Well, I finally did it. After reading a few of the threads a long time ago, I looked into importing but never actually did it. So when I read the blog post by Will, I decided to take a look at it. I have a friend who has been interested in doing business together so I decided to work with him on it. Nice to make someone else do a lot of the work, although I have to show him some things here and there.
So we started about a month ago or so researching. I'd look for products on Alibaba and then read all the threads by Vilante, Biophase, etc on importing and eCommerce businesses. It has been a pretty busy month or so. I found some products I thought would work, but turns out they may not. It definitely took longer than I expected though.
But...we found something that I think should work, I think. It was in a market I thought was saturated but this niche is kind of a hot area right now and will be for the next several years at least. So we spoke with the manufacturer and got a sample. $73.2 + $34 shipping + paypal. $110.xx in total for the sample. I paid Sunday night and got it yesterday, not bad coming from China. Extremely pleased with the quality, I was blown away actually. Surprised my friend too, tested it out a bit and worked amazing. After playing with it a bit, we took the next step and listed it. $127.99 + 9.99 shipping, took all of 15 hours to sell. Not sure if it helped or not, but today I revised the listing to change the quantity from 1 to 3. My thought was if they see 1, it might not look as legit, but if they see 3, maybe they think we are more legit and buy asap because there aren't many.
After we ship it, we will probably make a few bucks profit, but it is the sample so I am not too worried. We found out there is a demand for these. Shipping will go down a lot with bulk orders. Based on rough (I don't know exact shipping costs) estimates, I think we can make $30 net on each unit.
I emailed the manufacturer today to ask a few more questions and get some information on another order. He originally sent an excel document with everything they have, I starting going through on eBay some sell with small margins, but many have pretty good ones so I want to work out getting a test sample with each large order and continue to add new products.
In addition, I notice there are a couple people selling a lot of these on eBay but they don't really control the other markets. Amazon is barely tapped, Buy.com has nothing, and there really aren't other places to get them. Tonight, we are going to make a eCommerce test store with all the products. List everything the manufacturer offers and see what sells, and doesn't. Neither of us have done an eCommerce store so it will be a lot of learning for us, but based on the threads on here, I think we can figure it out.
It really is amazing how far we have come in a month, and it will be more interesting to see where we will be in 1 month, 2 months, or a year. I think are timing is good because we have a year to build up before the holidays, if we F*ck this up, its our own fault.
Stay tuned, I will continue to post updates.
BTW, I am still doing the apps, they are progressing but still need work.
:icon_super:
So we started about a month ago or so researching. I'd look for products on Alibaba and then read all the threads by Vilante, Biophase, etc on importing and eCommerce businesses. It has been a pretty busy month or so. I found some products I thought would work, but turns out they may not. It definitely took longer than I expected though.
But...we found something that I think should work, I think. It was in a market I thought was saturated but this niche is kind of a hot area right now and will be for the next several years at least. So we spoke with the manufacturer and got a sample. $73.2 + $34 shipping + paypal. $110.xx in total for the sample. I paid Sunday night and got it yesterday, not bad coming from China. Extremely pleased with the quality, I was blown away actually. Surprised my friend too, tested it out a bit and worked amazing. After playing with it a bit, we took the next step and listed it. $127.99 + 9.99 shipping, took all of 15 hours to sell. Not sure if it helped or not, but today I revised the listing to change the quantity from 1 to 3. My thought was if they see 1, it might not look as legit, but if they see 3, maybe they think we are more legit and buy asap because there aren't many.
After we ship it, we will probably make a few bucks profit, but it is the sample so I am not too worried. We found out there is a demand for these. Shipping will go down a lot with bulk orders. Based on rough (I don't know exact shipping costs) estimates, I think we can make $30 net on each unit.
I emailed the manufacturer today to ask a few more questions and get some information on another order. He originally sent an excel document with everything they have, I starting going through on eBay some sell with small margins, but many have pretty good ones so I want to work out getting a test sample with each large order and continue to add new products.
In addition, I notice there are a couple people selling a lot of these on eBay but they don't really control the other markets. Amazon is barely tapped, Buy.com has nothing, and there really aren't other places to get them. Tonight, we are going to make a eCommerce test store with all the products. List everything the manufacturer offers and see what sells, and doesn't. Neither of us have done an eCommerce store so it will be a lot of learning for us, but based on the threads on here, I think we can figure it out.
It really is amazing how far we have come in a month, and it will be more interesting to see where we will be in 1 month, 2 months, or a year. I think are timing is good because we have a year to build up before the holidays, if we F*ck this up, its our own fault.
Stay tuned, I will continue to post updates.
BTW, I am still doing the apps, they are progressing but still need work.
:icon_super:
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