About Tophney
Your year-round merch sourcing concierge.
We’re Tony and Daphne. We source branded merchandise for gyms, cafés, hotels and events: the uniforms, the cups, the signage and the gifts, planned around your calendar and shipped together as one kit.
We started on the factory side.
Tophney didn’t begin as a sourcing agency. It began with a client problem we kept hearing from the other side of the table.
Where we grew up
A family yarn factory
Tony’s family makes yarn for US and European brands. We both worked there, ran international orders, and sold at trade shows in New York and Paris. We learned what a quote leaves out because we wrote them.
The problem
Clients burned by Alibaba
Buyers we knew kept telling the same story. They’d tried ordering seasonal merch on Alibaba.com, and it arrived late, off-spec, or not at all, after weeks of messages that went nowhere.
So we built it
Source with Tophney
We already knew the factories and spoke their language. So we started doing it for them: one team that plans the season, picks the factory, checks the goods and ships it all together.
Three things you won’t get from a sourcing platform.
Plenty of tools can find you a factory. We built Tophney around the parts they leave to you.
We plan around your calendar.
Merch is seasonal. A Christmas campaign that ships in January is a write-off. Our free Planner maps 53 festivals and promotions against real factory lead times, with Chinese New Year and other factory holidays already counted in, so you know the date to start before it’s too late.
Open the Planner →
One project kits out the whole venue.
A new gym needs staff tees, towels, shakers, bags and signage. Most buyers source each one separately, from a different supplier, with a different deadline. We start from the venue instead: pick your scene, and we source the full kit across our factories, then consolidate it into one shipment.
See the scenes →The founders run your project.
There’s no account manager handing you off. Daphne manages every order herself, and each project gets its own WhatsApp chat with the people actually running it. We’re based in Zhongshan, so when a sample looks wrong we can go to the factory and check it in person.
How we work →
Where we fit.
If you’re launching your own product line, an AI sourcing platform may suit you better. If you need branded merch for a business, on a deadline, this is what we’re built for.
| Compared on | Other agents | MarketplacesAlibaba.com, etc. | AI sourcing |  Tophney |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Importers who arrive with a spec | Anyone buying anything | Brands launching their own products | Businesses that need branded merch: gyms, cafés, hotels, events |
| Who does the work | An account manager, between you and the factory | You do | Software, with specialists behind it | Tony and Daphne, with MerchSourcer to track it |
| Timing | Starts when you send a brief | Your problem | Fast quotes, per product | Planned backwards from your season, factory holidays included |
| Scope | Usually one product per order | One listing at a time | One product at a time | The whole kit for a venue, consolidated into one shipment |
| Updates | Emails and spreadsheets | Seller chat | A dashboard | A 12-step tracker plus a WhatsApp chat with the founders |
| Factories | Their own network, rarely shown | Millions of listings, unchecked | Tens of thousands in a database | 100+ we’ve vetted ourselves, matched to each item |
Dongfeng Town · Cross-border E-commerce Association
“AsDongfengTowninvestmentambassadorsandSecretary-GeneraloftheZhongshanCross-borderE-commerceAssociation,we’renotjustsourcingagents.We’retrustedconnectorsinZhongshan’smanufacturingcommunity.”
Access
They put us in rooms with factory owners and town officials. A cold inquiry from an overseas company gets a sales rep and a stock quote; an introduction through the association gets the owner, the real capacity, and an honest answer about whether they can actually make your product. That’s where supplier vetting genuinely happens.
Standing when something goes wrong
Production problems aren’t rare — they’re routine, and what matters is how fast they get resolved. A foreign buyer chasing a factory by email is easy to deprioritize. A local party with standing in the Zhongshan cross-border business community is not. When we escalate, it gets taken seriously, and quickly.