Categories
The list never changes, but the check that usually fails does. These are the places a review most often finds something, category by category.
Power supplies, cabling, lighting, consumer devices. Voltage, plug type and approval marks change by destination, and that is where it lands: a certificate issued for the wrong market reads as valid right up until customs asks which one it is.
Workshop tools, spare parts, manuals. Whether the seller has actually handled the machine matters most: a trading company quoting one it has never touched will not have the technical file when you need it.
Cement, steel, fittings, finishes. Volume hides the question of who actually made it, so going to look is what pays for itself — a broker's price on a mill's product is a price with no mill behind it.
Replacement parts, consumables, accessories. What the part actually is again, and harder: a part number is not a specification, and "compatible with" is a different claim from "original" in every way that matters on arrival.
High volume, thin margin, and packing data that decides whether the container is full. Packing and carton figures are the most common omission in the quotation.
Garments, fabric, home textiles, workwear. The wording of the quotation carries the ambiguity here: a price per piece that does not state the size curve, the colourways and the minimum per colour is not yet a price.
Formulated goods carry registration requirements at the destination. Registration and labelling do the work here, and both need checking against the arrival date, not the order date.
Health certificates, halal attestation and a shelf life that has to survive the voyage and still leave something to sell. Documents read against the arrival date rather than the order date — this is the category where a lapsed one is discovered at the port.
Tents, lighting, vehicle camping, sports equipment, shade and storage. The one that usually fails is documentation that lapsed quietly — flame-retardancy and battery paperwork are rarely reissued unless somebody asks.
Models, toys, parts, controllers, batteries. Lithium cells change the packing, the certificates and sometimes the whole freight route. The quotation is where the surprise lands.
Small orders, many workshops, and material claims that are hard to see. How long the workshop has existed is the useful one: makers in this trade appear and disappear between seasons, and a company founded after your last order is a company with no record to check.
Cartons, labels, films, print finishing. A unit price hides the one-off costs — plates, dies, tooling, artwork proofs — so what the quotation leaves out decides whether the second order costs what the first one did.
Stationery, furniture, consumables, classroom supply. Demand arrives in one season and leaves in another, so the quotation and the lead time behind it are what decide whether the goods land before the term starts or after it.
Protective equipment, alarms, access control, site safety. The standard on the certificate is not paperwork here: what a helmet or a harness is certified to is the whole product, and an expired or substituted certificate is a liability you have imported.
Where you know the outcome and not the supplier. The work starts at who the company is and what it has shipped before, because there is no incumbent to compare against.
Regardless of category
Whatever the product, the finding that most often changes what a buyer does next is the bank account named on the proforma not matching the company on the contract.
We will say which of the twelve are most likely to move, and what to ask for before you pay.