Editorial policy

Who writes our content

Every article is written by a named member of the Silk Way Sourcing team, and the byline links to that person's profile with their role and background. We don't publish anonymous articles or articles under invented author names.

Authors write in the area they work in day to day: supplier search, factory audits and metals sourcing by our founder, Arkadii Vakhnovskyi; logistics, customs and compliance by Andy Wang; process and operations by Dmitry Markov.

Where the experience comes from

Silk Way Sourcing has been sourcing from China since 2019, with more than 3,500 deliveries and more than 340 verified suppliers behind it. Our guides describe the process we actually run for clients: finding the real manufacturer, visiting the plant, inspecting goods before the balance is paid, and moving them by sea, rail, road or air.

Photos in our articles and case studies are our own, taken at factories, mills and trade fairs our team visited. We don't use stock photography to illustrate our work.

Sources and fact-checking

Rules, rates and requirements are checked against primary sources wherever one exists: customs authorities and customs codes, the ICC for Incoterms, ISO and IEC for standards, official company registries, and published freight indices. We link those sources in the text so you can check them yourself.

Figures that change quickly, such as freight rates, duties or regulatory thresholds, are dated and marked as indicative. Worked examples with invented numbers are labelled as hypothetical and are never presented as client data.

We never invent statistics, client stories or reviews. The only company figures we publish are the ones we can stand behind: our delivery count, verified-supplier count, sourced volume and founding year.

Case studies and client confidentiality

Case studies describe real projects. Clients are not named, to protect their commercial confidentiality, but the product, volume, destination and what we did are stated as they happened. Where a date is shown, it comes from the project's own records or the photos our team took on site.

How we use AI tools

We use AI tools to help with research, drafting, structuring and translation. They don't decide what we publish: the named author is responsible for every article, and checks the facts, figures and sources before it goes live. Nothing is published unchecked.

Commercial relationships

Silk Way Sourcing is a sourcing company, and our guides link to the services we sell. We say so plainly rather than presenting commercial content as neutral. Guides are written to be useful whether or not you hire us, including sections on when you don't need an agent at all.

Updates and corrections

We review our core guides regularly and whenever a rule, rate or process they describe changes. A substantive change updates the date shown on the article; minor edits such as typos do not.

If you find an error, write to contact@silkwaysourcing.com with the page and the correction. We check every report, fix confirmed errors and update the article's date.

Languages

Our content is published in English, Ukrainian and Russian, with core pages in Kazakh. Each language version is localized for importers in that market — terms, customs references and examples — rather than machine-translated word for word.