Qualifying a Hardware Supplier 2026: Factory, Trader or Broker, the Five Questions That Separate Them, and What to Verify

Three kinds of company reply to a door hardware enquiry, and all three reply the same way. The difference only appears later, in what they can change, how fast they can answer, and who is holding the problem when something is wrong.

None of the three is illegitimate. A good trading company is more useful than a bad factory. But you should know which you are talking to, because it determines what you can reasonably ask for.

What each one actually controls

The row that matters most on a technical product is the second-to-last. **A factory answers a dimensional question from its own drawing; everyone else answers it by asking somebody.** That does not make the answer wrong — it makes it slower, and it means the answer arrives through a party that may not know which of two similar dimensions you meant.

The five questions

None of these is confrontational, and all five are ordinary things a buyer would want to know. The answers separate the three categories by themselves.

**"Which of these models do you make yourselves, and which do you buy in?"** Almost every real factory buys some things in — cylinders, springs, packaging, sometimes whole categories. A factory answers this easily and specifically. A trading company answers it generally, because the honest answer is "all of them".

**"Can you change the backset on this model, and what would the tooling cost be?"** A factory answers with a number or a reason. Anyone else answers with a delay, because they have to ask.

**"Who does your plating, and is it in-house?"** Plating is frequently outsourced even by genuine factories, and saying so is normal. What is informative is whether they know the answer immediately.

**"What is the minimum on this model in one finish, and why is it that number?"** Our MOQ page explains the four things that set a minimum. A factory's answer refers to at least one of them — a finish batch, a tooling amortisation, a print run. A relayed answer is just a number.

**"Can we have the dimensioned drawing for this model?"** The most useful single question in the list. A factory either has it or knows it does not exist for that model. A trader has whatever the factory sent them, which is often a catalogue page.

Nobody needs to be caught out by these. A trading company that answers "we do not make these, we work with three factories in Guangdong, here is who makes this one" has given a better answer than a factory that is vague — and is now a supplier you can work with accurately.

What can be verified independently

**The business registration.** Companies in most jurisdictions are on a public register with a registration number, a registered scope of business and a date of establishment. A manufacturer and a trading company usually have visibly different registered scopes.

**The address, on a map.** A satellite view of a registered address tells you whether it is an industrial building or an office floor. This is crude and it is also the single fastest check available.

**Any certificate, at the issuing body's register.** Covered in full on our certificate validation page: search by certificate number rather than by company name, and check the scope covers your product.

**Export history**, where the destination country publishes trade data. It will not tell you quality and it will tell you whether a company that claims twenty years of exports to your market has any.

What cannot be verified from a desk is the thing that matters most — whether they will do what they said on the third order. That is what a first order is for.

The video call, and the three things worth asking to see

A factory visit is the real answer and is not always possible. A video call is a reasonable substitute if you ask for specific things rather than a tour.

**The tooling for the model you are buying.** A die or a mould with a part number on it, in a rack with others. This is the single hardest thing to fake and the most informative.

**The line running that model**, not a line running something. Ask them to hold a finished part next to the machine that made it.

**The QC bench**, and what is on it. A caliper, a gauge, a sample board, a log. An empty bench is an answer too.

Ask for these live rather than as a video file. A recording is a recording of a good day at somebody's facility, and it is not necessarily this facility.

What a first order should be

Not the project. A sample, then a small order, then the project — and the small order matters more than the sample, because a sample is made by the best person available and a small order is made the way orders are made.

Our samples page covers what to check when it arrives. The three things a first small order tells you that a sample cannot: whether the packing matches the packing list, whether the lead time was real, and whether the pieces in the middle of the carton match the ones on top.

Payment terms are also a signal, in both directions. A supplier who wants full payment before production on a first order is asking you to carry all the risk; one who offers unusually soft terms to win a first order may be buying a relationship they cannot fund. Neither is disqualifying and both are worth noticing.

The reference worth asking for, and the three questions to ask it

"Can you give us references" produces a supplier's three happiest customers and tells you almost nothing. A narrower request produces something usable: **a customer in my market who buys this model, in this finish.** The narrowing is the point — it asks for a reference the supplier cannot pick purely for enthusiasm, and a supplier who genuinely has one usually says so immediately.

Not every supplier can give you a contactable reference, and refusing on confidentiality grounds is legitimate rather than evasive. What is informative is whether they can describe the customer at all: a market, an order pattern, a model. A supplier who has no specific answer about who else buys the thing you are buying is telling you something about how often it is bought.

If you do reach a reference, three questions carry almost all of the value.

**"Did the second order match the first?"** The first order is usually fine everywhere. Consistency across orders is the thing that is hard and the thing that is expensive to discover yourself.

**"What happened the time something was wrong?"** Not whether anything has ever been wrong — something always has. Ask how it was handled, who paid, and how long it took. This single question separates suppliers more reliably than any factory tour.

**"How long does a technical question take to come back?"** A number in days. It is the clearest proxy available for the factory-or-trader question above, measured from the outside by somebody with no reason to flatter anyone.

Four answers that look bad and are not, and one that looks good and is not

**"We subcontract our plating."** Normal, including at large and capable factories. Plating is a specialised, heavily regulated process and outsourcing it is often the higher-quality choice. What matters is whether they name the plater and know their process.

**"We do not have a certificate for that model."** Also normal. Testing is expensive per model and most catalogues are only partially tested. A supplier who says which models are tested and which are not is more trustworthy than one whose whole range is described as certified.

**"Our minimum on that is high."** A minimum with a reason behind it is a sign that somebody has costed the work. Our MOQ page sets out the four things that set one.

**"We cannot do that."** The most under-rated answer in the list. A supplier who declines a modification they cannot execute well has just saved you a project, and has told you their refusals mean something.

And the one that looks good: **yes to everything, immediately.** Any dimension, any finish, any quantity, any lead time, no questions asked back. A supplier who is genuinely able to do all of that would have asked at least one clarifying question about your door. Agreement without questions is not capability; it is a quotation written before anybody read the enquiry.

Applying this to us

It would be incoherent to publish this page and not answer it.

**We are a factory**, and like every real factory we buy some components in rather than making everything. Ask which, per model, and the answer comes back specifically.

**We do not hold test certificates for everything in the catalogue.** Our 307 and 311 exit devices are in testing, and until certificate numbers exist nothing we publish will imply they hold a fire rating, an ANSI grade or a UL listing. Our certificate page explains how you should check that claim, including against us.

**We do not publish a drawing for most models.** 84 dimensioned drawings and 95 door preparation drawings against 924 products, which our drawings page states as a number rather than an adjective, because question five above is the one we would answer worst.

**Several specification gaps are open and published**: the stainless grade on 224 rows, the zamak grade on 156, the brass alloy and DZR status on 57, the cylinder split on 45. Each of those is on its own page, with the count.

That is a worse-looking answer than most suppliers give, and it is the one that survives the five questions. A supplier whose catalogue has no gaps has either measured everything or has written what the gaps should say — and the second is far more common than the first.