Today we are going to show you the things you need to know to work with the watch manufacturers in China.
Why do you need to produce the watches by the Chinese manufacturers?
China is the world’s largest manufacturer. It’s also one of the most common places that online seller’s turn to for manufacturing.
China is producing millions of watches each year and the price is lower than watch manufacturers from other countries like USA, Switzerland and Germany.
So it is the choice of most popular watch brands such as DW, Emporio Armani , MVMT and Fossil. It probably works for you too.
Quality?
Yes it is one of the most important key of your brand. But no worries, many Swiss watches are also made in China, like Tissot.
When you are looking to have your own watches produced from China, finding the right watch manufacturers plays an important role.
It literally determines whether it will be a good start of your watch business or not.
However find watch manufacturers in China can seem like quite a difficult task, especially if you have no experience of this work.
So if you want to produce and receive your first batch own brand watches from China, this list is for you:
- How to find the watch manufacturers
- List of watch manufacturers in China
- Watch materials
- Minimum order quantity
- How to create my own watch
- Packagings
- Delivery time
- Shipping
- Payment
- Warranty
Let’s get started.
1. How to find the watch manufacturers in China
Attend a China Trade Show
Imagine being able to meet face to face with hundreds of Chinese watch manufacturers, feel their quality and discuss their ability to produce and even pricing.
Furthermore it can also be useful for the watch business startups to learn more about the products, trending watch designs in the industry and even the watch manufacturing process.
The watch trade show recommendation: Hongkong Watch and Clock Fair, Shenzhen Watch and Clock Fair and Canton Fair.
Find the Watch Manufacturers by Search Engine
It is probably cannot be affordable for a new watch startup to attend a watch fair.
Then the search engine is a very good option for you finding the watch manufacturers.
You can source the suppliers on Google, Bing or Yahoo. As English is not the first language in China, hence it is a good signal that if a Chinese manufacturer has their English website, which means they speak English and do global business.
It is easy to find the manufacturers which you expect by typing in your requirements in the search bar. It helps if you are specific here.
For instance, instead of “watch manufacturers”, you could search specifically for “watch manufacturers in China” or “custom watch manufacturers in China” or “make my own brand watches from China”.
Online Marketplace
There are three main online marketplaces in China Alibaba.com, Made-in-china.com and globalsources.com
Whatever your niche or product is, you can almost find a manufacturer here. Needless to say, watch is one of the most popular niche, so you can find the watch manufacturers there as well.
These online marketplaces have many manufacturers, trading companies and wholesalers. Finding a watch supplier there is easy just by typing watches or more specific mesh strap watches.
When you search watches, you will find thousands of suppliers, but you can filter by selecting “Gold Supplier,” “Verified,” “Manufacturer,” “Trading Company”.
However, some of the factories are not real factories even though they are labelled as “Manufacturer”.
What should you do? Choose “Verified” label when you search.
On Alibaba there are some manufacturers marked as ‘Verified.’ This label shows that they did factory audits by Alibaba, which means they have factory.
Easy right? But you need to verify the factory information through your conversation with them subsequently, as even a factory with 5 workers can be verified by Alibaba.
Let’s see am example. I find a watch supplier by searching men’s watch on Alibaba, and found a verified supplier. They are factory, but total employees 5~10?
It’s confused if a manufacturer has 10 workers, how can they produce watches. And factory size is still 5~10 workers with a history 20 years?
Ensure that you avoid any scammer suppliers on the marketplaces.
Referral
Ask your friends, relatives, or partners to see if they can introduce you to an overseas country, contact or middleman. Many of our customers are as a result of introductions made by one client to the other.
This approach works very well. You can know the situation of the referral companies from your friends.
List of watch manufacturers in China
More than 23% of global manufacturing was situated in China which is called the world factory.
When it comes to watch manufacturing, China is one of the watch industry center of the world, many renowned brands such as Tissot and Swatch are produced there.
It is incredible for you to find the right one from tens of thousands of watch manufacturers, especially you have no experience of doing business with Chinese companies.
Here we list some of the leading watch manufacturers in China which can produce custom watches for you.
OPS
Ops is a BSCI audited custom watch manufacturer with their own non-dust workplants, the experienced 120 workers guarantee the quality can always make you happy.
Due to Ops is providing a minimum order quantity 300~500pcs, they will be a good choice for making your own watches if you just start the business and look for good quality watches.
Ops works with both automatic and quartz movements including from Switzerland and Japan, such as Sellita, Ronda, Miyota and Seiko movements.
They also provide a wide range watch styles so you can choose the designs you are interested to customize it with your own concept.
3Wells
3 Wells is a watch manufacturer in Shenzhen. They are supplying watches to many international and micro brands in 35 different countries.
3Well is experienced in producing complete and semi-assembled watches for Certified Swiss Made watches.
Because of the big size, they only accept minimum order quantity 1000pcs of stainless steel watches and 5000pcs of alloy watches. And the production schedule has compromise on their key accounts.
Montrichard
It is a watchmaking company established for over 20 years ago. The Montrichard Group has offices based in Europe, Asia, and the USA.
You can see the Montrichard Group at all the most important worldwide watch events such as Baselworld and HK Watch & Clock Fair.
They provide starter packs, so that you can have a one-stop solution with Montrichard. However it will be a problem if your budget is limited as the packs cost a lot.
Watch Materials
Watch materials are the key of your watches quality and it determines if you are going to create a brand like Swiss made grade watch, or affordable micro brands like Daniel Wellington or a watch with retail price at $40.
Besides the materials impact the price, minimum order quantity, delivery time. That’s why we wanna talk more about watch materials.
The main watch materials you need to consider are watch case, straps, movement and glass.
Watch case materials:
The most used watch case material is stainless steel because of it is durable and fine finish.
Except for stainless steel, there are many other watch case materials out there, such as Titanium, carbon fiber, alloy, etc.
No matter you are starting your watch business or going to buy a watch, watch case is one of the main feature for you to consider.
The main watch case materials are:
- Stainless steel
- Titanium
- Alloy
- Wood
- Bronze
- Carbon Fiber
- Plastic
- Ceramic
Straps:
Different straps convey different styles- leather straps are classical; Nylon straps express the leisure and silicon straps are sporty.
There are many different watch straps with different materials, as you know the straps will make the watches look so different with different colors and materials.
The material options are usually:
- Leather
- Stainless steel bracelet
- Stainless steel mesh
- Nylon
- Silicone
- Perlon
- Ceramic
Movement:
As you know the watch movement manufacturers are mainly from Switzerland and Japan. Except for choosing the movement manufacturer or brand, you need to have an idea if you are going to use automatic or quartz watches.
Automatic watches will require you have an enough budget due to the movement is expensive. To get more idea of the options of automatic or quartz movement, you can read this article.
Glass:
In fact, glass is a minor important material you need to pay attention to, as the options are usually mineral and sapphire glass.
Most affordable brands are using mineral glass, like DW and MVMT. Even though sapphire glass cost more, but it makes your watches more luxury which is worth trying sapphire crystal.
There are also other glass materials which we discussed in this article.
Minimum Order Quantity
Minimum order quantity (MOQ) is the minimum quantity you need to order from a watch manufacturer.
You would be confused why the MOQ is necessary, as you are considering to make a trial order 10 watches to understand the market.
In fact, MOQ is a breakeven point of a watch manufacturer. With the MOQ, the manufacturer are able to proceed to the bulk manufacturing, and provide the most affordable price to their clients.
The MOQ is mainly based on the watch model but not colors. The definition of model is the watch case design is same and with same size.
Even with a same size, you can require different colors of the watch case, dial or straps.
In order to have a clear clue of the minimum order quantity of making your own watches, below the list of the watch parts MOQ.
- Watch Order MOQ: 300 pcs
- Watch Case MOQ: 300 pcs
- Watch Case Plating MOQ: 50-100 pcs
- Watch hands MOQ: 50 pcs
- Dial MOQ: 50-100 pcs
- Leather strap MOQ: 100 pcs per color
- Mesh strap MOQ: 100 pcs per color
- Stainless steel link strap: 300 pcs
With these MOQs, you can make some better color combinations based on the watch minimum order quantity 300.
How to Design My own Watch
If you don’t have the watch designs yet, it could be a good choice to choose the existing styles from the manufacturer catalogue. Find the preferable designs if there is a wide range styles.
Usually the watch manufacturer has their own design team, which can help you make the modifications on the existing designs.
You are suggested to make changes if you ever see something similar, so your designs will not be regarded as copy.
You can understand their process better here.
Packagings
You probably order the packagings for your watches together, so you don’t need to pack the watches yourself.
There is a fact that the watch manufacturers they don’t produce watch box, user manual or card, but they work with other packaging factories.
Therefore you can try to source packagings supplier on your own, but it is still a good solution to order packagings from your watch supplier, because they created the supply chain so many years and also able to help you to control the quality.
You can also require logo on the watch box, the minimum order quantity of watch box is commonly 500pcs.
If you are not going to order watch box, the manufacturer usually will pack the watches by bubble bag.
Delivery Time
As we said the materials will make the delivery time different. Here we will discuss the delivery time of the stainless steel watch.
As soon as you approve the drawings and details of your watch design and are ready to make prototypes.
The average lead time of making prototype is around 40 days in China, and you will find the lead time is longer in other countries.
If you are happy with the samples you received and decide to move forward to the mass production. The lead time is around 50~60 days.
Shipping
Due to the size of a watch is small, the default delivery method in China is express. For example, DHL door to door which normally takes 5 days to your door from your supplier. Remote area may be 3 days more.
However if your order volume is large, you’d better to choose the most economical way—sea.
Payment
The most used payment term with the watch manufacturers in China is 30% down payment and 70% before shipping.
But if you work with a manufacturer stably for many years, you can try to negotiate with them to provide a better payment term, which can support your business grows.
There are also other payment terms: L/C, 100% T/T (not recommend), 30% deposit and balance after receiving goods, etc.
Warranty
Before you ask the manufacturer what warranty they can provide you, you need to know how long you can provide to your clients.
Go to your competitors’ website and find how long of their watches, you can provide same or longer warranty but never less than it.
If you are going to provide 1 year warranty to your client, then speak to your supplier this (the warranty from watch manufacturer is usually 1 year in China).
Longer warranty will bring your clients a better experience, so you need to negotiate with your watch manufacturer to see the possibility. Normally additional warranty will require extra cost.
