The OEM process: NDA, artwork, sampling, production, IP
By Mohamad Sinno, Charcoal Expert ·
Ask AI for an importer brief:
The stages and their clocks
Nine stages, and only two of them have a clock long enough to plan around. Print and production run at the same time, not one after the other — which is the single thing most first-order timelines get wrong, because they add the two together and arrive at a date six weeks out that nobody at the factory recognises.
| Stage | Clock | What it involves |
|---|---|---|
| Samples | Dispatched within two working days | Free, 1–10 kg. A batch COA accompanies every sample. paid by the recipient. |
| NDA | On request, before files change hands | The template exists and has been through external legal review. We do not publish the reviewing firm. |
| Artwork and dielines | Yours to set | We supply the dieline files. Artwork comes back as vector, Illustrator preferred, CMYK with any Pantone called out. |
| Proof approval | Yours to set | Nothing goes to the printing house until you have signed off the proof against the dieline. |
| Two weeks new design · ten working days existing · none for a house design | This is the stage most first orders lose weeks to, and the only one you can remove entirely by taking a house box from stock. | |
| Production | 15 working days (20 ft) · 20 working days (40 ft) | Runs alongside the print lane rather than after it. The print clock and this one overlap by design. |
| COA | Every production batch | Each COA states its own validity — 90 days from issue on current certificates. Issued by PT Beckjorindo Paryaweksana. |
| Loading and departure | Booked against the production finish | Charcoal books as dangerous goods, so the sailing is a DG booking and not an afterthought to it. |
| Claims window | 7 days from receipt | Quality or quantity claims inside that week; after it the goods are deemed accepted. Remedy is replacement or credit on the next order. |
Every clock in that table is ours and dated to this page. Where the market publishes its own, it publishes a spread rather than a number, and the spread is wider than any one factory's figure — which is a reason to ask a supplier for theirs, not a reason to average them. The lead-time page takes the two clocks apart and shows what the overlap is actually worth.
The onboarding teardown
One onboarding, told with the client's permission and without their name. A European brand came to us with its own packaging design and placed its first order as a single 40 ft container. An NDA was signed before any artwork moved in either direction. From first contact to the container leaving Indonesia took under two months, design cycle included.
The part worth knowing is where the time actually went. The artwork took more than three proof rounds — and not one of them was about colour or the structure of the box. Every round was text: wording, languages, and the warning panel. That is the pattern we see most often and the one buyers budget for least, because a design brief tends to describe how a box should look rather than what it is legally required to say.
They are still ordering. Their reorders print from plates already on file, which is the structural reason a repeat run is quicker than a first one — what that does to the calendar is set out on the lead-time page. Where that proof-round experience belongs in full is dielines and artwork requirements, which takes the panel apart instrument by instrument.
What is deliberately absent: the brand, the country, and the shapes, sizes and formats they ordered. The name is withheld by agreement; the rest we simply have not written down, and a teardown that invents its own specifics to look complete is worth less than one with gaps in it.
Your brand, protected
Three instruments do different jobs, and the honest summary is that they cover less than buyers assume. An NDA covers disclosure — it stops us showing your artwork or your specification to somebody else, and ours has been through external legal review. It does not stop a third party who never signed it from copying a box they saw on a shelf — the shape that copying usually takes, and the tells it leaves, are in the seven scam patterns. Artwork ownership is a matter of practice here: you supply the file, you own it, and it leaves with you if you move production. And a trademark is the only one of the three that binds anyone who did not sign anything — which is why it matters where you register it, and why the answer is rarely just Indonesia.
That last point is where most of the real exposure sits, and it needs more room than a summary paragraph: which registry, in whose name, before or after you show a distributor your box. NDAs, trademarks and IP in practice takes it in full, with the Indonesian rules read from the statute itself. Treat everything in this section as practice rather than legal advice, and take a view on your own market with someone qualified in it.
One thing that is not an IP question at all, and is often mistaken for one: whether you are buying white label or private label. That fork decides who owns the artwork before any of the three instruments above become relevant, and it is also where the cost difference lives — what branding adds per box and per container is set out separately, with the delta computed rather than asserted.
Process Q&A
What is the first thing that actually happens?
A sample. It is free, one to ten kilograms, dispatched within two working days with the batch COA in the box, and the freight is on you. Nothing about the OEM conversation is worth having before you have burned our product, because every stage after this one is about packaging a thing you have already accepted.
Do you sign an NDA before I send my artwork?
Yes. The template exists and has come back from external legal review, and it is available on request before any file changes hands. We do not publish the reviewing firm. What an NDA does and does not reach is a longer answer than this page should give, and it is the subject of a dedicated page that is not yet published.
How long does the whole thing take for a first order?
Two clocks run at once. Production is fifteen working days for a 20 ft and twenty for a 40 ft. Print is two weeks for a new design, ten working days for one that has been printed before, and nothing at all if you take one of our house designs from stock. Because they overlap, a first branded order is not the sum of the two — but it is the longer of them, and that is usually the print.
What happens if the goods arrive wrong?
Raise it within seven days of receipt, through the export desk or WhatsApp. After that window the goods are deemed accepted. The remedy is replacement or credit on the next order, and compensation beyond that is settled by agreement in a later shipment rather than in cash.
Stage clocks, sample terms and the claims window accurate as of September 2026. The order floor is 1 × FCL (20 ft or 40 ft), with a 2 tonnes per shape, size and packaging variant. Payment terms: 50% T/T deposit against the proforma invoice, balance against the B/L copy.
Start at the sample
Tell the export desk the shape, the size and the market, and the sample goes out within two working days with its batch COA. Everything on this page after that stage is a conversation about a box, and it is a much shorter conversation once the charcoal inside it is settled. The batch COA in that box is also what makes the sample checkable against what ships later — the failure it forecloses is bait-and-switch.