Supplier due diligence
starts here.

Trade Assurance offers refund protection on orders placed and paid through Alibaba's platform. The moment your supplier moves communication to WhatsApp or asks for a bank transfer, which most do, that protection disappears entirely. It also does not verify factory capacity, check whether certifications are genuine, or assess the legal and financial standing of the supplier before you commit. ALIX does all of that before a single pound leaves your account.

Long-term supplier relationships give a false sense of security. A supplier's business scope, financial health, legal standing and ownership can all change without you knowing. Eight years of good behaviour does not show up in any government registry. Many buyers discover problems with established suppliers when they are about to place their largest ever order, which is exactly the wrong moment. Our monthly monitoring option exists specifically for this scenario.

For large orders, yes, a factory visit makes sense and we would always recommend it for significant commitments. But visiting a factory does not tell you whether the company is legitimately registered, whether it has active court disputes, or whether its certifications belong to a different entity. A supplier can show you a professional facility that has nothing to do with the business you are contracting with. ALIX runs a different layer of due diligence. If you want both, we can arrange the physical visit through our partners after the report is delivered.

Yes, for now. Our checks draw on Chinese government infrastructure specifically, including the SAMR business registry, the National Enterprise Credit Information system, the Supreme People's Court database and Chinese customs records. These systems do not have equivalents in most other countries that allow the same depth of independent verification. We are honest about what we can and cannot do rather than overclaiming.

For businesses placing repeat orders with the same suppliers, we offer a monthly check covering changes in legal status, court records, ownership structure and blacklist status. If anything changes you receive an alert with a summary of what has changed and what it means. Priced from £79 per month per supplier. Ask us about this when you get in touch.