The 4 Types of Factories in China

David Dayton over at Silk Road International has an excellent article detailing what he terms the "Three and a Half Kinds of Factories". For someone new to China or a company looking to break down their search for factories into segments, this article gives some insight into the nature of the factories based on the types of customers they currently service.

Understanding what type of customers your factory currently services can help understand what types of issues you may face in working with them. It will also help you to overcome issues as they arise because you will know why the issues may be occurring. Also, in general it will let you compare prices among factories and see why one factory might be more expensive (or less) for what on the surface may appear to be the same product.

The 4 different types of factories are: 'Purely Domestic', 'Mostly Domestic, Partly International', 'Purely International' and 'Limited International'.

David does a great job of breaking them down. For more details, have a look at the original post: Three and a Half Kinds of Factories.