How to vet a Ramadan decorations supplier before you send a deposit

1. Ask when the clock starts, not how long it takes

“40 days” is only meaningful once you know what starts it. Ours starts when the deposit is received and the artwork is approved — not on the day you sent the enquiry, and not on the day you first got a price. A supplier who quotes 40 days without saying this is not necessarily lying, but you have not yet got the information you need.

The other half of the question: does sampling sit inside those 40 days or outside them? With us it sits outside — a stock sample goes out within 10 days, and production only starts after you approve it. Ask both halves, because two suppliers quoting “40 days” can be a month apart in practice.

2. Ask what a sample costs and how long it takes

Stock samples are free here; the courier is billed to your account, which is the honest version of “free sample” — nobody is paying the freight for you. Custom samples follow the artwork schedule rather than a fixed number of days.

What you are testing is not the sample. It is whether the supplier sends it when they said they would. A sample that takes three weeks to arrive is the most accurate forecast you will get of how the order will go.

3. Ask to see the certificate, and ask what it covers

Audit names get listed without anyone checking what was audited. Ours are listed with their scope on the certifications section — BSCI, ISO 9001, FSC and SEDEX. Two things matter:

• Whose name is on it. A certificate held by a trading company does not describe the factory that will make your goods.
• What it covers. FSC covers paper and board. It says nothing about the electronics in a light-up lantern.

Ask for the certificate number and the audited entity name. A supplier who has them sends them in an hour.

4. Ask which AQL level they inspect to

AQL (Acceptable Quality Limit) is the sampling method most importers use to accept or reject a shipment: a sample is drawn, and the number of defects in it decides the fate of the whole lot. The question is not “do you inspect” — every factory says yes. The question is which level, and whether it is written into the order rather than agreed over coffee. Our inspection step is set out in how an order runs.

If your market has a product-safety standard for the item — electrical, coating, food contact — ask which standard the goods are tested against, and get the report number. Test costs are usually excluded from a quotation unless you asked for them, so ask.

5. Ask whether the MOQ is per item or per order

This is where budgets die. Across the 460 items in our range that carry a published minimum, the median is 1,000 pcs and the range runs from 50 to 5,000 — and that is per item. Twelve items at 1,000 each is 12,000 pieces, which is not the order most first-time buyers had in mind.

So ask two things: what the per-item minimum is, and whether mixing SKUs gets you past it. There is a second route too — stock, from 12 pcs per SKU, when the item is on the shelf. How the two routes work, and how mixing SKUs changes the risk, is set out in mixed-SKU ordering.

6. Ask for carton data, not just a price

A unit price with no carton volume is not a quotation, it is a number. You need pieces per carton and carton dimensions, because that is what turns into freight: a 20GP holds roughly 26 CBM usable, and the difference between a well-packed and a badly packed range is a second container.

Every product page here publishes its carton data where we have it. If a supplier will not give you CBM before you order, assume the freight quote is a surprise you will open later.

7. Then check the dates against your own calendar

Once you have a lead time, a sampling window and a shipping estimate, put your own date in and count backwards. That is what the order deadline calculator does — enter the day you need the goods and the market they are going to, and it returns the last date the order has to be confirmed. If a supplier's dates cannot survive that arithmetic, you want to find out now rather than in December. The wider season view is on the Ramadan 2027 ordering calendar.

What to send instead of “please send catalogue”

• Item numbers, with a rough quantity against each
• Which lines are stock and which are custom — this decides the whole quotation
• Destination port
• Any artwork, packaging or private-label requirement
• The date the goods actually need to land

Send it through the enquiry form. A supplier who answers these seven questions in the first reply is usually the one who ships on time.

Lead times, sampling terms and the certification list are the ones published on this site; MOQ figures are taken from the published data on each product page. Nothing here is a general claim about the industry — it is what we do, and the questions we would want asked of us.