a sanctions, forced-labor, or enforcement hit
- Memos to your dashboard and email
The Check told you who they were. The Watch tells you what they're doing.
Creates your private dashboard in 30 seconds — that's where your report lands.
Two promises. If the public record returns nothing on your supplier, you do not pay. If the report does not tell you something you did not already know, tell us within 24 hours and it is refunded.
Questions
Read before you buy.
Can't I just run these checks myself, or ask an AI?
You can, and the free playbook tells you how. What takes the time is reading a Chinese enterprise register, a U.S. docket, and a shipment index for one name, then deciding whether a partial match is the same company. Ask a general AI and you get an answer without knowing whether it was looked up or guessed. A report is those checks run and sourced, with a date and a verdict on one named factory.
Does the factory find out I checked them?
No. Every report is built from public records — registries, sanctions lists, court dockets, news archives, and open data. We never contact the supplier.
How fast do I get the report?
Standard Desk Checks land in your dashboard within 48 hours; Enhanced investigations within 72 hours. Supplier Watch goes to work the day you add a supplier — monthly memos plus escalation alerts within 48 hours of a hit. You get an email whenever something lands.
What if the factory cannot be identified?
The report says so plainly, marks identity unverified, and gives you the exact verification steps to run before any payment. We never fill gaps with guesses.
Which countries are covered?
Any. Coverage is deepest where records are public; for China and similar jurisdictions we lean on international registries, consolidated sanctions lists, news, digital history, and trade data, and we state coverage gaps explicitly instead of implying a clean record.
Is this legal or compliance advice?
No. The report is an organized reading of the public record as of its date, with sources, so you can make your own call or take it to your counsel.