Editorial Policy

These guides are written from the buyer’s side of the table. The test applied to every page is whether it helps someone decide something they actually have to decide: which layer of the supply chain to buy from, which checks to run before paying, which number to compare.

This page is the rule set the guides are held to.

Who writes and who is responsible

Jack Lau writes the guides. The site is published under the name Ecommerce Wholesale Distributors, and there is no separate registered company behind it. Responsibility for what appears here sits with the named author.

Author credentials are limited to experience that can be stated without inflation. Where an identity field cannot be filled truthfully — a legal entity name, a verifiable public profile — it is left empty rather than filled with something plausible.

What this site is not

It does not sell goods, hold inventory, take orders or appoint distributors. The site name describes the subject matter, not a trading business. Nothing here is an offer to supply or an introduction to a named vendor.

It also does not replace a customs broker, a lawyer or a compliance adviser. Duty rates, classification and certification are jurisdiction-specific. A worked example on this site is a shape to reuse, not a figure to file.

How a topic is chosen

A page is opened only when it answers a question that no existing page already answers.

If a proposed page would compete with an existing one for the same reader intent, the two are merged rather than published separately. This is a deliberate constraint: publishing several near-identical pages to capture variations of the same query produces thin, competing content and serves nobody. Several planned pages have been dropped for this reason rather than written.

Sourcing

• Primary sources first. The body that issues a rule, not a summary of it.
• Sources are checked live before publication. A cited link that redirects to a parent page or no longer resolves is replaced, not published. This has already caught one incorrect citation before it shipped.
• Sources support the specific claim they sit next to. A general reference is not evidence for a specific figure.
• Inference is labelled as inference. Where a page reasons beyond what a source states, the reasoning is visible rather than presented as sourced fact.
• Competitor content is not evidence. Other publications may inform what is worth covering; they do not support factual claims.

What a finished page shows

On any guide you should be able to see, without hunting:

• A named author and a publication date
• The date of the last substantive update, where one has happened
• A direct answer, but only where the question genuinely resolves in a paragraph
• Takeaways that are supported in the body rather than asserted at the top
• The sources the factual claims rest on
• A content-method note describing how the draft was produced

If any of these is missing from a page that should have it, that is an error worth reporting.

Current status of the content

The guides currently published are editorial syntheses of public trade, customs and product-safety guidance. They are marked as pending named-author review, and that marking is accurate rather than decorative: it stays on each page until the named author has checked it against the cited sources.

Removing that notice before the review happens would make the byline claim more than the process delivers. The AI use policy explains what the marking covers.

Updates and corrections

Update dates move when a page changes in a way that would alter a reader’s decision. They do not move for typographical fixes, and they are never refreshed to signal freshness.

Corrections are handled under the fact-checking policy, which sets out what to send and what happens to it.