If you want to start your LED lights business in your country, there are 2 ways for you to purchase the goods.
First, you can buy from the import companies in your country. This is the easiest way for you, but you need to pay a higher price for them, this will cut your profit.
Second, you can import the led lights from China directly, but this is not a very easy job for a green hand to import LED Lights from China.
Thanks to the development of the internet and economic globalization, to import the LED lights from China is coming easier and easier than before. In this article, you can learn how to import the led lights from China, and how to avoid the risk of your importing business.
After that, you can source LED lights and import from China by yourself, or find a sourcing agent in China to work for you to save your time but you know how they work.
Why buy from China
You can find many reasons that you should buy led lights from China. but I think the Competitive price and A full range of products are the most important reasons.
1, Competitive price
In China, you can find the complete supply chain of LED Lights, we do not need to import any parts of the led lights from other countries, and you can buy all the parts of any styles of LED lights in a supper big Accessories market near the LED Lights factories in one or two hours.
For the LED Lights production, most of them use machines to finish, most of the LED Tube and LED bulb factories have fully automatic production lines for the products, the fully automatic production lines run in 24 hours.
High-efficiency production saves much time for the buyers, and also saves money for them.
2, A full range of products
I think you will think it is an amazing thing that you can find all styles of the led lights in a whole lamps shopping mall, and many of the LED lights you’ve never seen before, but I want to tell you this is very normal in China.
There is a small town in Zhongshan, it is the Capital Of Lighting, there are more than 30% of the LED Lights all over the world that is made in this small town every year. There are many professional LED Lights malls in the town, selling the lights you know or you unknow.
So, you can buy all the lamps you want in one place, a really one-stop trip for your led lights business.
LED Lights Quality
Before talking about how to import the led lights from China, I think you should understand how to evaluate the quality of LED lights.
Compared to the price, I think the quality is more important. because if you buy the LED Lights from a factory at a very low price, you are very happy about this and so proud of it. but maybe the quality is very bad, this will put you at a big risk, so many customers’ complaints will destroy your business after you sell the led lights with bad quality.
Then, how to evaluate the quality of the LED Lights? You just need to know 3 parts of the LED Lights.
1, The Heat Sink
Usually, the heat sink is the housing of the LED Lights. The good heat dispersion will make the LED Lights work for a long lifetime.
The material of good heat dispersion, the first one is brass, the second one is aluminum, and the third one is iron.
Based on the price and the heat dispersion, the material of most of the heat sink is aluminum.
And different thicknesses of the material have different heat dispersion, the thicker the better.
For the model of the aluminum, 6063 is the top-rated aluminum with the best heat dispersion.
Maybe you can find a factory, their lamps with aluminum housing, and same thickness with other factories, but the price is very low, you need to pay attention to it, cause they may use the recycled aluminum or the aluminum is not the model 6063. Both of them will make the heat dispersion very bad, the lamp will be very hot when it works, and will “burn down” soon.
Then, how to check it?
First, from the weight, the same size, the same style, the heavier, the better.
Second, check the surface of the housing, inside and outside, if it is rough and uneven, then maybe the aluminum is not very good.
Third, test the lamp, ask the LED Lights factory to age the lamps for more than 8 hours, if we still can touch the lamp by hand, then it is OK.
2, The LED Chip
With the development of the LED Chips technology in the past years, the performance of the LED Chips is very good now, most of them have more than 30000 hours lifetime, for Commercial Lighting, 50000 hours lifetime is a standard, it means the warranty is 5 years.
There is three grade of the LED Chip, top-grade is the famous brands LED Chips, such as Bridgelux, CREE, OSRAM, PHILIP, and so on, the second grade is the big LED Chips manufacturer in China, such as SANAN, EPSTAR, SEOUL and so on, the third grade is the other LED Chips factories.
the key parameters of LED Chips are CRI, CCT, and lumen efficiency, all of the key parameters need to check with the professional machines, you can ask the LED Chips supplier to show you the LM80 reports and datasheet, you can find all the information about the LED Chips you need in them.
3, The LED Driver
LED Driver is the most important factor of the LED Light lifetime. There are so many styles of the LED Driver in the LED Lights market for different usage, indoor and outdoor.
There are isolated driver, non-isolated driver, narrow range input voltage driver (220-240V), wide range input voltage driver (75-265V), driver with flicking, driver without flicking.
Normally, the lifetime of the isolated driver is longer than a non-isolated one, but at a higher price.
No matter what design of the LED Driver, you need to check with the supplier if they pass the test in your country, such as CE for EU, UL or ETL for USA, SAA or C-click for Australia, and so on.
If they pass the test, then which driver is better for your LED Lights? it depends on your budget and the standard of your target market.
Find a Supplier
No matter what LED lights you want to import from China, and no matter how you understand the LED Lights business, finding a Chinese LED Lights supplier is the first step of all, then How to find a reliable LED Lights supplier for your business and get in touch with them?
There are 3 ways here:
1, Search in Google
Google is the biggest and The most advanced search engine in the world. You can search the LED Lights suppliers from China on Google, and get thousands of results from the website in a short time.
For example, if you want to buy LED Flood Lights from China, you can enter the keyword of “LED Flood Lights” in the Search Box on the Google website, 10 results on the first page will show on the screen in less than one second, but you can find most of the results are not about the LED Lights suppliers from China. You can add the keywords of “China” to narrow down the range of the results. After this, I think you can get the best results about the LED Flood Lights suppliers in China.
But you need to pay attention to the Top results of Google, which have the mark of “AD” in front of the results. They are the advertising, the website owner pays the money to Google to make sure their website is in the top place. Compared with the ones without an AD mark, you need to check the website carefully, to make sure the website is professional.
Pros: You can get thousands of the China LED Lights supplier in a second, and find the best one for you. Save money, Save time.
Cons: You need to pay attention to the advertising result in the top place.
All in all, Searching in Google is the fast way to find the LED Lights manufacturer from China
Cons: need to take a trip to China or other countries.
In a word, attending the LED Lighting exhibitions is the best way to find the newest products and good suppliers for your business.
2: Search in B2B Platform
Thanks to the rapid development of e-commerce in the past decades, now there are many Chinese B2B platforms on the internet, such as Alibaba, Made-in-China, Globalsource, and so on. There are thousands of the LED Lights manufacturers that sell the LED Lights via the B2B Platform. You just need to type the name of the products you need in the search box, then you can get hundreds of the LED Lights manufacturers. Click the live chat icon to get in touch with them.
But before you search the LED Lights manufacturers in the B2B platform, you need to know first, that the profit of the B2B platform comes from the member fee, who pays more, who gets the top place in the search results. Normally, the results in the first 10 pages are the biggest sponsors of the B2B platform.
Another bad experience to use the B2B platform is that, if you need to use the live chat, you need to submit your email address, and after that, you will get so many spam emails from the B2B Platform and the LED Lights supplier you asked for information, they email you every day and try to get the orders from you.
Pros: all the results are the LED Lights manufacturers from China, and you can talk with them about anything you want to know, including the price, via live chat immediately.
Cons: No all the results you see on the pages are good suppliers.
All in all, Finding the LED lights supplier via the Chinese B2B Platform is the fastest way to get information about the products, including the price.
3: Attend LED Lighting Exhibitions
There are so many LED Lighting Exhibitions in the world every year. You can reach the Chinese LED Lighting suppliers in the LED lighting exhibitions and trade shows, there are hundreds of the Chinese LED Lights manufacturers gathering in the exhibition halls.
Usually, the LED Lights manufacturers will display their newest products in the exhibitions, instead of searching the LED Lights manufacturers via Google or B2B platform, you can touch the real LED Lights products in the booths, talk to the salesmen face to face, test the products.
In the trade show, you can also collect the catalogs, contacts, or build a relationship with the suppliers as your backup suppliers.
There are several big professionals led lighting exhibitions and trade shows in China every year, here is the list:
| Trade show | Date | Address |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Kong Lighting Fair Spring Edition | April, every year | HongKong |
| Canton Fair Spring Edition | April, every year | Guangzhou |
| Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition | June, every year | Guangzhou |
| Canton Fair Autumn Edition | Middle of October every year | Guangzhou |
| Hong Kong Lighting Fair Autumn Edition | End of October every year | HongKong |
But if you want to find the LED Lights supplier in the trade shows, you do not need to fly to China to attend the lighting fairs listed above. Now more and more LED lights manufacturers have booths in the international lighting fairs, so, you can check with your local trade shows, maybe you can find a good LED lights supplier from China in your country.
Here is the list of the different trade shows in different countries:
| Trade show | Date | Address |
|---|---|---|
| BIEL Light+building | September, each two years | Egypt |
| Light-Middle East | October, every year | UAE |
| International Lighting Industry Exhibition | August, every two years | Brazil |
| International Trade Show of Lighting Equipment | February, every year | Poland |
| Light+Building | March, every two years | Alemanha |
| Interlight Moscow | September, every year | Russia |
| LED EXPO | June, every year | Korea |
| LED EXPO BENELUX | February, every year | Holanda |
| LFI | May, every year | EUA |
| The LED Show | February, every year | EUA |
| LED EXPO PERU | October, every year | Peru |
| Expo Electrica International | June, every year | Mexico |
| Africa LED Expo | September, every year | South Africa |
| LIGHTING FAIR | March, every year | Japan |
| Saudi Elenex | April every year | Saudi Arabia |
| Istanbul Light | September, every Two years | Turkey |
| International Trade Fair for the Electrical and Electronics Industry | November, every two years | Espanha |
| ILLUMINOTRONICA | November, every year | Itália |
| Light India | October, every two years | India |
| EXPO EDIFICA | October, every year | Chile |
For more Lighting Fair information in the world, please check with this website: https://10times.com/lights-lighting.
By the way, there is another advantage to visiting the light fairs, you can buy the samples at a cheap price on the last day of the trade show.
Pros: touch the real products, talk to suppliers face to face.
Cons: need to take a trip to China or other countries.
In a word, attending the LED Lighting exhibitions is the best way to find the newest products and good suppliers for your business.
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Before Order
I think you should have found many suppliers after you know the ways to find the LED lighting manufacturers. and after you have nice communication with the salesmen of the manufacturers, you get a good price and want to place your order now.
please stop it.
Before you place bulk orders to a new supplier, there are THREE steps needed to be finished in advance.
1, Clear Communication
For business, unimpeded communication is the first thing. When you send an email, the supplier can give feedback to you in a short time with professional answers to your questions. So the salesman needs to be a fluent English speaker and know the LED Lights very well.
You can contact the LED Lights supplier via email, phone call, or instant messaging App, such as WhatsApp, webchat, and so on. All of them will improve communication efficiency to save time and money.
2, Visit the Factory.
If you confirm the products of the samples from the LED Lights manufacturers and select one of them as your main supplier. Before you order a big quantity, you need to inspect the factory, to make sure they can finish the huge order on time. The good supplier needs to have several production lines and professional test rooms in the factory, and also a big warehouse to store the final products before shipping.
1, Production Lines
Production Lines are the main part of the LED Lights factory, you can find the numbers of the production lines in the factory, so, if you have a big order and need to make 10000 pieces LED Flood Lights or LED Street Lights one month, but just 2 production lines in the workshop and one of them is the packaging line, I think you need to find the other factory for your orders.
To check the production lines, you also need to talk with the boss or the director of the workshop, How they will do for your small order or urgent order. This is very important for your LED Lights business, cause not all of your orders are big orders, and have enough time for delivery. You need strong support.
2, Aging Production Lines
All of the LED lights need to be aging more than 8 hours, even 24 to 48 hours before packing, to check if the LED lights work well for a long time.
When you visit the factory, you need to check how many LED lights can be aging in one time on the aging production line, this is the bottleneck of the production capacity, cause all of the LED Lights to need aging in a long time.
3, Test Room
The test room is very important for a LED Lights factory, we need the machine to check the parameters of the lamps, so an integrating sphere is the standard configuration of the test room.
Via the integrating sphere, we can check the Power, the CCT, the CRI, the Lumen, and the Voltage of your products. You can operate the machine by yourself, it is very easy to understand.
If you import the commercial lights, such as the track light, the downlight, maybe you need a Goniophotometer to check the Light distribution curves. It needs a dark room for this testing.
4, How to Visit the Factory
If you do not have enough time or money to fly to China to visit the factory, then, How to do a factory visit?
there are two ways here:
First, find a third party inspection company, pay them money, and ask them to visit the LED Lights factory and give you a detailed report.
Second, it is the popular one now, you can visit the factory by the camera, you can have a video conference with your supplier, and ask them to show you all of the factories you want to see.
Frankly, It’s very cumbersome to visit a factory, but I think it is the most important step to import the LED Lights from China. By visiting the LED Lights factory, you can find if the LED Lights manufacturer is trustworthy, and check the quality of the lights on their production lines, cause we know, you can make the sample with perfect quality, but you can not ask the factory take the same production time as the samples for each product in bulk production. It is worthwhile to visit a factory to find a business partner that will help you to avoid so many problems in the future.
3, Order Samples
After you get the sample, you can check the quality, and also check if it meets the demands of the lighting in your country by your local laboratory.
You can ask the suppliers to send the samples by Express, such as the DHL, UPS, and FedEx to save time. Normally, the delivery time is about 3-7 days.
If you have seen the products in the trade show, then you can pass this step.
2: Place an order
Now, it is time to start the importing business. After you check the quality of the samples and visit the factory, you select one or two LED Lights manufacturers as your main suppliers. Now you can place bulk orders to them.
If the products will be all the same as the sample you get, that is the easy way to place the order, just ask the factory to make the same thing.
If you need to order the other one, then you need to talk to the LED Lights manufacturers all you need cleanly.
A proforma invoice is important before confirming the order. A Proforma invoice is a contract, you can sign it and send it back to your supplier to confirm the details written in the file. So, pls take care of the details!
How to Pay
1, Payment Terms
In international trade, there are different payment terms. When you get quotations from the supplier, you need to tell them what payment terms you prefer, because Not all of the LED Lights factories are OK for all of the payment terms.
Usually, you need to pay a deposit to start the production of the bulk order, the amount of the deposit always is 30% of the total payment, and the balance needs to be cleaned before shipping.
If the LED Lights are shipped by sea, you can pay the balance to get the customs clearance document and Bill of Loading after shipping.
But all of all, you need to tell the supplier what payment terms you want when you ask for a price.
2, Payment Methods
There are many payment methods in international trade, such as pay by a bank (T/T), Paypal, Western Union, Letter of Credit (L/C).
Usually, when you start to work with a new LED Lights factory, the payment method is T/T. and after the business go years, you are the old client of them, you can talk with them for the better payment method.
Before you make the first payment for a new supplier, it is better to check with the salesmen for the details of the bank account via phone call or instant messaging App online, this will make sure the bank account is safe and correct.
And if the LED Lights supplier changes the bank account by email, you need to check with the supplier via phone call or instant messaging App, or you can ask them to send you a file with the official stamp. This will avoid money lost in the email box is hacked.
Inspection
After the goods are finished, you can find a third party inspection company to come to the factory to do the job for you.
Pay them money by jobs, and get an inspection report of your products.
Of course, you also can inspect the products by the camera, ask the salesman to do the inspection live stream for you.
But to avoid the bad quality products, you need to do things for it when you ask for a price from the LED Lights factories. It is a high probability event to get poor products at a low price. In China, you can not find the lowest price, because the price is lower, lower, and lower. Now the price of the parts of the LED Lights is very transparent, Such as the driver, the LED Chips, the unit price of the aluminum. So if you get a price lower than normal, please pay more attention to it, they may use the fake brand of the parts.
One more, never import the LED Lights without any Warranty!
Shipping
There are several shipping ways for LED Lights such as by sea, by air, by train, by express. For the bulk order, usually shipping by sea, it is the cheapest way, but takes a long time, about 12-45 days to ship to all over the world. If the order is urgent, you can ship the LED Lights by air, it takes about 7-15 days, and the price is higher. For the sample, we send it by express, such as UPS, DHL, FedEx.
If you are from Europe, you can ship the goods by Train, it takes 15 days from China to Hamburg, Germany, it is faster than shipping by sea and cheaper than shipping by air.
You also can find a shipping agent to work for you, the shipping agent can come from your country or China. You just need to give them the packing list of your goods and tell them where the location of the factory is, and when you need LED Lights to arrive at your warehouse, they will give you the best shipping method with the price.
Do a plan for your order
An order plan for orders is very very important in international trading. It takes a long time to import LED Lights from China, from 15 days to 60 days, and in the meantime, everything will happen to delay the delivery time. Such as the raw material is a delay, the shipper can not book the shipment on time, the goods can not be released in time by the China Custom, and most of the factories are very busy before the holiday, So, you need to do a plan for your orders to keep your LED Lights no shortage for your shops.
Factory or Trading company?
Buy the products from a factory or a trading company in China, it is a question. Which one is better for you? Before you choose, you need to know the advantages and disadvantages in advance.
Factory:
Advantages: Better Price, professional at their products.
Disadvantages: Need a high MOQ, no Fluent English salesmen in most small factories.
Trading Company:
Advantages: Small MOQ, different products, Fluent English Salesmen
Disadvantages: need to pay more money.
So, if you just import a few varieties of LED Lights from China one time, you can choose a factory, one Kind of LED Lights, one factory. Because you only buy 3 kinds of LED Lights for your main business, such as Holofotes de LED, Luzes do painel de LED, Luzes de rua LED, you just need to communicate with 3 factories one time. By this, you can get a better price from the professional factories.
If you buy a lot of kinds of LED Lights from China, but not a large quantity, I think the Trading company is better for you. You do not need to communicate with so many different factories, which will save a lot of time for you. You also do not need to buy a large quantity per item per time, cause the trading company can put the same LED Light orders from different clients together with for the factory. One more, the trading company can inspect the products before shipping and arrange the shipping for you.
Conclusão
There is no doubt that Importing LED Lights from China will make your profit to the max for your LED Lights business. The Chinese LED Lights factories make good quality LED Lights for all the world at a lower price. But before importing LED Lights from China, you need to do deep research about the products and factories, this will help you to avoid so many problems for your future business.
Hope this article will help you.
If you have any idea about importing LED Lights from China, please send it to email: [email protected] or leave your comments below. Thanks