Centwork
Cross-border service matching between the US and China.
live
Centwork matches small and mid-size service work between the United States and China — a factory visited before you wire the deposit, a contract translated by someone who understands both legal systems, a shipment checked while it's still in the warehouse — with a local partner who can actually do it.
The gap it fills
Cross-border work of this size falls into an awkward middle. It's too small for a consulting firm to take seriously, and too consequential to hand to whoever answers first on a freelance marketplace. The hard part was never posting the job. It's knowing whether the person on the other side of an ocean — in a different language, a different time zone, and a legal system you've never dealt with — will actually show up.
So Centwork is built around the part that's hard, not the part that's easy. Every offer is read by a person before it goes public, and a consultant follows both sides through the introduction.
How it works
- Post an offer. What you need done, where, and by when. Takes a few minutes; no account required.
- A consultant reviews it. We check that it's complete and genuine before it goes anywhere public — usually within one business day.
- It goes on the board. Approved offers are listed publicly. Your contact details are not.
- A local partner applies. Interested providers leave their details and a short note.
- We make the introduction. A consultant follows up with both sides.
What people bring us
| Category | A typical request |
|---|---|
| Site visit | Walk a supplier's factory in Shenzhen and send photos before the deposit goes out |
| Software development | Build an internal tool with a team that can work your hours |
| Translation | A contract or filing rendered by someone who knows both legal systems |
| Procurement & QC | Inspect a production run before it ships |
| Market research | Find out whether a product has buyers in the other market |
| Legal & compliance | Local paperwork for an entity, an import, or a license |
What it deliberately doesn't do
Worth stating plainly, because these are choices rather than a roadmap:
- No payment escrow. Centwork introduces the two sides; you contract and pay each other directly. We're not holding your money.
- No automatic matching. There's no algorithm ranking providers. A consultant reads the offer and follows up — slower, and the reason listings on the board are worth reading.
- US ⇄ China only, for now. One corridor, done properly, before adding others.
The point isn't to be the biggest board. It's that every listing on it was read by a person who cared whether it was real.
The same site, from the other end
Every page — the board, the submission form, the consultant back office — exists in English and 中文. Not a translated shell over an English product: a poster in Guangzhou and a buyer in Ohio are looking at the same board, each in their own language.
Built to stay up
Centwork runs as a single native binary with an embedded database — no runtime to install, no container to babysit, no third-party service to go down at 3am on the other side of the world. The whole site is one file plus a reverse proxy, which is roughly the amount of machinery this problem deserves.