Relationship
We come in person, we speak Vietnamese, and we build over years. Sourcing cannot be done from a distance.
01The standard
Three criteria, applied to every factory.
They decide which factories we keep, and which ones we let go.
Quality
Only factories we have seen at work, in the building that will make the order. Approved samples, and inspection before every shipment. We answer to the buyer for every factory we introduce.
Transparency
Certificates checked against the public registers, and a plain word on where the factory stands on origin. You know how we work and what we are paid.
All three, or we do not take the factory on.
The six steps.
One route, Vietnam to France. Furniture is its main lane.
Identify the manufacturers
A short list built on the ground, through visits. Never from a directory.
Visit on site
Capacity, machinery, workforce, safety, order book. What can be seen, and what can be verified.
Approve the samples
Prototype, counter-sample, written tolerances. What is approved is what gets produced.
Check the origin position
Certificates checked against the public registers, species, chain of custody: whether the factory can carry the European rules taking effect in 2026.
Stay through the order
The schedule followed week by week, inspection before shipment, and a person at both ends until the container sails. Your questions are answered the same day.
Record how the order went
Dates, volumes, defects, delays, and how a problem was settled. Every order is written back into the factory’s file.
What is in the two files.
Two documents decide whether an order is possible. Neither of them is a formality.
The origin file
What Europe asks to see.
- The species, botanical name included — acacia, rubberwood, eucalyptus, teak.
- The forest or plantation the lot came from, with geolocated plots.
- Certificates where they exist, and the chain-of-custody claim written on the invoice.
- The factory that actually cut the wood — not the trading house above it.
- The lot, tied to the container, so the file still stands up to a check two years later.
The visit sheet
What we look at on site.
- Capacity in containers per month, and what is already booked.
- The kilns: how many, and how the wood comes out of them.
- Joinery, D4 glue where the range demands it, stainless hardware for outdoor.
- The finishing line, the sanding, and what happens to a rejected piece.
- Workforce, safety, and the order book — who else the factory answers to.
- Whether the building we are standing in is the one that will make the order.
Ask us for the visit sheet we use. We will send it before you decide anything.
The register.
The register is our file on every factory we have visited. Everyone we meet goes into it. Few of them stay.
How it fills
We record everyone we visit.
- Every factory of interest is recorded: capacity, species, machinery, and the people who run it.
- We come back. A relationship is built over years and repeat visits, not over one order.
- Partnerships are put in writing: volumes, seasons, terms, and exclusivity once it has been earned.
How it empties
We keep only the reliable.
- After every order we score the factory on what actually happened: defects, delays, and honesty when something went wrong.
- A factory that slips twice comes off the list, and is told why.
- What reaches a buyer is the short list of factories that kept their score.
We would rather have no partner than an unreliable one.
Your file does not leave us.
Prices, drawings, plots, capacity, the names above you and below you. A sourcing agency holds the most sensitive file in the trade. Keeping it safe is part of our job, not somebody else’s.
The standard we are moving onto ML-KEM-768 · FIPS 203
In writing, before you send anything
A confidentiality agreement, signed by us first and on request, before a drawing or a price list leaves your side. It says what we hold, what we may put in front of a buyer, and what becomes of the file if we stop working together.
Nothing crosses between clients
One factory’s costs are never shown to another. A buyer’s programme, its prices and its short list, stays inside that programme, without exception.
Encrypted, and kept that way
Your file is encrypted where it rests, and we will open an encrypted channel for anything you would rather not put in an email. Records copied today can still be read by a quantum machine years from now, so we follow the post-quantum standards as they are ratified and move onto them early rather than late.
Your prices are yours. They go no further.
Discretion is part of the trade. A factory’s or a buyer’s file is kept like a bank file: encrypted, compartmented, and never shown for convenience.
What you sign.
Written here, so that none of it is a surprise at the first order.
You sign with the buyer
The sales contract for an order is between you and the French buyer. We are the agent between the two: we carry the brief, the negotiation and the schedule, and we never take title to your goods or buy them in order to resell them. Our own agreement with you is a separate document, covering the programme, the season, and exclusivity where it has been agreed.
In Vietnamese as well as French
Every document you are asked to sign exists in Vietnamese as well as French: the contract, the specification and the tolerances. We go through it with you in Vietnamese before anything is signed. Nothing important is agreed through an interpreter, and nothing at all is signed in a language you do not read.
If the goods are wrong
What is owed on a defective shipment is written into the contract before production starts, rather than argued afterwards. We inspect in your factory before the container leaves, against the sample you approved, so that it should not reach that point. If it does, we are in the room for the settlement, in Vietnamese, with the inspection photographs and the record of what was actually agreed.
Nothing is signed in a language you do not read.
Terms of remuneration.
Written here, so you do not have to ask on the first call.
You are never invoiced
No retainer, and no fee for being visited, introduced or followed up. Our commission is invoiced to the buyer. Nothing comes out of your pocket at any point.
When it falls due
A commission on the order, invoiced to the buyer once it has shipped, against the same documents as the order itself. One rate, agreed in writing before the first container.
Our fee is not taken from your price
We work on commission, not on resale. The price you set is the price the buyer sees, and our fee sits beside it rather than inside it.
One rate, agreed before the first order.