Verify any supplier in six steps. Negotiate like you have boots on the ground. Move money without getting burned.
Five minutes to find a "factory." No verification because the salesperson seemed nice. 30–100% wired upfront. Then: a container of unsellable product — or nothing at all.
"I finally received my goods after 4 months and $12,000. Wrong material, wrong size, and the supplier's response was: 'same as before.' There was no before. It was my first order."
— a first-time importer, r/ecommerce (weekly occurrence)
Every chapter is built to be used, not read: checklists, tables, and copy-paste templates with annotated "why it works" notes.
| Part | What you get |
|---|---|
| Part 1 | The VERIFY System — the 6-step supplier qualification protocol: business license checks, virtual factory audit, sample testing, reference calls. Includes the 10 Red Flags table (any one = walk away). |
| Part 2 | 25 negotiation templates — first contact, verification request, sample order, price negotiation (tiered-anchoring script), pre-production lock, dispute escalation, and 19 more. Each annotated with the leverage behind it. |
| Part 3 | Money rules — payment method safety tiers (Trade Assurance vs wire vs PayPal), the 30/70 split, escrow options, and the recovery playbook when things go wrong. |
| Part 4 | Logistics & tariffs 2026 — Incoterms cheat sheet, de minimis changes and what they mean for your landed cost, freight-quote comparison template. |
| Part 5 | 10 AI sourcing prompts — turn any chatbot into a sourcing analyst: quote-comparison matrix builder, tariff-impact estimator, red-flag email screener. |
| Part 6 | The 7-day sourcing sprint — day-by-day plan from "no idea" to "verified supplier, sample in transit." |
Private-labeling on Amazon, Shopify, or Etsy. First (or fifth) China order — and no budget for a $500/day sourcing agent.
Hardware startups and DTC brands validating a physical product without hiring a full sourcing team.
You already lost money to a bad supplier. This is the system that would have saved you — and the dispute templates to fight back.
The toolkit repo below gives you five production-grade templates free — first contact, verification request, sample order, price negotiation, pre-production lock. The Playbook gives you all 25 plus the full verification and money systems.
Open-source VERIFY checklist, red-flags table, Incoterms cheat sheet, 5 free templates — plus 3 deep guides: supplier verification, reading a Chinese business license, Alibaba vs 1688. ⭐ Star it.
25 templates, VERIFY system, AI prompts, 7-day sprint. Instant PDF download, lifetime updates.
Yes — written for first-time importers, respected by repeat ones. Every concept is explained once, plainly, then turned into a tool you use.
No. The templates are in English and written so that any export-sales person at a legitimate factory handles them fluently. The Playbook also tells you exactly which verification steps need zero Chinese.
Single professionally-typeset PDF, 25 pages, ~6,000 words. Readable on laptop, tablet, and phone. Lifetime updates included — tariff and trade rules change; you'll get the revisions.
One avoided mistake — one inflated freight quote, one unnecessary middleman, one wrong Incoterm — pays for it 50×. A sourcing agent charges $500/day.
The gap between reading about sourcing and profiting from it is one sent email. Make it T01.
Sponsor $19 — Get the Playbook