FBA and Importing Goods From China

[Luke1213]

Hello,

I am in the process of starting my own brand on amazon as well. I have the product picked out, how much I will charge and my profits. What I am stuck at is the Brand name. I have been writing and thinking and I feel really stuck. Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way. Anyone have any advice as to what is a good process to pick a brand name. Thanks!

Picking a brand name can be as simple as combining a few names together or something that intrigues you. When I started my brand, I wanted the name to be able to appeal to almost any product. So how I did it was by taking my kids names and switching some letters around to create a brand name that can be used with many different products. This way I am not limited to one or two niches.

 

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[SJVC]

@MoneyDoc Yes they support international orders and from the UK do not charge more for European sales, I do not have any experience with charges for selling the US from the UK (yet!) Have you even listed your products yet though? I would worry about that first before thinking about a step that is not critical yet. Good luck though.

@Maria Singh You know, what your brand name is isn't as important as you think it is. Get the product, validate it, sell some units then think about a simple brand name that makes sense for your product. Again, focus on what is critical for you right now, brand name probably isn't a critical task right now.

 

[MoneyDoc]

@MoneyDoc Yes they support international orders and from the UK do not charge more for European sales, I do not have any experience with charges for selling the US from the UK (yet!) Have you even listed your products yet though? I would worry about that first before thinking about a step that is not critical yet. Good luck though.

@Maria Singh You know, what your brand name is isn't as important as you think it is. Get the product, validate it, sell some units then think about a simple brand name that makes sense for your product. Again, focus on what is critical for you right now, brand name probably isn't a critical task right now.

The thing is,

I have my brand, my supplier, everything set up in place. Only thing I'm missing is a website, which can be built fast (I have the domain name).

Only thing I'm trying to figure out is shipping. By no means can I ship from Canada as it's expensive as hell, that's why I was thinking of amazon FBA but I'm not sure if they would ship my order from the US to say Turkey.

 

[SJMM]

Picking a brand name can be as simple as combining a few names together or something that intrigues you. When I started my brand, I wanted the name to be able to appeal to almost any product. So how I did it was by taking my kids names and switching some letters around to create a brand name that can be used with many different products. This way I am not limited to one or two niches.

Thanks for the advice. Thought about it for the whole weekend and came up with one.

 

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[SJMM]

@MoneyDoc Yes they support international orders and from the UK do not charge more for European sales, I do not have any experience with charges for selling the US from the UK (yet!) Have you even listed your products yet though? I would worry about that first before thinking about a step that is not critical yet. Good luck though.

@Maria Singh You know, what your brand name is isn't as important as you think it is. Get the product, validate it, sell some units then think about a simple brand name that makes sense for your product. Again, focus on what is critical for you right now, brand name probably isn't a critical task right now.

Thanks so much for your imput. I actually thought about it this weekend and gave myself this weekend as the deadline. I have to move on to the next step.

 

[SJVC]

@MoneyDoc How much is it to send from the US to Turkey? Have you sold any units in the US?

 

[MoneyDoc]

@MoneyDoc How much is it to send from the US to Turkey? Have you sold any units in the US?

Sorry I don't think I was clear enough.

I reside in Canada. If I ship from canada, shipping will be almost twice the product price. It's not worth it.

So I was looking into fulfillment centres and came across Amazons service.

What I'm trying to understand is if they ship international to countries like Turkey, Russia, UK, etc.

If so, I would sign up for the FBA and get all my skus into amazons warehouse in the US and let them do the shipping. That sure will allow me to offer the products at the price I want including free shipping to my customers.

Cheers.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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[SJVC]

@MoneyDoc Sorry for the late reply. How is the shipping problem going?

This link will help you: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200240360#200240580

The do not ship to Turkey or Russia at the moment I believe.

 

[MoneyDoc]

@MoneyDoc Sorry for the late reply. How is the shipping problem going?

This link will help you: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200240360#200240580

The do not ship to Turkey or Russia at the moment I believe.

Thanks for the reply buddy.

I'm still looking for viable shipping options from Canada.

My product only weighs 50 grams (its the same size as a pen). I was thinking of putting it alonside an invoice in a large padded envelope and using Canada post's letter/document service. They'll charge me about $2.50 to send it within Canada and about $3.33 to the USA ($5 for international).

But even $3.33 cuts back on my profits... I guess I have to raise my product price to take the shipping into account.

Thanks for your link.

 

[SJVC]

@MoneyDoc Your welcome. Yeah international shipping can be expensive. Is your product more suited for the international market then?

 

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[SJVC]

Okay guys, here is an interesting 'trick' you might be interested in...

Ever see those pages on Amazon that seem to be always on sale? You can do that too. This might sound quite cynical but I would estimate that 90%+ pages on Amazon that say they are sale are not actually on sale at all. They are just using the contrast principle. The contrast principle is that a potential buyer will value an item more if they believe it was once selling at a higher price than it is now. So we could enter this in the price fields (in Amazon Seller Central):






You can then enter when the sale starts and ends. There is no limit as to when the sale should stop so you could theoretically have a sale that never ends… see what I mean? We could enter our sale to go on for two years and then when our page go lives it will say ‘50% off’ when it was never selling at £14.99. You can use this ‘trick’ if you want, no doubt it will increase your conversions for your page.

 

[Dicky Dee]

@SJVC Awesome thread you have hear and thank you for sharing the information with us! I have a few questions below for you if you dont mind answering.

- Im located in Canada and will be shipping from my country with the use of amazon.ca does that mean im only able to sell to canadian customers if i only listed on amazon.ca?

- Am i able to post on amazon.com if im shipping from canada? If not do i need to send my items to a fba warehouse in the U.S. in order to do so?

- If i ship my items to FBA do i still have to pay the shipping costs from amazon to my customer?

- Using FBA i dont understand the whole bar code thing, do i just buy bar codes somewhere and thats it? Or do i need to input them into an inventory system of some sort?


Thank you for any advice you can offer!

 

[1milclub]

@SJVC - Thanks for the AMA again. I added a few items to FBA, however I noticed two things (that is not moving the sale of them)

1. The ranks of the items are way high (100k +) - should I have reviewed the rank before sending the items? (The margin from the current price quoted is very good but failed to check rank so it is not moving fast). However I immediately got the buy box (first time FBA seller).

2. There is another seller and seems the setting he has is to match price, so the price war is going on between us. How low do you recommend going? (due to high margin I have some room to lower the price).

Appreciate your input,

 

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[SJVC]

@Dicky Dee I'm not sure of the specifics with using your stock from Canada to the US, but from my experience I can send orders to mainland Europe with stock from the UK, so I imagine you can.

I'm not sure what you mean about paying the shipping costs for your customers? Amazon will still charge your customers for postage unless they are Prime members.

With barcodes, you can buy EAN (for Europe) or UPC (for the US) from eBay. You can be them for like $0.01 each and you just enter that code when creating a product, then Amazon creates the barcode for you which you can print off or they can label for you.

@1milclub Are you selling on a page with other sellers then? You probably should have looked at the SR yeah. Is the other seller using FBA, then you could get into a price war, if they are not you can keep your prices higher and still keep the buy box unless they really go beneath your sales price.

Hope that helps guys!

 

[Dicky Dee]

@Dicky Dee I'm not sure of the specifics with using your stock from Canada to the US, but from my experience I can send orders to mainland Europe with stock from the UK, so I imagine you can.

I'm not sure what you mean about paying the shipping costs for your customers? Amazon will still charge your customers for postage unless they are Prime members.

With barcodes, you can buy EAN (for Europe) or UPC (for the US) from eBay. You can be them for like $0.01 each and you just enter that code when creating a product, then Amazon creates the barcode for you which you can print off or they can label for you.

@1milclub Are you selling on a page with other sellers then? You probably should have looked at the SR yeah. Is the other seller using FBA, then you could get into a price war, if they are not you can keep your prices higher and still keep the buy box unless they really go beneath your sales price.

Hope that helps guys!

1. I meant since you're using amazon UK do you only have europe buyers or do north american customers purchase from you off the amazon UK site as well?

2. When using FBA, does amazon charge you anything when they ship it out to your customer or do you include that in your listing price already?

3. I have a Dymo Barcode label printer, it prints out barcodes if i have it inventoried into my other businesses POS system, do you know if theres a way to do it without adding into my POS system or maybe theres another system i can use? Sorry im really new to amazon selling as ive only used ebay and never had to deal with this, thank you for your patience.

 

[SJVC]

@Dicky Dee

1. I only sell to European customers at the moment. I do not believe American customers could order from myself.
2. They will charge the customer postage if they are not a prime member
3. Not sure what your POS system is. But the way I do it is print off labels on a4 pages with 27 labels on each page.

Hope that helps, often the best way to find out is go through the FBA process, confusing at first but then you will realise how easy and powerful it is

 

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[SJVC]

A nugget about Alibaba for you guys. (I wonder how the IPO will go!)

This is an extract from the free ebook in my signature (shameless self-promotion I know!)

This is the place to go if you wanted to source both ready made products and to find a manufacturer for a product. When you are just starting out, you do not want to go down the manufacturer route, purchasing ready made products is much quicker and easier. Examples are always useful so lets say we are looking for HDMI cables.

Above is what the home page looks like for the website.


Below is what the page will look like when you search for ‘hdmi cables’ :

From here you can see that the first two results show unit prices of $0.69-$2.46 and $0.5-$10, respectively. Out of these two the best option would be the second cables because they have a lower unit cost and lower minimum order quantity (MOQ). Bear in mind that if you are ordering the MOQ then you will pay the higher unit cost, for our example here we would pay $1 for ordering 100 pieces.


Scrolling down we can see some more results, but the second listing still looks the best.

Okay so now we have chosen our supplier (the second listing), it is time to message them. When we click through to the page we see this:

Click ‘Contact Supplier’ to be taken through to the message interface.


A good example text could be:


‘Hello,


My name is (insert name here) acting on behalf of (your company) and I am interested in your product.


I would like to purchase (x amount) of this product.


Please reply so we can arrange payment methods and delivery.


Best regards,


(Your name).’


Then you can proceed to talk with the supplier. If they do not reply, do not worry as there are plenty of suppliers on Alibaba. It is a good idea to message several to ensure you get some replies. Also do not worry if you have not officially set up your company yet, it is still a good idea to include a company name to look more credible.

 

[SJVC]

Hi everyone, got another nugget of info below about Sales Ranks (SR) which are critical on Amazon.

I will be online for about an hour if anyone wants to do some quick fire question and answers

Most people who purchase from Amazon are unaware of what Sales Rank is and that fine because it really doesn't affect them. However as a seller you must be acutely aware of what this is and how it can and will affect your business on Amazon. The simple definition of SR (Sales Rank) is that it is a number Amazon will assign a product depending on how much volume it sells. The best SR a product could have is 1. The worst could be into the tens of thousands. Now this doesn’t mean only one product at a time can have a SR of 1, multiple products could have that SR, just like many products could have a SR of 2,412 for example. SR are also assigned by category not across the whole of Amazon. For example a product may rank as 1,032 in Kids Toys, while another product may rank 202 in Womens Clothes.

To find a SR of a product is very easy. Go to the product page and scroll down to ‘Product Details’ until you find this:

You can see that this item has a SR of 111 which is #1 in baby cutlery. So now we know that the best selling item in the baby cutlery category has a SR of 111. But how does that really affect us? If you are thinking about selling a particular product, then you can look at your competition and have an educated guess as to how many sales they are getting. In this case our main competitor has a SR of 111 (which is a very good SR).

Below is a guideline as to what volume of sales you could expect from certain SR’s. This is by no means a definitive guide but will help you to get a feel for what size the market is you are after.

1-100 Extremely Good Selling Item (Will be around 20+ sold a day)

101-500 Very Good Sales

501-1000 Okay Sales

1001-2000 Average Sales (Will be around 5+ sold a day)

2001-3000 Will Be A Slow Seller

3000+ Very Slow Sales (Will be 1-2 sales every other day, once you get passed a 5000 SR then you can’t expect any sales at all really)

Keep in mind that it is quite rare to see a SR of 1. Also remember that when you create your product pages they will start with a relatively high SR (around 2000-3000) and then will the SR will begin to come down as your sales go up. Most of my product pages have a SR of 100-800 depending on where they are on their life cycle.

It is okay to have a higher SR if you net profit per unit is high. The flipside of this is also that it is okay to have a low unit profit if your SR is low. For example if you had a product that you sold to consumers for £49.99 (a relatively high priced item on Amazon) and your unit profit on that was £20 you are doing well if you sold three of those a day. Equally if you had an item which sold for £4.99 in which your net profit was £2 and you sold 30 of those day, you have the same total net profit as the item which sold three items a day.

The optimal position to be in would be for a high net profit item with a low SR. So while SR is important so is the unit profit that is associated with the product.

 

[PopEmersen]

1-100 Extremely Good Selling Item (Will be around 20+ sold a day)

Really so like the 90-100th rank would be 20+ a day? Im not questioning you, because I honestly don't know, I am just asking how did you get that figure? Even 10-15 a day is still good.

 

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[eSparks]

Not sure how accurate FBA Toolkit is, but the site estimates daily sales per category and sales rank. You can also get details on the daily price, stock and sales volume for products in their database.

 

[1step]

Below is a guideline as to what volume of sales you could expect from certain SR’s. This is by no means a definitive guide but will help you to get a feel for what size the market is you are after.

1-100 Extremely Good Selling Item (Will be around 20+ sold a day)

101-500 Very Good Sales

501-1000 Okay Sales

1001-2000 Average Sales (Will be around 5+ sold a day)

2001-3000 Will Be A Slow Seller

3000+ Very Slow Sales (Will be 1-2 sales every other day, once you get passed a 5000 SR then you can’t expect any sales at all really)

Really so like the 90-100th rank would be 20+ a day? Im not questioning you, because I honestly don't know, I am just asking how did you get that figure? Even 10-15 a day is still good.

The only way to really estimate sales based on a sellers rank is to have experience selling in that category. Categories vary far to much to even come close to creating a real set of guidelines. In some categories top 100 could mean just a couple sales per day and in others it could mean hundreds, at the same time in some categories a sellers rank of 4000 is only a few sales a day and in others it could mean 20 sales a day.

 

[SJVC]

@PopEmersen From the niches that I sell in, those are the figures. Like @1step pointed out above the SR varies from each category, I posted about SR to make people aware that it actually exists and is very important for sellers to be aware of.

@eSparks Ah yes I have heard about that website, I think I will check that out! That's a great free resource.

 

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[btkfr]

Hi Sjvc, Ty so much for this ama !
At first I would like to apologize for my crappy english (I'm french )

I've just finished to read TFM book and yeah I would like to start import goods from china as a beginning and I have a few questions about that.

1) Account name on sites (ebay/amazon), Do you think its preferable to have a serious badass name account (I don't know, something like OMEGA-CORP-TECHNOLOGIES , if you see what I mean), or people just don't care about this detail ?

2) I'm lucky enough to have a chinese girlfriend who is able to negociate directly this manufacturers on alibaba, and so far I find products are cheaper on this site is than on aliexpress (even for small sample ,like 50 pieces) , did you find any difference about that ?

3) I would like to start directly on several site on .fr (basically ebay and amazon .fr + french website like priceminister or leboncoin.fr) Would you say it's a good idea to directly start on 4 sites or it will be a pain in the a$$ to manage customers on 4 differents plateforms ?

4) Last one is about freedom and holidays , let's say you would like to go one week on an exotic island with not a single internet connexion, do you have any way to pause your business? and what would it implies ?

Thanks in advance guy !

 

[SJVC]

@btkfr Hey man! Thanks for your q's.

1) I would say that your account name should be simple and friendly. Something like you suggested would make you sound too 'big'. Don't worry about your account name too much because you can change it on both Amazon and eBay.
2) You mean she can talk in Chinese to them? I usually find Alibaba is cheaper but the MOQ will be much higher - that isn't a solid rule but a trend I have observed.
3) Depends on how much time you have. If you have enough time go for all four! If not shoot for Amazon and eBay to begin with.
4) Once you use FBA (or any other service which sends your orders for you) then you can jet off for as long as you have stock! If you are fulfilling orders yourself then you will be more tied down to one location. You can say that you are on holiday on eBay and you can de-activate your listings on Amazon but I wouldn't recommend it.

Hope that helps

 

[btkfr]

Sure it did help a lot, ty for the quick answer !
Feel free to contact me for a beer if you come to Paris one day !

 

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[SJVC]

@btkfr Your welcome, last time I was in Paris it was raining ha.

 

[vinisterz]

when you find a product that you want to import on alibaba, how do you know you are not infringing on someones invention that the chinese manufacturer just copied?

 

[Kerin]

Hey there,

I'm based in Australia but am going to start selling on Amazon UK. With regards to the VAT - do you know what the threshold is before VAT is payable upon importation?

I'm assuming if you are registered for VAT you could reclaim this anyway however being a foreign company I believe it is optional to register and charge for VAT? Trying to gauge whether we can import stuff into the UK and avoid VAT altogether.

Cheers

 

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[GreedyBGoode]

Hey there,

I'm based in Australia but am going to start selling on Amazon UK. With regards to the VAT - do you know what the threshold is before VAT is payable upon importation?

I'm assuming if you are registered for VAT you could reclaim this anyway however being a foreign company I believe it is optional to register and charge for VAT? Trying to gauge whether we can import stuff into the UK and avoid VAT altogether.

Cheers

You won't be able to avoid VAT unfortunately especially if you're shipping normally. The option to register and charge for VAT is basically option to reclaim your input VAT (VAT on your costs) and offset that against output VAT (VAT on your selling price). If you're not registered for VAT, you simply get what you sell for and costs is as it is.

For e.g. (assuming selling price of £12 and cost of £5):
Registered for VAT:
Output VAT (20%) = £2, for your purpose you assume selling price of £10 plus £2 VAT. VAT portion would be absorbed by your customer
Input VAT = £1
You need to pay HMRC (aka the Government) £1
Your net profit = £10 - £5 = £5
So you can reclaim £2 and offset against VAT on your costs of import

Not registered for VAT:
Not VAT, so net profit = £12 - £6 = £6

By not registering for VAT, you basically gain the portion of VAT that you were meant to pass on to the government. Hence why higher net profits.

I hope that was what you were asking...

 

[Kerin]

You won't be able to avoid VAT unfortunately especially if you're shipping normally. The option to register and charge for VAT is basically option to reclaim your input VAT (VAT on your costs) and offset that against output VAT (VAT on your selling price). If you're not registered for VAT, you simply get what you sell for and costs is as it is.

For e.g. (assuming selling price of £12 and cost of £5):
Registered for VAT:
Output VAT (20%) = £2, for your purpose you assume selling price of £10 plus £2 VAT. VAT portion would be absorbed by your customer
Input VAT = £1
You need to pay HMRC (aka the Government) £1
Your net profit = £10 - £5 = £5
So you can reclaim £2 and offset against VAT on your costs of import

Not registered for VAT:
Not VAT, so net profit = £12 - £6 = £6

By not registering for VAT, you basically gain the portion of VAT that you were meant to pass on to the government. Hence why higher net profits.

I hope that was what you were asking...

Perfect, thanks for clarifying that. It seems the most logical thing for me to do would to sell as unregistered for VAT as the input VAT will always be lower than VAT payable to the govt - therefore I'll always end up in a payable position.

I'll just have to absorb the input VAT and take it as a hit.

Thanks again!