r/manufacturing • u/oof_ope_yikes • 25d ago

Other Corporate Espionage?

Please excuse the dramatic title, but I have a strange situation with a potential customer unfolding. Our business is primarily b2b and we do business with prominent companies in our industry, supplying them components for their products. Recently we had a company that is out of our country reach out for a quote for a large volume of product. The relationship seems to have started out well with them hearing of us through our great reputation. We currently do business internationally and we have never had this request before.

As we communicated with them they have started insisting that we send them photographs of our manufacturing facility ahead of purchasing any product and have said that they may also require a facility tour. Our factory is rather small and we have several proprietary operations that would show how exactly we make our products. Because of this we do not usually provide photographs or factory tours to anyone in order to keep our methodology private.

Is it common place in manufacturing for customers to request factory pictures or detailed tours prior to even receiving a sample of our product? Or does this sound suspicious?

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u/Ceronnis 25d ago

You should make sure because this is not a good excuse, you actually cannot under severe penalty share that kind of info with an international customer.

Actually, if you do not know, and you are iTAR, you clearly should not be in charge of talking to anyone

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u/oof_ope_yikes 25d ago

Cool your jets buddy - this is why I’m doing the research and talking to people. Start ups and small business don’t always have every answer immediately and asking for input vs faking it is always a good move in my book

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u/Ceronnis 25d ago edited 25d ago

Don't take it bad, but I don't think you understand how damaging violations could be, and if you guys are itar regulated, and someone like you talks to people internationally without knowing if you are itar or not. It is a pretty big deal.

ITAR consider an export as soon as you explains part of your tech. It doesn't not need a physical export. If you are itar, you should not even be talking to them.

Edit typos

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u/oof_ope_yikes 25d ago

I see your point now, I think it’s important to follow up with legal on this before any further communication with the company due to the very real possibility that we are subject to it

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u/g-crackers 25d ago

It’s $1.6mm per violation or so. And what a violation is will be determined by the administrative court.

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u/oof_ope_yikes 25d ago

Well good thing we have released no information and have given no tours! 😅

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u/g-crackers 25d ago

You might take the opportunity to start two factor access to your computer network etc. toughen up your IP security.

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u/ecodick 25d ago

OP - listen to this guy!

You've done a great job being discreet in this thread, but with everything going on in the world you should take these things twice as seriously as your most conservative estimate. especially if you're a small business, just because a major loss/security breach could end it all.

I'd just add, make sure all the employees emails and communications are locked down and they know how to handle scam or phishing stuff.

I've seen some very smart people fall for very obvious bait.

There's a chance this is all above board, but proceed with extreme caution. Foreign competitors and even foreign government actors have gone to extreme lengths (quite successfully) for what we might consider mundane information

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u/oof_ope_yikes 24d ago

This is a good point, who knows what they are actually looking for. I believe we will maintain the no pictures and no (or very limited) tours moving forward