Global sourcing
without borders.
For over 13 years, Trannovis has helped European companies source reliable, high-quality products from Asia — managing every stage from supplier selection to final delivery.
A sourcing company built by people who import for a living.
Trannovis was founded in Paris in 2013 by a small team who had spent years on the buying side of European industry and had grown tired of the same story repeating itself: a promising factory found online, a sample that looked perfect, and then a shipment that arrived late, incomplete, or nothing like the sample at all. We started the company on a simple conviction — that distance, language and time zones should never be the reason a European business cannot manufacture in Asia with confidence.
Our first office was two desks and a phone line. Our first client was a French houseware distributor who needed 4,000 stainless steel units and had been let down twice. We flew to Guangdong, walked six factories in five days, and came back with a supplier who is still producing for that client thirteen years later. That is still, in essence, what we do: we go and look, in person, so that our clients don't have to.
Since then Trannovis has grown into a full procurement organisation. In 2015 we opened our first permanent representative office in Asia, which allowed our inspectors to reach most of the Pearl River Delta within a few hours. Between 2017 and 2020 we added coverage in Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand as clients diversified away from single-country dependency. In 2021 we built our own logistics desk so that freight, customs and delivery stopped being someone else's problem, and in the years since we have invested heavily in structured supplier data — audit histories, defect rates, on-time performance — so that every recommendation we make is backed by evidence rather than instinct.
Today we are a multilingual team of sourcing engineers, quality inspectors, logistics coordinators and account managers working across French, English, Mandarin and Vietnamese. We are independent: we take no commission from factories, we never hide the manufacturing price, and we are perfectly willing to tell a client that a project should not go ahead. That independence is the reason the majority of our revenue comes from clients who have been with us for more than five years.
What has not changed since 2013 is the size of the relationship. Every client has a named specialist who knows their product, their tolerances and their commercial reality — not a ticketing system. When a mould breaks in Dongguan at two in the morning, someone at Trannovis is already on the phone.
Thirteen years of going and looking, in person.
From two desks and a phone line to a multilingual team across two continents. Select a year to follow the story of how Trannovis grew.
Founded in Paris
Trannovis is established in Paris by a small team of sourcing engineers who had spent years buying for European industry. The conviction is simple: distance, language and time zones should never be the reason a European company cannot manufacture in Asia with confidence.
The procurement partner behind European supply chains.
Importing well is not about finding the cheapest quotation. It is about controlling risk at every point where a supply chain can quietly fail — and knowing, before you wire a deposit, who you are actually dealing with.
- Based in Paris, FranceEuropean standards, European contracts and European accountability — combined with permanent teams on the ground in Asia who speak the language of the factory floor.
- Extensive supplier networkMore than 500 continuously audited manufacturers across seven countries, scored on quality history, capacity, responsiveness and compliance.
- End-to-end procurementFrom the first feasibility study to the delivered container: one partner, one contract, one person who owns the outcome.
- Quality assurance & inspectionIndependent AQL-based checks before every shipment leaves the factory, with photographic reports you receive before you release the balance payment.
- Logistics & customsSea, air and rail freight, consolidation, bonded warehousing, duty classification and customs clearance coordinated as a single workflow.
- Dedicated specialistsMultilingual account leads who understand your product category, your certification requirements and your seasonality.
- Transparent commercialsYou always see the factory price. We are paid by you and only by you, which keeps our recommendations honest.
- Risk & continuity planningDual-sourcing strategies, backup tooling and contingency routing so a single disruption never stops your business.
Six stages between your idea and your loading dock.
Every Trannovis project follows the same structured method, whether it is a single trial order of 500 pieces or a rolling annual programme of forty containers. The method is what makes the outcome repeatable.
- 01
Brief & feasibility
We start with your specification — drawings, samples, target landed cost, certification requirements and expected volumes. Within a few working days we tell you honestly whether the product can be made at your price, what needs to change, and which countries are the right fit. No project starts on an assumption we haven't tested.
- 02
Supplier shortlist & audit
We match your brief against our network of more than 500 audited manufacturers and identify three to five credible candidates. Our teams visit the plants in person, verify business licences, export history, machinery, capacity and labour conditions, and report back with photographs, quotations and a comparison you can actually act on.
- 03
Samples & industrialisation
We manage the sampling loop end to end: golden samples, tooling validation, packaging design, labelling, CE / RoHS / REACH documentation and pre-production approval. Every revision is tracked so nothing is lost in translation between your engineers and the factory floor.
- 04
Production monitoring
Once the order is placed we stay inside the factory. Weekly production reports, in-line inspections and escalation the moment a schedule slips — because a delay you hear about early is a problem, and a delay you hear about late is a crisis.
- 05
Inspection & release
Independent pre-shipment inspection against an AQL sampling plan, functional testing, drop and packaging tests where relevant. Nothing leaves the factory without a signed report and your explicit go-ahead.
- 06
Freight, customs & delivery
Sea, air or rail, consolidated or full container, with customs clearance, duty classification and final-mile delivery to your warehouse. One partner, one invoice, one point of contact from the factory gate to your loading dock.
Four disciplines, one continuous chain of responsibility.
Most importing problems happen in the gaps between service providers — between the agent and the inspector, between the inspector and the freight forwarder. Trannovis closes those gaps by owning all four functions internally.
Strategic sourcing
Product-specific supplier research across seven Asian markets, cost breakdown analysis, negotiation support and dual-sourcing strategies that protect you from single-supplier risk.
Learn more →Supplier audits
On-site factory audits covering legal status, financial health, production capability, machinery, sub-contracting practices, social compliance and environmental handling.
Learn more →Quality control
Initial production checks, during-production inspections, pre-shipment inspections and container loading supervision, all documented with photographic evidence.
Learn more →Logistics management
Freight booking, consolidation, incoterm advice, export and import documentation, customs clearance and warehousing across the European Union.
Learn more →Two continents, one supply chain.
We source where the capability genuinely is — not where it is fashionable. Electronics and precision assembly in South China, Taiwan and South Korea; textiles, furniture and light assembly in Vietnam and Thailand; high-tolerance industrial components in Japan. And we deliver into the eight European markets where our clients build their businesses.
Asia
- 01China
- 02Japan
- 03South Korea
- 04Taiwan
- 05Vietnam
- 06Thailand
- 07Malaysia
Europe
- 01France
- 02Germany
- 03Belgium
- 04Netherlands
- 05Spain
- 06Italy
- 07Switzerland
- 08United Kingdom
The last 12,000 kilometres are ours too.
A perfect production run means nothing if the container sits in a port for three weeks or the paperwork is rejected at customs. Our logistics desk books freight, consolidates part-loads from multiple factories into a single container, advises on the right incoterm for your risk appetite, prepares export and import documentation, handles duty classification and arranges final delivery anywhere in Western Europe.
We work with sea, air and rail depending on urgency and value density, and we tell you plainly when air freight is worth the cost and when it is not. Where clients need buffer stock closer to their customers, we arrange bonded and standard warehousing with pick-and-pack capability.
Throughout, you receive a single weekly status update covering production, inspection and transport — one document, one contact, no chasing three companies for the same answer.
Sourcing expertise across sectors.
Thirteen years of projects have given us deep category knowledge — the certifications that matter, the failure modes to inspect for, and the factories that genuinely specialise rather than simply claiming to.
Principles we have not traded away for a cheaper quotation.
Independence
We are paid by our clients, never by the factories. If a supplier is wrong for you, we say so — even when it costs us the project. Independence is not a value statement, it is a business model choice we made deliberately in 2013.
Transparency
You see the manufacturing price, the inspection report and the freight quotation. There are no hidden margins in the middle of the chain, and no surprises on the final invoice.
Responsibility
We only work with factories that meet basic standards on labour conditions, workplace safety and environmental handling. We audit for it, we re-audit for it, and we walk away when it is not met.
Answers before you ask.
If your question isn't here, write to us. A real specialist replies, usually within one business day.
- What minimum order quantities do you work with?
- It depends entirely on the product category. For electronics and injection-moulded goods we typically work from a few hundred to a few thousand units, while for furniture or industrial equipment a first order can be far smaller. We tell you the realistic MOQ before you commit, rather than after.
- Do you take commission from the factories?
- No. We are paid by you, our client, which is the only way our advice can stay independent. You see the factory quotation and you know exactly what our service costs. That transparency is the foundation of every long-term relationship we have.
- How long does a typical project take?
- From brief to shortlist is usually one to three weeks. Sampling adds two to six weeks depending on tooling. Production runs thirty to sixty days for most categories, and sea freight from South China to Northern Europe takes roughly twenty-eight to thirty-five days door to door.
- Can you work with a supplier we already have?
- Absolutely. A large share of our work is taking over quality control, production follow-up and logistics for factories our clients found themselves. We audit the existing supplier, benchmark their pricing and then manage the relationship on your behalf.
Ready to reshape your supply chain?
Tell us what you're sourcing. We'll come back with qualified manufacturers, indicative pricing, and a realistic timeline.