How to buy inflatables in China
At the first beginning, exclude trading company and middleman, as it makes no sense to do business with them. They just help to increase your budget. Nowadays more and more Chinese factories can speak English, so why not buy from the direct source?
After you sift out the factories from lots of companies, your next challenge is to distinguish who has best quality among hundreds of inflatable supplier, but it’s not the proper time to compare prices now.
Nearly all the companies declare their material is 0.55mm tarpaulin and more than 80% people trust it, so they pass to next step and start their hard journey on comparing prices. Obviously it’s a big pain to compare prices among so many companies because everyone says trust me, my quality is the best, who will you deal with finally?
You may always think that the thicker the material is, the better the quality will be. But that is absolutely wrong. If someone declares they use 0.6mm or 0.9mm PVC tarpaulin to sew inflatable bouncers and slides, please ignore and look for next one. As they are just trying to attract you to purchase by thicker material. 0.55mm PVC tarpaulin has been regarded to the best material for stitched inflatable games. If you are professional on inflatable product, you will know clearly 0.6mm or 0.9mm is just used to make sealed inflatable, such as paintball bunkers, water trampoline and inflatable boat.
Except the 0.55mm tarpaulin, another problem is the interior baffles. When people compare price and quality, only one tenth of them will mention this question. It’s too easy to be ignored just because it is inside the inflatable structure. The interior baffle is also the key point for price. Sometimes the price will be very different due to different baffles, especially the inflatable slide, which needs lots of baffles to keep the shape, if use bad material to replace good baffles, price will be nearly 20% down. So you see the big difference. Ask the company send you some actual photos of inflatable product and do not forget to ask about their interior baffles.
Besides the baffles, you must pay attention on the stitching. Most of factories just do double stitching on the jumping area, but if you spend a bit more time, you will find some ones can do triple and quadruple stitching in key areas inside the base of the unit. This will help to prolong the operating life of your inflatables. In another words, you will save much money for your future business, as all people know, repair cost is very high in USA and Europe.
Now it will be about price. It’s important to remember every extra penny deserves its value when you make decision on where to buy. You will have to face lots of different price, some price is high, but some is even lower than you imagine. But will you go with the lowest one? At least I will not, because I know when the price is lower than average, it’s hard for me to make sure if their product will be in high quality. You will consider if the product that you will finally receive is old, used, or the material is changed, or the baffles is different? Do not try to find the lowest price, because you will never find.
