Buyers Guide / Before You Buy

Before You Buy

Do You Need a Custom Magnet, or Will Stock Work?

Every magnet purchase starts with the same fork in the road, usually before anyone realizes it's a decision at all: is this a catalog part, or does it need to be built? Get it wrong in either direction and you pay for it — either in a redesign six weeks from now, or in tooling and lead time you never needed to buy.

The question underneath the question

"Custom" doesn't mean one thing. It can mean a genuinely new tool for a geometry that doesn't exist anywhere in a catalog. It can also mean a stock size with a different coating, a tighter tolerance called out on a drawing, or magnetization in a direction the standard part isn't normally sold in. Each of those has a different cost and lead-time consequence, so the real first step isn't "custom or stock" — it's figuring out which parts of your requirement are actually driving that answer.

When a stock part is the right call

When custom is actually the right call

The middle path most buyers don't know exists

Between "pure stock" and "new tool from scratch" is a wide middle ground that's genuinely the most common outcome: a stock size, re-specified. Same tool, different coating. Same geometry, magnetized in a different direction. Same part, ground to a tighter tolerance after the standard press-and-sinter run. None of these require new tooling, so the cost and lead-time premium is far smaller than "custom" implies — but none of them are stock pricing either. When you're not sure which bucket you're in, this is the question worth asking the supplier directly before you assume either extreme.

A five-minute gut check

1. Pull up the catalog. Search by your rough dimensions before you assume you need something built. Standard sizes cover more use cases than most buyers expect.
2. Separate the geometry question from the spec question. A standard-shaped part with an unusual coating or tolerance is a modification, not a new tool.
3. Check your timeline against your certainty. If you're not sure this is the final design, prototype in something close to stock rather than committing to tooling for a part that might change.
4. Ask what triggers a new tool versus a process change. A good supplier will tell you plainly — this alone often resolves the custom-vs-stock question in one email.

What this means for cost and lead time

Stock ships same day from inventory. Custom, once tooling exists, ships on the same cadence as any production run — but the first order carries the tooling lead time on top of the manufacturing lead time. That combination is the single biggest scheduling mistake buyers make on a first custom order: budgeting the production lead time and forgetting the tooling lead time that has to happen before it. The full mechanics of lead time and MOQ planning are covered in the sourcing library linked below — this chapter is only about deciding which lane you're in before those numbers matter.

Buyers Guide / Before You Buy

Before You Buy

Turning Your Application Into a Spec a Supplier Can Actually Quote

"I need a strong magnet that can handle some heat" is a real sentence buyers send suppliers, and it produces a real problem: nobody can quote it. Not because the requirement isn't valid, but because it hasn't been translated yet into the handful of fields that actually determine what gets manufactured. This chapter is that translation.

The seven fields every quotable spec needs

Working backward from what the magnet actually does

Most of these seven fields can be derived directly from the application, without needing to already know magnetics. A short mapping:

• "It needs to hold X pounds" → points to material, grade, and size together — pull force is a function of all three plus air gap, so this is where a force calculator or an engineer's estimate turns a holding-force requirement into a starting grade and geometry.
• "It sits near a motor / under a hood / in a sterilizer" → points straight to maximum operating temperature, which then filters which material families are even in play. Standard NdFeB grades top out well below where SmCo or Alnico remain stable.
• "It's outdoors / in a washdown environment / implanted" → points to coating. Nickel-copper-nickel is the default for general use; different environments call for different platings entirely.
• "It has to align with a sensor / commutate a motor / read an encoder pattern" → points to magnetization direction and pole count, and usually means the magnetization pattern has to be agreed before tooling exists, not adjusted afterward.
• "It gets pressed into a housing / bonded to a shaft" → points to tolerance, because assembly method is exactly where tolerance stack-up shows up as a fit problem later if it wasn't specified up front.

A worked example

The most common under-specification traps

1. Leaving off operating temperature. Without it, a supplier will quote a standard grade — which may quietly fail in the actual application months later.
2. Leaving tolerance unstated. Silence defaults to commercial tolerance, which is fine for many uses and wrong for anything pressed or bonded into a tight assembly.
3. Describing magnetization in ambiguous language. "Magnetized through the middle" can mean several different things geometrically — naming the axis explicitly (through the thickness, through the diameter, radially outward) avoids a redo.
4. Quoting only prototype quantity. A quote built around five pieces looks nothing like the price at production volume — if there's a production volume in view at all, say so even at RFQ stage.

When to loop in an engineer instead of specifying it yourself

If you can already state all seven fields with confidence, you're ready to request a quote directly. If the honest answer to "what temperature class do I need" or "what tolerance actually matters here" is a shrug, that's the signal to describe the application itself — force, environment, assembly method, duty cycle — and let a supplier's engineering team propose the spec rather than guessing at fields you don't have grounds to fill in yet. Guessing wrong on paper is free; guessing wrong after tooling exists is not.

Buyers Guide / Before You Buy

Before You Buy

Factory-Direct, Distributor, or Broker: Who You're Actually Buying From

Ask ten buyers who they bought their last batch of magnets from, and most will say a company name. Ask what kind of company it is, and fewer can answer. That distinction — factory-direct, distributor, or broker — matters more for magnets than it does for most commodities, because it changes who actually controls quality, lead time, and what happens when something goes wrong.

The three channel types

What each is actually good at

Factory-direct is the right channel when engineering support matters, when documentation and traceability need to hold up under audit, and when price at volume is the priority. The tradeoff is that true custom tooling can carry a minimum order tied to amortizing that tool — though as covered in the custom-vs-stock chapter, that only applies to genuinely new geometry, not to most spec changes.

Distributors earn their markup by solving a real problem: carrying smaller quantities of a wider range of parts than any single factory wants to hold, and being reachable quickly for urgent, modest-volume needs. What they typically can't do is redesign a spec with you or guarantee a specific production lot's traceability, because they're reselling from pooled stock.

Brokers exist because shortages and allocation happen, and someone has to find inventory when the usual channels can't. That flexibility comes with the least visibility of the three — a broker often can't tell you which mill or manufacturing site the material actually came from, which matters a great deal if a customer, an auditor, or an end application requires country-of-origin or process traceability.

How to tell which one you're actually talking to

• "Do you manufacture this, or resell it?" — a direct question, and a supplier that manufactures will usually answer it without hesitation.
• "Can I see your quality system documentation?" — a real quality management system (ISO 9001 or equivalent) points to a company built around consistent production, not arbitrage.
• "Will you sign a PPAP or provide lot-level traceability?" — this is very difficult for a broker to commit to honestly, because it depends on visibility they may not have into the source.
• "What happens if this part fails in the field?" — the answer reveals who actually stands behind the part versus who is passing along someone else's liability.

Where this leaves you as a buyer

None of the three channels is universally wrong — a distributor is often exactly right for a five-piece maintenance order, and a broker can genuinely save a program during an allocation crunch. The mistake is not knowing which one you're using, and assuming factory-level traceability or engineering support from a channel that was never built to provide it. Radial Magnets operates factory-direct, with owned U.S. inventory on both coasts and ISO 9001 documentation available on request — worth stating plainly here because it's exactly the kind of thing this chapter says to ask about.

Buyers Guide / Before You Buy

Before You Buy

What ISO 9001 and Your Compliance Paperwork Actually Cover

"Can you send your ISO certification?" is one of the most common requests a magnet supplier gets, and it's usually standing in for a more specific question the buyer hasn't quite articulated yet — proof of quality, proof of origin, proof of composition, or proof that a batch matches an order. Each of those is a different document. Here's the map.

What ISO 9001 actually is — and isn't

ISO 9001 certifies a company's quality management system: the processes, documentation, and continuous-improvement discipline a company runs its operations through. It is not a certification of any individual part or lot. A supplier being ISO 9001 certified tells you their processes are audited and consistent — it does not, by itself, tell you the specific magnets in your shipment meet your dimensional tolerance or magnetic performance spec. That's what the order-specific documents below are for.

The documents that actually answer your question

The certification-scheme question buyers sometimes get wrong

ISO 9001 is the general-purpose quality management standard. It is not the same as IATF 16949 (the automotive-industry-specific standard, built on top of ISO 9001's framework) or AS9100 (the aerospace equivalent). If your end customer or internal quality group has specified one of those by name, ISO 9001 alone will not satisfy that requirement — worth confirming which standard is actually being asked for before assuming general quality certification covers it.

Getting the documents you actually need

The practical fix for most of the confusion here is simple: instead of asking for "certification" generically, ask for the specific document that answers your specific question — a CoC for this shipment, a material cert for this lot, a Certificate of Origin for this customs filing. A supplier that already has a compliance document center set up can usually produce any of these without much lead time; one that has to generate them from scratch for the first time is worth asking about before the order is placed, not after.

Buyers Guide / Getting Quotes

Getting Quotes

Writing an RFQ That Gets You a Real Quote, Not a Guess

The previous chapter covered getting the technical spec right — material, dimensions, magnetization, temperature. That's necessary, but it isn't sufficient. An RFQ that's technically complete and commercially silent still comes back as a guess, because price, lead time, and quality terms are quote inputs too, and a supplier has to assume something when they're not stated.

What an RFQ needs beyond the spec

A structure that works for almost any magnet RFQ

1. Header: your company, contact, need-by date, and whether this is a prototype, production, or both.
2. Technical spec: the seven fields from the previous chapter — material, dimensions/tolerances, magnetization, coating, temperature, quantity, delivery need.
3. Quantity breaks: prototype quantity plus at least one production-volume tier, even if the production volume is an estimate.
4. Documentation required: named explicitly — CoC, material cert, FAI, RoHS/REACH statement, whatever your quality system actually requires.
5. Commercial terms: requested Incoterms, payment terms if you have a preference, and delivery location.
6. Drawing or reference file: attach it if one exists — even a rough sketch resolves ambiguity a paragraph of text can't.

What happens after you send it

A supplier reviewing a complete RFQ can usually turn a quote in a few business days for standard materials, longer if the geometry needs a manufacturing feasibility check first. If a quote takes unusually long to come back, or comes back with several clarifying questions, that's not necessarily a bad sign — it can mean the supplier is being careful about a genuinely ambiguous spec. What is a signal worth noticing: a quote that comes back suspiciously fast with no questions at all, for a spec that had real ambiguity in it. That often means assumptions were made silently, and they'll surface later as a change order.

Buyers Guide / Getting Quotes

Getting Quotes

How to Read and Compare Magnet Quotes

A quote at $0.42 a piece and a quote at $0.61 a piece for what looks like the same magnet aren't automatically the cheap one and the expensive one. They're two numbers that need to be put on the same basis before that comparison means anything — and the basis is usually where the real difference is hiding.

Normalize before you compare

Reading the line items

A well-structured quote breaks out piece price, tooling/NRE (if any), documentation costs (if not bundled), and freight terms as separate lines rather than one bundled number. That structure is itself useful information — it's much easier to negotiate or substitute one line (say, dropping an optional test report) when the quote shows what that line costs, than when everything is folded into a single figure you can't unpack.

When a number looks too good

A quote that comes in well under the others is sometimes just a more efficient supplier — but it's worth checking a short list before assuming that: does it include the same documentation, the same quantity basis, the same delivery terms as the others? Is the material and grade actually the same, or has a lower grade been quietly substituted to hit a price target? Is the quantity break realistic, or does the low number depend on a volume you haven't committed to? None of these make a low quote wrong — they make it worth a direct question before it becomes the basis for a purchase order.

Handling a quote revision

The comparison that actually matters is landed, documented, apples-to-apples cost at the quantity you're actually going to buy — not the number printed largest on the page. The chapter on total cost, later in this guide, goes further into what belongs in that number beyond the quote itself.

Buyers Guide / Getting Quotes

Getting Quotes

What Actually Drives Magnet Pricing

Two magnets that look nearly identical on a drawing can price a long way apart, and the reason is almost never that one supplier is simply charging more. Price is built up from a small number of real cost drivers, and knowing what they are is what separates a negotiation from a guess.

The five drivers, roughly in order of impact

Which levers are negotiable — and which aren't

Material cost tracks a real market index; a supplier isn't padding a rare-earth surcharge, they're passing through what the material actually costs that week. That's not the lever to push on. Conversion cost, tolerance, and coating spec, on the other hand, are all things a buyer actually controls — relaxing a tolerance that isn't functionally necessary, or choosing a simpler coating where the environment allows it, produces real savings that a price negotiation on the same spec never will.

Why this matters even if you never negotiate a price yourself

Understanding these five drivers changes what you specify, not just what you argue about. A buyer who knows that coating and tolerance are real, controllable cost levers will ask an engineer "does this actually need to be this tight" before an RFQ goes out — which is a cheaper place to find savings than a negotiation after the quote comes back. The should-cost modeling guide linked below goes considerably deeper into building an actual cost breakdown from these drivers, for anyone managing a recurring category rather than a single order.

Buyers Guide / Getting Quotes

Getting Quotes

The Real Cost: What Belongs in a Magnet Purchase Beyond Piece Price

Piece price is the easiest number to compare and the least complete one. A magnet that's ten cents cheaper on the quote can cost more once it actually lands at your dock, clears an inspection, and either performs or doesn't in the field. None of that shows up on the line labeled "unit price" — which is exactly why it's worth knowing what does.

What sits between piece price and the real cost

Where duties and tariffs fit in

For imported magnets, duty is often the single largest gap between piece price and landed cost — and it moves with country of origin and current trade measures, not with anything about the part itself. Buying from domestic stock sidesteps the import event and this cost layer entirely, which is one of the more overlooked reasons a US-stocked part can beat an import on landed cost even at a higher piece price. The tariffs and import compliance guides linked below go into the actual mechanics — HS classification, current rates, and Incoterms — if duty exposure is a live question for a specific order.

The cost that's hardest to see: getting it wrong

The most expensive outcome in a magnet purchase usually isn't a high piece price — it's a part that doesn't perform in the application, discovered after it's already assembled into a finished product. That cost doesn't appear on any supplier's quote, because it's driven by the buyer's own spec and vetting process, not the supplier's price. It's the reason the earlier chapters in this guide spend more time on getting the spec and supplier selection right than on squeezing the last cent out of a quote — a magnet that's slightly more expensive and correct beats a cheaper one that has to be redone.

Buyers Guide / Vetting & Derisking

Vetting & Derisking

How to Vet a New Magnet Supplier

"Are you ISO 9001 certified?" is the question almost every buyer asks a new supplier, and it's a fine start — but it's a yes/no question, and a real vetting process needs a few more that actually reveal how the supplier operates day to day.

Beyond the certificate: what to actually ask

Reading the certificate itself, not just its existence

When a certificate is provided, check three things beyond the logo: the scope line (what activity it actually covers), the site address (does it match where your part is made), and the expiration date (certifications run on renewal cycles, typically three years with annual surveillance audits — an expired or soon-to-expire certificate is worth asking about directly).

Vetting scales with what's at stake

Not every purchase needs the full process above. A one-time order of a few hundred stock magnets for an internal tool doesn't carry the same risk as a magnet designed into a medical device or an automotive program running for years. Match the depth of vetting to the consequence of getting it wrong — the questions above are the ceiling, not a mandatory floor for every purchase order.

Buyers Guide / Vetting & Derisking

Vetting & Derisking

Should You Dual-Source Your Magnets?

Dual-sourcing costs real money and effort — a second qualification, potentially a second tool, ongoing management of two relationships instead of one. It's worth it precisely when the cost of a single source failing exceeds that overhead, which for magnets is a more common situation than buyers often assume.

Why magnets specifically carry more of this risk than most components

The rare-earth magnet supply chain has gone through documented, material volatility in recent years — export licensing changes, concentrated processing capacity in a small number of regions, and material pricing that can move independently of anything about your specific order. This isn't a hypothetical: current tariff and export-control conditions have moved lead times and pricing on real orders industry-wide, not just for buyers who chose a risky supplier. A component with this kind of exposure at the raw-material level carries a different risk profile than, say, a machined aluminum bracket sourced from a stable domestic supply chain.

When dual-sourcing is worth it

When single-sourcing is genuinely fine

Not every part needs this. Low-volume, non-critical, easily substitutable stock magnets from a supplier with strong domestic inventory don't carry the same exposure as a custom high-temperature part built into a long-life program. Domestic stock in particular sidesteps a meaningful share of the risk this chapter is about, since it removes the live import event rather than just diversifying it.

What qualifying a second source actually involves

At minimum: the same specification sent to both suppliers, a first-article inspection from the second source compared against the same acceptance criteria as the first, and a documented decision on how volume would split or transfer if it were needed. It doesn't have to happen all at once — building it into the plan for a part's next design revision is a reasonable way to phase in the cost.

Buyers Guide / Vetting & Derisking

Vetting & Derisking

Samples, Prototypes & First Articles: How Sampling Actually Works

"Can we get a sample first?" is a reasonable instinct, but "sample" means different things depending on whether the part is a stock item or a new custom geometry — and knowing which one you're asking for sets the right expectation on both timeline and cost.

Three different things people mean by "sample"

What a first article inspection actually verifies

An FAI report checks the first parts off a new or changed tool against every dimension and magnetic property on the drawing, not just a spot check. The measured samples are typically retained as reference hardware — meaning if a dispute comes up later about whether a part conforms, there's a physical, agreed-upon reference to compare against rather than relying on the drawing alone.

When it's reasonable to skip ahead

For a stock geometry re-specified with a different coating or a documented tolerance change, a full prototype-then-first-article cycle is often unnecessary — a stock sample plus a CoC on the first production lot may be sufficient. The determining question is whether anything about the actual manufacturing process is changing, or only the finishing/documentation. New geometry, new magnetization pattern, or a tolerance tighter than the process normally holds — all of these are signals that skipping the prototype stage is a real risk rather than an efficiency.

Budgeting for it

Sample and prototype costs are usually treated as a sunk cost of the qualification process rather than a per-piece price point — expect to pay more per piece for a handful of prototypes than you ever will at production volume, and don't use prototype pricing to estimate production cost. If a rough production-volume budget number is needed before prototypes are even ordered, that's a fair thing to ask for alongside the prototype quote.

Buyers Guide / Vetting & Derisking

Vetting & Derisking

Red Flags: When to Walk Away From a Magnet Supplier

Most supplier problems don't appear out of nowhere at delivery — they were visible earlier, during quoting and qualification, to a buyer who knew what to look for. None of the signs below guarantee a problem on their own, but each is worth a direct question before you place real volume.

During quoting

During qualification and first orders

• Certificate scope or site doesn't match your part. An ISO 9001 certificate for "distribution and warehousing" doesn't cover manufacturing quality — read the scope line, not just the logo.
• No documented process for handling a failed lot. "We'll just remake it" is not the same as a corrective-action process with root-cause investigation.
• Consistent lateness with no proactive communication. An occasional delay happens to every supplier; a pattern of delays discovered only when you ask is a process problem, not bad luck.
• Unwillingness to provide a reference from another customer. Reasonable confidentiality concerns exist, but a flat refusal on a supplier you're about to commit real volume to is worth noting.

The cost of not checking

The reason this chapter exists in a buyer's guide rather than only a quality manual: the cost of catching a red flag during quoting is a slightly awkward email. The cost of catching the same issue after a production run has shipped is a line stoppage, a customer escalation, or a redesign. The few minutes spent on the questions above are cheap relative to what they're insuring against.

Buyers Guide / Placing & Managing the Order

Placing & Managing the Order

Lead Times and MOQs: What Actually Drives Them

"How long will this take?" has a different honest answer depending on exactly one thing: does this order require new tooling, or does it draw from an existing process and inventory. Everything else — quantity, complexity, coating — matters less than that first fork.

What actually drives lead time

Why MOQs exist and when they don't apply

A minimum order quantity on a custom part exists to amortize tooling and setup cost across enough pieces that the per-piece price makes sense — it's not an arbitrary policy, it's a reflection of that fixed cost needing to be spread out. Stock items generally don't carry the same MOQ logic, since there's no tooling to amortize; the practical limit there is closer to "smallest quantity a supplier can pick and pack economically" than a hard minimum.

What a buyer can actually do to help lead time

1. Send a complete, unambiguous spec the first time. The single biggest lead-time killer isn't manufacturing — it's a clarifying-question round trip on an RFQ that could have been avoided.
2. Decide on documentation requirements before the order, not during production. Late-requested certs and reports can push out an otherwise on-time delivery.
3. Give a realistic production-volume estimate at RFQ stage. It doesn't commit you to anything, but it lets a supplier plan material and capacity ahead of a confirmed order rather than reacting cold.
4. Ask directly what's driving the quoted lead time. If it's tooling, that's largely fixed; if it's queue position or material sourcing, there may be real room to expedite.

Buyers Guide / Placing & Managing the Order

Placing & Managing the Order

Setting Up Net Terms and Credit as a New B2B Customer

A first order with a new supplier is often paid up front, by card or wire — which is fine for a one-off purchase, but not practical for an ongoing business relationship with recurring orders and a finance department that runs on invoicing cycles. Getting onto net terms is a separate, short process worth doing early rather than after the fifth prepaid order.

What's typically needed to apply

• Business information: legal entity name, address, and how long the business has operated.
• Trade or bank references: other suppliers who extend the business credit, or a banking relationship that can confirm standing.
• A resale certificate or tax-exemption documentation, if the purchase qualifies — this is separate from credit terms but often collected at the same time to avoid a second round of paperwork later.
• A signed credit application — usually a short form, not a lengthy underwriting process, for typical B2B order volumes.

What determines the terms you're offered

Standard terms in industrial supply are commonly net 30, though a new relationship may start on shorter terms or a lower credit limit and expand as a payment history builds. This is normal and not a reflection of anything specific to the buyer — most suppliers extend more favorable terms to a proven, on-time-paying account over time rather than offering maximum terms to every new customer immediately.

Blanket orders and standing purchase orders

For a recurring need, a blanket purchase order — an agreement covering a total quantity or dollar amount released against over time — can simplify both the credit conversation and the ordering process itself, since it's negotiated once rather than re-approved on every release. Whether that structure fits depends on how predictable the demand actually is; the next chapter goes further into blanket orders, VMI, and consignment as options for an ongoing relationship.

Buyers Guide / Placing & Managing the Order

Placing & Managing the Order

Import, Tariffs & Getting Magnets Across the Border: The Quick Version

This chapter is deliberately short. Import compliance for magnets has enough real mechanics — classification codes, origin rules, current trade measures, air-cargo restrictions — that it needs its own dedicated guides, linked below, rather than a summary that goes out of date the moment a tariff rate changes. What belongs here is the orientation: what the moving parts are, so the dedicated guides make sense when you need them.

The moving parts, briefly

The one structural fact worth remembering

Where import is genuinely necessary — a specific grade, a specific supplier relationship, a volume that domestic stock can't support — the dedicated guides below cover the actual classification codes, current rates, and air-shipping rules in the depth this decision deserves. This chapter's job was only to tell you they exist and roughly why each one matters.

Buyers Guide / Placing & Managing the Order

Placing & Managing the Order

Reordering and Managing an Ongoing Supplier Relationship

The first order with a new supplier gets all the attention — the RFQ, the vetting, the first article. The tenth order gets almost none, which is exactly right most of the time, but a small amount of ongoing attention is what keeps a supplier relationship from quietly drifting off track.

Reordering: what to check even on a routine repeat order

• Confirm the spec hasn't drifted. If a drawing revision happened on your side since the last order, make sure the supplier is working from the current one, not a cached copy of the original.
• Reconfirm the manufacturing site. Sites can change without notice from suppliers who don't have a strong change-management process — worth a periodic direct check rather than assuming nothing moved.
• Watch for quiet price creep. A small increase on each reorder can add up to a meaningful drift from the original quote over a year of orders — periodically re-benchmarking against current material indices is a reasonable check, not an accusation.

Keeping documentation current

Certifications expire, and a supplier's ISO 9001 renewal cycle doesn't automatically sync with your ordering cycle. For any part where certification status actually matters to your own quality system, it's worth a periodic — not every-order — check that the certificate on file is still current, rather than discovering it lapsed during an audit of your own operation.

A lightweight periodic review

Growing the relationship deliberately

As a category grows — more parts, more volume, longer commitment — it's worth revisiting whether the original ordering structure still fits. A relationship that started as one-off purchase orders may be a better fit for a blanket order or a standing arrangement once volume is predictable; a single point of contact that worked at low volume may need a more structured account relationship at higher volume. None of this requires a formal renegotiation — it's a conversation worth having proactively rather than only when friction forces it.

Buyers Guide / Reference

Reference

The B2B Magnet Buyer's Glossary: Quick Reference

This is the short list — the commercial and procurement terms used throughout this guide's chapters, defined quickly for reference. For material grades, magnetization directions, and engineering terminology, the full Magnet Terminology Glossary covers the technical vocabulary in depth.

Buyers Guide / Reference

Reference

The B2B Magnet Buyer's Checklist: Start to Finish

This is the guide in checklist form — one line per decision point, in the order they typically come up. Each item links back to the chapter that covers it in full. Print this page for a working reference; the print stylesheet strips the sidebar and navigation and keeps just the list.

Before you buy

1. Decided whether the part needs custom tooling, a modified stock part, or true off-the-shelf
2. Translated the application into the seven spec fields: material/grade, dimensions/tolerances, magnetization, coating, max operating temperature, quantity, need-by date
3. Identified whether you're buying factory-direct, from a distributor, or through a broker — and confirmed which
4. Named the specific compliance documents needed (CoC, material cert, RoHS/REACH, Certificate of Origin) rather than asking for "certification" generically

Getting quotes

1. RFQ includes commercial terms, documentation requirements, and quantity breaks — not just the technical spec
2. Multiple quotes normalized to the same basis (Incoterms, quantity, documentation) before comparing
3. Landed cost calculated separately from piece price for any imported option

Vetting & derisking

1. Certificate scope and manufacturing site checked against where your part is actually made
2. Dual-sourcing decision made deliberately for any line-stopping or high-supply-risk part, not left as a default
3. Sample or first-article plan matched to how new the geometry or process actually is
4. No unresolved red flags from the quoting or qualification process

Placing & managing the order

1. Net terms and credit application submitted before the order is urgent, not during it
2. Import, tariff, and licensing exposure checked for any non-domestic sourcing option
3. Documentation and certification status confirmed current, not assumed from the original qualification
4. A lightweight periodic review scheduled for any part or category that will reorder regularly

Questions on any step? Contact us — or use the sidebar to jump back to any chapter above.