China now is seen as the "world factory", so many compaines around the world turn to china to source products and service or outsource product and service, I believe you can find a lot of resources online and offline to help you to reach the exact suppliers and exporters you are looking for. but there are not so many information on helping you find chinese importers and buyers.
I was recently approached by an Pakistan seafood supplier, who ask me for advices on how and where to look for seafood buyers/importers in China. I have worked in several trading companies before, so I know the critical issue for you to explore the market in a new country is to find out the list of authentic importers in that country and try to get in touch with those companies.
Below is my advices to that client:
1) China Customs Information Products
Some of you make have some idea of the product of PIERS, I come to know PIERS when I tried to sell footware to U.S.A and can't have good resource to locate authentic american footwear importers, when we turn to American Footware and Apparel Association for help, they recommend the information products PIERS offers. PIERS's product is really fantastic, they can offer you a list of american importers of certain products(categorized by H.S code) in a certain period of time, that is exactly what we want, the thing is, the price is unbeleivably expensive, especially when we are testing the water of a new market, so we give this option up in the end.
China Customs also offers an service exactly like PIERS, you can buy the the list of importer on certain product(categorized by H.S code) during a certain period of time, the price is quite affordable even if you are testing water. The problem is the list is provided in Chinese, so it will need to be translated into your language. Also they only provide the name of the importer, not include contact information, so you need to find the contact information yourself, We help that Pakistan client gather the contact information by internet and 114 telephone inquiry system.
2) B2B site
on renowed chinese B2B website like Alibaba and Made-in-china, Abcsources,some chinese buyers and buy lead are listed there, not many though, it is a resource to access to the real chinese buyers. one thing I would like to remind you is that do remember to verify the seller and make due diligence against them(, also another blog entry entitled "Gold suppliers and TrustPass suppliers on Alibaba" shall give you some general ideas.
3) trade fair
Canton fair(also as China Import and Export Fair) and East China Fair are two comprehensive and famous trade fair hold in China, the attended sellers and buyers there are very authentic and mostly recommended by the local government to attend the fair due to their excellent business performance in the past years. so For medium and large size buyers, those trade fairs shall not be missed.
4) industrial association
You can try your luck with the industrial association of your target market, ask if they offer industrial database service or pubilish any english-version industry magazine, you will find some great resource there. We get many valuable business contact by buying one footware magazine published by Japanese Footware Association.
We have written an article compiling a relative complete list of China industry association, please check out for more information.
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