Trust and the advance: how payment works in stocklot.

Every week we speak with a buyer we have never met, about goods they have never touched, in a country they may never visit. Then we ask them for an advance. It is a fair moment to pause — and this post is our answer to that pause, written as plainly as we can.

Why advance at all

Stocklot moves fast and moves once. When we commit to a lot, we pay the factory and put a crew of twenty-plus on the finishing line — salaries, labels from nominated suppliers, trucking, all real money out before a single carton ships. An advance is not caution about you; it is how the deal itself gets funded. Every serious house in this trade works the same way.

What the advance buys you

The moment your deposit lands, the lot is yours — off the market, no second buyer, no re-quote. The finishing line starts on your program: labels replaced, specs and sizes QC-checked twice by SGS-trained staff, goods assorted, packed and price-ticketed to your shelf. You get photos and reports at every stage, and the balance is only due against shipping documents — you pay the rest when the goods are provably on the water.

If the deal falls through, your money comes back

Here is the part few houses put in writing: if you cannot take the goods — whether something fails on your side or on ours — your advance is fully refunded, minus only the bank fees. Stocklot is our trade; we simply sell the lot to another buyer and return your money in full. Your deposit funds a deal. It is never a hostage.

How we make trust easy to check

We are not a website with a bank account. We are a registered Canadian company, twenty years in the trade, with our own finishing centre and warehouse floors in Montréal and Dhaka. We supply major retailers in Canada today and wholesalers in the UAE, with retail returns under one percent. Before you send anything: video-call the floor and see your goods live, ask for our company registration and bank details in the company name — never a personal account — and check us against any reference you like.

Start smaller than trust requires

We would rather earn a long relationship than win one large first order. Start with a trial lot — any quantity, even below our usual MOQs. Inspect it, sell it, then decide. Most of our oldest accounts began exactly this way: one small lot, one clean delivery, and the second order wrote itself.

The advance is the start of our obligation to you, not the end of yours to us. From that moment, every risk on the table is ours to manage — and twenty years on this floor says we manage it well.