What this is
OligoDirect sells synthetic oligonucleotides to research laboratories outside China. Primers, hydrolysis probes, miRNA reagents, siRNA and CRISPR guide RNA, at prices printed on the website.
We are not a synthesis plant and we do not pretend to be one. The chemistry is done by established Chinese oligonucleotide facilities that have been running at scale for years for the domestic research and molecular diagnostics market. We choose the facility for each product class, hold the stock of the sequence-fixed items, run the incoming checks, and carry the relationship with you.
The chemistry here is not exotic and we are not going to dress it up. Phosphoramidite synthesis is phosphoramidite synthesis. What is unusual is the commercial arrangement. This product class is made well and cheaply in China and then sold internationally through a quotation process slow enough that people budget a week for finding out a price. We skipped that part.
Why it costs less
Two reasons. Neither of them is a shortcut on the product.
Where it is made. Chinese synthesis capacity for oligos is large, mature and competitively priced, and the reagents are the same reagents used everywhere else.
What is not in the price. No field sales force, no territory manager, no quotation cycle, no account executive who needs to visit you. The catalogue is on the website and the order goes straight to synthesis.
Where this does not hold: a large university with a negotiated framework agreement is often already buying unmodified primers at a genuinely competitive rate, and an in-house core facility can beat anyone on turnaround for a plain primer. The pricing page says so. Our advantage concentrates in probes, modified oligos and the fixed-sequence catalogue, because framework discounts in this industry go deep on base synthesis and stay shallow on dyes, quenchers and purification.
Four things we are not going to claim
A supplier with no track record has nothing to show, and dressing that up would be the wrong way to start.
- No customer testimonials. We do not have customers yet, and inventing three grateful postdocs is the oldest trick on a new supplier website. When there are real ones they will be named and they will have agreed to it.
- No publication citation wall. Same reason. Every order carries a citable product ID from the first day, and the list will be built out of real papers or it will stay empty.
- No quality certification in our own name. Our manufacturing partners hold ISO 9001, and ISO 13485 on the relevant lines. Those certificates are theirs. Putting their logos in our footer would be a lie of exactly the kind that is easy to get away with, so we are not doing it.
- No competitor price comparison. Published list prices and the prices large institutions actually pay are different numbers, sometimes by a factor of two. A comparison against list would make us look better than we are, and anyone with a framework agreement would spot it immediately.