01
Decide the freight mode before you ask for a price
The single biggest variable in what a component actually costs you is not the unit price — it is how it travels. Air freight is charged per kilogram and lands in days. Sea freight is charged per cubic metre and lands in weeks. For a small, dense part the two can be within a few rupees of each other. For a light, bulky part such as a speaker enclosure, sea can be a fraction of the air cost.
Ask for the unit price and the freight basis together. A quotation that gives you one without the other is not a landed cost, and a landed cost is the only number you can plan against.
02
Understand chargeable weight, or you will be surprised by the invoice
Freight is billed on whichever is greater: the actual weight of the carton, or its volumetric weight. Volumetric weight converts the space a carton occupies into a weight figure using a fixed divisor — for air freight, cubic metres multiplied by 167.
A carton of connector housings might weigh four kilograms but occupy 0.05 cubic metres. Volumetrically that is 8.35 kg, so you will be charged for 8.35 kg, not four. This is why cartons that feel light can cost more to move than dense ones, and why the useful question to a supplier is not just "what does it weigh" but "how many pieces per carton, and what is the carton's volume".
03
Order in whole cartons
Suppliers ship cartons, not pieces. If a carton holds 500 pieces and you order 2,400, you are paying to move five cartons — 2,500 pieces of space — whether or not the last hundred pieces exist.
Round your order quantity to the carton before you place it. On a large order this is often a bigger saving than anything you will negotiate off the unit price.
04
Fix the exchange rate at the moment you order
Chinese suppliers quote in USD or CNY. Your costing is in rupees. If you convert at whatever rate applies on the day the goods land, your margin is set by the currency market rather than by you.
Record the rate that applied when the order was placed and cost the order against that. A landed cost from March should still read as March when you look at it in July. If it moves every time you open the file, you cannot tell whether a product line is profitable.
05
Get the order acknowledged, not just sent
A purchase order that has been sent is not an order that has been accepted. The gap between the two is where most supply problems begin: the supplier is short on one line, substitutes a near-equivalent, or has not read the order at all.
Ask for a line-by-line acknowledgement — confirmed quantity against ordered quantity, per item. A supplier who confirms nine lines and flags a shortfall on the tenth has given you three weeks to find the tenth line elsewhere. A supplier who simply goes quiet has given you nothing.
06
Specify the part properly the first time
For semiconductors and ICs, give the full manufacturer part number rather than a description, and state whether an alternate manufacturer is acceptable. For mechanical parts, a drawing or a photograph of the part being replaced is worth more than a paragraph of description.
For anything that plugs into mains power, state the destination market at the enquiry stage. Regulatory requirements differ, and discovering that after a sample run is expensive.
07
Plan the lead time backwards from when you need stock
A sea shipment is not simply slower than air — it has more stages, and each one can absorb time: production, consolidation, sailing, arrival, customs, and inland movement to your warehouse. Air compresses most of that but not customs.
Work backwards from the date you need the stock on your floor, not forwards from the date you place the order. If the arithmetic does not work, that is the moment to consider splitting the order — air for the quantity that bridges the gap, sea for the balance.
08
Separate what you have from what is coming
On-hand stock and on-order stock are different numbers and should never be added together. A part with 200 pieces on hand and 5,000 on the water is not a part with 5,200 pieces. Treating it as one number is how the same stock gets promised twice.
Keep the two figures visibly apart in whatever you use to track inventory, and flip a part from incoming to on-hand only when it has been physically received and counted.