My eBay Business Part 2 – Sourcing Product From China
I left Part 1 of my eBay business story at the point where we decided to tip some capital in to give it a go.
We had $7000 and no eBay account or anything set up. Next was sourcing some product.
Sourcing product from China
We needed to find a good supplier to get us some reasonable quality fishing reels (and rods if we could find them) from China. We already had the ridiculously low prices from our initial emails but we had to do some more research.
We used www.alibaba.com to send out some more emails and find some more manufacturers.
Some of the initial issues we found were :
- Trying to work out who was a manufacturer, and who was an agent
- Who was the original source of a product (often, many suppliers used the same item picture!)
- What their terms and pricing were
- What their minimum order requirements were
We settled on a few suppliers that responded quickly, seemed to understand english ok, and seemed to be reasonably ‘honest’.
With these suppliers we submitted requests for small orders or products to test. One supplier responded quickly, quoted for a number of reels of a particular brand, at a reasonable price.
I had to do a lot of research into how ordering took place. You will need to understand letters of credit, Telegraphic transfers, air freight, LCL, FCL, FOB pricing, CIF pricing and more!
There are some great books around, I recommend using Amazon to find some books on trade with China (start simple and see what else you will need to learn).
With small quantities of goods (and where margin is high, like ours was initially) you can air freight items and still make a good profit. We air freighted stock over, and initially it was only about 100 reels from memory.
We then had to start the real work. Listings, photography, starting an eBay account and finalising our selling strategies to see if we really could make a business out of this.
Stay tuned for Part 3 – getting the basic right, and starting to sell!
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Comments
Hi Nathan,
I’ve just started looking at importing products from China via Alibaba.com
I’ve never done this before – which website/books would you recommend for me to read up on importing from China and all those ordering terms like FOB, T/T etc.
Would also be interested in an agent or a contact you use over there?
Thanks
My recommendation, especially if you are a small volume or first-time buyer, is to use a trustworthy agent/sourcing firm.
I can recommend several firms run by foreigners (Americans and/or Canadians) in sporting goods, tools, toys, emblems/pins, furniture/fixtures, and many other products.
Let me know if you want the contacts.
Nathan,
Would be happy to introduce you to friends who are sourcing a wide variety of items from China, including sporting goods.
If you are serious about wanting to find fishing rods and reels, let me know.
Regards
Mike