An independent, in-person ethical audit of your Chinese supplier — wages, hours, dormitories, health and safety, and the records behind them. We check the documents, then we walk the floor and talk to the people doing the work.
Almost every supplier will send you a compliance certificate. Far fewer will pass an unannounced walk of their own floor. Certificates get bought, audits get coached, and the second shift rarely appears in the records a buyer is shown. We go and look.
Our auditor spends a full day inside the factory: pulling payroll and attendance records, cross-checking them against pay slips and rosters, interviewing workers away from management, and walking the production floor, the chemical store and the dormitories with a camera. You get a signed, photo-evidenced report with every finding rated and a corrective-action list you can put in front of the supplier — or use to walk away.
Most factories need one man-day. Larger sites, multi-building campuses or factories with dormitories usually need two. We agree the number of days and the fixed price with you before we book. Transport is free anywhere in Guangdong; outside Guangdong, travel and hotel are discussed and agreed with you first — never added to your invoice as a surprise.
Book an ethical audit →Buyer-side only. We take no supplier fees, ever — so a pass means something.
Records first, then the floor — and the two have to match.
A standard factory audit checks whether the supplier is real, capable and organised: licences, machinery, capacity, QC systems and a basic walk of the floor. It is the right choice for most buyers who simply need to know the factory can make their order.
An ethical audit goes one level deeper into how the work is done. It is a social-compliance investigation: wages, working hours, contracts, insurance, worker interviews, dormitories, health and safety, and environmental records. The goal is not to prove the factory can make your product — it is to prove it treats its people and processes in a way your brand can stand behind.
The extra $200 covers work a standard audit does not do.
Our own footage from a vape factory in Shenzhen. On the line, a young worker chain-smokes device after device as the quality check — hundreds a shift. Almost every vape factory we have visited does some version of this, and almost every one of them owns the machine that is supposed to do the job instead. The machine takes a few seconds longer per unit, so it sits idle and gets wheeled out for buyer visits.
This is exactly the kind of thing an ethical audit is for. It is not on any certificate, no supplier will volunteer it, and you will not see it on a scheduled tour. We look at how the line really runs when the visitors are not expected.
Footage from a bulb factory visit in 2026. We walked into the cleanroom unannounced and, on the other side of the room, saw a child sitting in a chair. Most likely the school holidays had left the parent with no childcare option — but that is not an excuse. A child has no place inside a factory, and certainly not in a cleanroom where hazardous chemicals are handled.
At the end of the clip you see a woman — presumably the mother — working with Phosphorus Oxychloride wearing no goggles, no mask and only a single thin glove on one hand. These are the violations that only appear when you arrive without warning.
Tell us the factory, roughly how many workers it has and where it is, and we will come back with the number of man-days, a fixed price and a date. If a standard factory audit covers what you need, we will say so.
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