Verification establishes that a company is real. An audit establishes whether the factory behind it can make your product, at your quality, at your volume, repeatedly.
What an audit covers
| Legal and commercial | Licence, scope, ownership, export entitlement, and whether the site matches the registration. |
| Production capability | Equipment, processes, workforce, in-house versus subcontracted steps, and where your product would actually be made. |
| Capacity | Realistic monthly output, current load, and what your order would represent as a share of it. |
| Quality systems | Incoming material checks, in-process control, final inspection, defect handling, and whether records exist or are reconstructed for visitors. |
| Certifications | Management-system and product certificates checked against scope, validity and issuing body. |
| Working conditions | Safety, hours and housekeeping — increasingly a commercial requirement, not just an ethical one. |
Working conditions form part of every audit — what we check, and what an audit cannot promise, is set out in our ethical sourcing policy.
The number that matters most
Capacity relative to your order. A factory running at full load for a larger customer will take your order and put it behind theirs; one where you would be the biggest account carries a different risk. Neither is disqualifying, but both change how you should plan lead times — and neither shows up on a quotation.
Ask what percentage of the factory's monthly output your order represents. The answer predicts more delays than any other single question.
What you receive
- A dated report with findings, evidence and a clear conclusion against stated criteria.
- Photographs of the production line, equipment and storage.
- Capacity assessment relative to your intended order.
- Risks and gaps stated explicitly, with what would need to change to close them.
Where you have your own audit template or supplier qualification checklist, we work to it — see enterprise procurement.
When an audit is worth it
Audits pay for themselves on first orders in a new category, on any order large enough that failure would hurt, on custom or tooled products, and before qualifying a second source. They are less useful on a small stocked-item test order, where inspection alone is usually the better spend. We will say which one you need.
