Key facts
What this is, in one glance
Dongguan · Shenzhen · Huizhou · Chaoshancoverage area (Guangdong, China)
$490 fixedstandard on-site report, one factory
5–7 working daysafter the visit, English PDF, signed
Limited slotsthis is a solo practice; I take a handful of visits a month
English report, Chinese sourcesI read the original records myself — no machine translation
Updated Nov 2026content and pricing last reviewed
If you found this page hoping for a $20 automated report with a hundred pages of court-record counts, I am not that service, and I can't compete with a crawler on speed. What a crawler cannot do is stand in your factory's workshop and notice that half the machines are unplugged.
The method
The lender's lens
When a bank decides whether to finance a factory, it does not ask "does this company exist?" It asks: can it survive long enough to pay us back? Those are different questions — and most verification services only answer the first one, because the first one can be answered by software.
| What a lender asks | What I actually look at |
|---|---|
| How leveraged is this factory? | Equipment financing registrations and chattel mortgages, read in the original Chinese: how many machines are leased, how much term remains, whether payments are current. A factory with every machine financed is not a red flag by itself — a factory with every machine financed and a sales team suddenly pushing for a 50% deposit is. |
| How far into cash stress is it? | How the sales side behaves in your negotiation: deposit size demanded, urgency about payment dates, flexibility on terms. Ten years of watching this from the credit side taught me which behaviors mean "growth" and which mean "someone is waiting for your wire." |
| How big is it really? | Social-insurance headcount against claimed headcount. Statements can be drafted; the social insurance ledger cannot. Machines actually on the floor against claimed capacity. |
| What role does my deposit play? | Where your order volume sits relative to one line's monthly output, and where you likely stand in the queue in a busy month. Is your deposit buying your materials — or paying last month's arrears? |
What you get at the end — in plain English
I call this a survival horizon, not a prediction. It is a stress test: what I would want to know if I were the one lending this factory money. Every conclusion comes in four fixed parts — what the record supports · what I could not verify · what would change my verdict · what to do before you wire. If I can't verify something, the report says so, on the page.
The sharpest check
Claimed capacity vs. machine-implied capacity
In the five industries I cover, capacity can be computed from the machine list. Machine count × cycle time × shifts = a ceiling that is very hard to fake, because the machines are physically standing in front of me.
A real example of the math, simplified
A factory quotes you 500,000 pieces a month. On the floor: 14 injection machines in the tonnage class your part needs. At a realistic cycle time, with the two shifts actually running, that supports roughly 210,000. Someone is quoting you another factory's capacity — or a trading company is quoting you a factory it visited once. The number on the quotation was never this factory's number.
This is the one check no automated report performs — the crawler has an "equipment" field but no way to test it — and most generalist inspectors can't do it either, because it requires knowing what each class of machine actually produces per hour. That knowledge came from ten years of pricing equipment leases against the output they were supposed to deliver.
Deliverable
What's in the report
One English PDF, written by me, signed by me, 15–20 pages. Every section says what it is based on — what I saw, what I read, or what I could not establish.
1 · Company & controlLegal entity, actual controller, related entities — the "same boss, five shells" pattern, confirmed on the ground and not just in the registry.Why it matters: the entity you contract must be the entity that owns the machines.
2 · The floor walkWhat the visit showed: machines running or idle, utilization, the whiteboard with real order codes, dormitory and canteen condition, how the boss and the floor workers behave.Why it matters: a factory can prepare a showroom, but it can't run a fake second shift for a whole day.
3 · Claimed vs. machine-implied capacityThe computation, shown openly: machine count, cycle times, shifts, resulting ceiling — next to the number the factory quoted you.Why it matters: the single most common misrepresentation made to foreign buyers.
4 · Equipment & financingWhat's owned, what's leased, what's mortgaged, and how much term and payment pressure remains — in plain English, with the registration facts behind it.Why it matters: a leased machine is normal. A leased machine plus urgent deposit demands is a pattern.
5 · Real sizeSocial-insurance headcount against claimed headcount; verified floor space against claimed floor space.Why it matters: two numbers that are cheap to check and hard to fake.
6 · Your order's positionWhere your volume sits as a share of one line's monthly output, and where you likely queue when the busy season squeezes.Why it matters: a 3–30% order is a sweet spot; 0.3% means you'll be the last batch shipped; 60% means you ARE their survival plan.
7 · Survival horizonThe lender's conclusion, in the fixed four-part structure: what the record supports / what I could not verify / what would change my verdict / what to do before you wire.Why it matters: judgment with its limits stated, not a score pretending certainty.
8 · Photographs, honestly captionedPhotos of what I saw, with captions saying what they do and don't prove. A photo of a running machine proves it ran that hour — nothing more, and I don't dress it up.Why it matters: you should know exactly how much weight each piece of evidence can carry.
Process
How it works
1You email meFactory legal name, address, what it produces, your planned order and deposit, and the one thing you're most worried about. Template at the bottom of this page.
2I confirm — or declineWithin 24 hours. I take a limited number of visits a month. If the factory is outside my four cities or five industries, I say no and tell you why, at no charge.
3The visitOne full day on site. Announced as your appointed representative, or discreet as an ordinary prospective-buyer visit — your choice. The report always states under which capacity I entered.
4The reportEnglish PDF, signed, within 5–7 working days of the visit. One round of follow-up questions by email is included.
Two things I want you to know plainly: payment is due only after I confirm I can take the assignment (never before), and if the factory refuses the visit outright, that is a finding — you'll get a short report saying so, plus a refund of the balance. I don't take jobs I can't honestly do, and I'd rather lose a fee than hand you a report built on a half-day of improvising.
Pricing
Two fixed prices, no tiers you don't need
On-Site Report
$490 fixed
One factory, one visit day. The standard answer to "should I wire the deposit?"
- Desk preparation: registry, financing registrations, court records, social insurance — read in original Chinese
- One full day on site, announced or discreet
- All eight report sections, including machine-implied capacity
- English PDF, signed, 5–7 working days
- One round of follow-up questions by email
Payment by invoice after confirmation. If the visit cannot happen, balance refunded.
Capacity Deep-Dive
$890 fixed
For orders above $50,000, tooling/molds involved, or a capacity claim you doubt.
- Everything in the On-Site Report
- Machine-by-machine capacity computation for your specific part
- Equipment financing read with remaining terms and payment status
- Town-level context: what this industry cluster actually looks like this year — who's expanding, who's quietly shrinking
- 7–10 working days; follow-up questions for 30 days
Best value when the order is large relative to the factory's size — exactly when the risk concentrates.
Why fixed prices: you're buying a day of a specific person's time and a signed judgment, not a subscription, and not a meter that rewards me for padding pages. If your situation needs something different — a second factory while I'm in the same town, a call instead of a report — ask, and I'll quote it plainly before any work starts.
Boundaries
What this service is not
- Not legal, financial or investment advice. It is an on-site assessment by a former credit underwriter, in plain language. Nothing here is a certification, a credit rating, or a warranty.
- Not a prediction. The survival horizon is a stress test with its limits stated. Anyone who claims 99% accuracy at predicting whether a factory will fail is selling you a number, not a judgment.
- Not production supervision. I don't inspect goods in production, don't do outgoing QC, and won't represent you after the wire. That boundary exists because supervision creates liability I can't honestly carry — and because my value is the clear-eyed moment before the money moves.
- No private personal data. No ID numbers, home addresses, or private contact details of individuals. I read official and public records, and I observe a place of business.
- No false pretexts. I enter either openly as your representative, or as an ordinary prospective buyer — a role factories see every week. The report discloses which one, so you know exactly what the factory knew.
FAQ
Questions buyers actually ask
Announced or discreet visit — which should I choose?
Announced (as your appointed representative) gets you access: the boss personally walks you around, books open, a real conversation about capacity and payment terms. Discreet (as an ordinary prospective buyer) gets you truth: the floor as it actually runs that day, with no time to sweep the workshop or coach the workers. Most clients pick discreet when they're already suspicious, announced when they're deciding between finalists. Tell me which you want; the report will state which one happened.
What if the factory refuses the visit?
Then you've learned something important, and you don't pay full price for it. You'll receive a short written note recording the refusal and what the records showed, and the balance will be refunded. A factory that won't let a prospective buyer through the gate has answered your real question already.
Why only four cities? Why not "all of China" like everyone else?
Because "all of China" from a one-person service means thin knowledge everywhere. I know which town in Dongguan does which process, what a five-year-old 200-ton injection machine trades for second-hand, what leasing penetration looks like in each of these clusters. That knowledge doesn't scale to the whole country, and pretending it does would make my reports worse, not better. Outside Dongguan, Shenzhen, Huizhou and Chaoshan, I decline — and I'll tell you honestly that you'd be better served by someone else.
Do you talk to the workers?
Yes, informally — that's one of the advantages of a discreet buyer visit. The canteen at noon, the dormitory block, the state of the machines' maintenance logs taped to them: these tell you more about a factory's real condition than the showroom ever will. I note what was said as observations, not as verified facts.
Can you guarantee the factory will be fine if your report is positive?
No, and I won't pretend to. What I guarantee is narrower and honest: the report will tell you what I saw, what I read, what I could not verify, and what would change my verdict — all four, every time. If a "positive" report can't survive contact with those four sections, it doesn't get written. You are buying a professional's eyes and signature, not insurance.
Why should I trust a one-person service?
You shouldn't trust — you should verify, and my report is built to let you: every claim points to something I saw on the floor or read in an original record, and it's signed by the person who was there. There is no team to hide behind and no analyst who never saw your factory. If the judgment is wrong, you know exactly who got it wrong. That's the deal.
What do you need from me to start?
The factory's legal name (Chinese characters if you have them), its address, what it produces, your intended order quantity and value, the deposit being discussed, and the one thing that worries you most. That last one matters — it tells me where to spend the day. Everything is in the template below.
About
Who writes the report
I spent over ten years on the business side of China's largest equipment leasing company, approving and managing financing for small manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta. The job was walking into factories and deciding whether they were worth lending to: whether the machines were real, whether the payroll was real, whether the boss was someone a lender could work with through a downturn. Several hundred visits across injection molding, plastics processing, machining, electronics, and printing and packaging — the same industries, the same towns, year after year.
StableSource is me, working alone, on the other side of the table: instead of deciding whether a factory deserves the bank's money, I tell you whether it deserves yours. Every report is researched, written and signed by the person who walked the floor.
Said plainly, because you deserve it that way
This service is new; the experience behind it is not. Ten years of factory-floor credit work, yes — but a young brand, no client logos on this page, and no testimonials borrowed from anywhere. When I've earned real references from real orders, they'll appear here named and verifiable. Until then, you are hiring the record, not the logo.
Order
Request an on-site visit
Email me with the details below. I'll reply within 24 hours — either confirming I can take it (with an invoice), or declining with a reason. Either answer is free.
Subject: On-site due diligence request Factory legal name (Chinese if known): USCC (18-digit code, if you have it): Address / city: What the factory produces: Planned order (quantity, value, deposit): The one thing I am most worried about:
A note on how fast I reply: I'm in Guangdong, UTC+8. If you write during your business day, my answer usually lands in your next morning. One person, one inbox — nothing goes into a queue.