How to plan a China sourcing trip from Kenya

A sourcing trip is bought as travel and lost as logistics. The buyers who come back with usable supplier relationships are almost always the ones who decided what they were sourcing before they decided where they were going.

Start with the sourcing goal, not the city

Write down the product categories, the order sizes you are realistically placing, whether you need to see production or only samples, and whether this trip is discovery or negotiation. Those four answers choose the cities for you.

Guangzhou, Yiwu or Shenzhen

Guangzhou and Foshan suit wholesale volume, furniture, building materials, ceramics and broad manufacturing access - and the Canton Fair anchors the calendar. Yiwu suits wide product discovery across general merchandise at SME order sizes, where a buyer wants to see thousands of items in a few days. Shenzhen suits electronics, components, devices and technology-led sourcing, with factory access across the surrounding manufacturing belt.

Most first trips try to cover all three. Two is usually the honest maximum for a week, once transfer days are counted.

Count working days, not calendar days

A seven-day trip from Nairobi is not seven working days. Departure and arrival consume roughly a day and a half, each city change costs a half to a full day, and the first morning after a long flight is rarely a good negotiation slot. Build the plan on working days and the itinerary stops being optimistic.

Interpreters change what the trip produces

In market halls, an interpreter who knows the sector vocabulary is the difference between price discovery and polite confusion. Brief them beforehand on your categories, your target quantities and the questions that matter - MOQs, lead times, certification, sampling. Interpreters are not negotiators; you still need to know your numbers.

Sequencing and transport

Book high-speed rail seats in advance around fair periods and holidays. Keep hotels adjacent to the markets you are visiting rather than in the central business district. Use pre-arranged vehicles with a briefed driver when travellers are carrying samples, and confirm each supplier address in Chinese characters before departure.

What to prepare before you fly

• Category list with target quantities and price expectations
• Sample handling and shipping plan agreed before you buy
• Business visa documentation staged early with the correct invitation letters
• Payment method and connectivity arranged before arrival
• Company profile and requirement sheet, translated
• Realistic per-city working-day allocation with slack
• One coordinator holding flights, hotels, rail and vehicles

Where we fit

Tulla Travel handles the travel and mobility layer of a sourcing programme from Nairobi: routing, visas, hotels, interpreters, inter-city movement and group logistics. Supplier selection, negotiation, quality assurance and importation remain your commercial decisions - we do not act as a sourcing agent, freight forwarder or customs broker.