There is a conversation that never happens in Turkish export sourcing, and it is worth having on paper because nobody will have it with you in person.
How the money actually moves
You engage an agent. You pay them a fee — sometimes modest, sometimes nothing at all, because “we get paid by the factory, so it’s free for you”. They introduce you to a manufacturer. You place an order.
The factory then pays the agent a percentage of that order. Typically three to eight per cent, sometimes more on first orders, often continuing on every reorder for as long as the relationship lasts. It does not appear on your invoice. It appears in your unit price, because the factory built it into the quote before you ever saw it.
On a €200,000 order, that is €6,000 to €16,000. You paid it. You just did not see the line.
Why this is not the real problem
The money is annoying. The incentive is the actual problem.
An agent earning a percentage of shipped value earns more when your goods ship, and nothing when they do not. Follow that through to its consequence:
- When choosing between two factories, the agent’s income depends partly on which one pays better commission, not only on which one is better for you.
- When negotiating price, the agent’s commission is a percentage of the price. A lower unit price for you is a lower commission for them.
- When the pre-shipment inspection is marginal, the agent needs the shipment to go. You need to know whether it should.
At the exact moment you most need someone to say “do not release the balance”, their income depends on the opposite answer. This is not a claim about anyone’s character. It is a claim about structure, and structure wins over character with reliable regularity.
“But my agent is honest”
Very possibly. Many are, and plenty of commissioned agents do good work for years.
The point is not that commissioned agents are dishonest. It is that you cannot tell from the outside, the incentive is invisible to you, and you find out which kind you have precisely when it is most expensive to find out.
How to tell
There is one reliable test, and it takes one email.
Ask the agent to sign a contractual clause stating that they will accept no commission, rebate, gift or benefit of any kind from any supplier connected to your order, with a financial penalty and an immediate termination right if they do.
An agent who does not take commission will sign it, because it costs them nothing. An agent whose business model depends on commission cannot sign it, and will explain why the clause is unnecessary, or unusual, or insulting, or “not how it works in Türkiye”.
That explanation is your answer.
The honest trade-off
Independence is not free, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of dishonesty.
A commission-funded agent can look cheaper, because part of their income is hidden inside your unit price. An independent office charges a visible fee that you pay from your own budget, and on a single small order that may genuinely be more cash out of the door.
Across a supply relationship, the arithmetic reverses. You pay the commission on every reorder, forever, plus the unit price that was negotiated on someone else’s behalf, plus the cost of the shipments that were let through.
What to ask for
If you keep a commissioned agent — which can be a reasonable commercial decision — at least make the commission visible:
- Ask for the commission percentage in writing, and ask the factory to confirm it independently.
- Ask for the factory’s price without the agent, so you can see the spread.
- Appoint a different party for inspection than the party who found the supplier. Whatever else you do, do not let the person who chose the factory be the person who decides whether the goods are acceptable.
That last one costs a few hundred euros a shipment and removes most of the risk in this article.