FBA and Importing Goods From China

[SJVC]

How does the FBA process affect broker charges?
Curious, as I ordered a $20 item here in canada that I can sell for $40. However, the shipping was $35, then I had to pay $35 brokerage charges when it arrived and it will cost me $10 to post within canada.
I only ordered 5 as a test and obviously there will be more profit on larger orders, just curious if you found it cheaper or more expensive using FBA?
Thanks for answers.

I'm not sure what you mean by broker charges, do you mean taxes? FBA shouldn't affect any of the importing of the goods, that's the end result really. $70 sounds like a really large amount for a $20 item! Have you asked your supplier about china post air? Takes around 2 weeks but is pretty much free.

 

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[SJVC]

This was just a quality test order through alibaba. I received 5, so will about break even. Then on larger order price goes down and shipping is acceptable (larger orders would be via sea). Should be able to make $10-12 off each item if it sells.
It shipped via DHL and it stops at customs here. The receipt showed local taxes, $10, DHL processing fee $5, some other fee for $5, then the rest was customs charges.

Ah okay that makes more sense, sounds like you could be onto a winner, get a few more products on the go and you will be surprised at how it all adds up

 

[SJVC]

Thanks for the great feedback, really appreciated.

I started importing from China recently but through Alibaba and have been doing sample orders which I just shipped out to Amazon.

Question:
1. When you make your sample order, do they create unique packaging for you or do you use the existing packaging? Since you are creating your own brand of private label products packaging is really important
2. Why do you not ship directly to Amazon from the supplier?
3. What is your process for adding the images and description for each item?

Your welcome man. I assume the packaging would vary from manufacturer to manufacturer but most of the time for a sample they wouldn't give custom packaging for a sample. I can't ship directly to Amazon's warehouses from suppliers here in the UK, not sure if that is the same everywhere. The process is take multiple photos of the item by yourself (make sure they look professional) or hire someone to do it for you, then make sure you use titles and descriptions that use plenty of the keywords your are targeting.

 

[Alveko]

Hey man, since you say ask you anything, I want to try and get started on this buy online and sell for more. What do you recommend I import from amazon? I want to do this to get some extra cash (gotta start somewhere right?) but truth be told I have to idea where to begin. What are the things that sell most easily in your opinion? I want to spend up 500-1000 usd on my first buy, something not too risky.

At least do a minimum of reading when you want to start out and sell on amazon, you can find some great sources(including this forum) that will give you an idea of what criteria you should keep in mind when searching for products. It will also provide u a greater picture of all the steps you will need to take after finding that potential product(s), it's all there on the interwebz.(most important stuff at least).

 

[SJVC]

@Fastlane Baron Ah right fair enough! Respect to you for taking action in your circumstances!! Best of luck.

 

[SJVC]

Okay a lot of posts so I will try and touch on everyone's points:

@Luke1213 If you are not getting the buy box even as the only seller then it is just because you are new. Maybe look at selling some products at cost to try and get some feedback. As for your product not showing, tbh I'm not sure about that. Keep checking and hopefully it will rank!

@harrry3000 Product research is really hard at first. Once you get a couple of decent products under your belt you will be able to sniff out what sells. My first product was ear spacers.... random I know (I'm not into that sort of thing). They had decent margins, relatively little competition and were small to store.

@exclusive88 I really can't comment on the products you mentioned without knowing your competitors, volume of sales, the margins etc. Just try one of them in a small sample and see how you do.

 

[SJVC]

@Davor Yes do it.

 

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[SJVC]

Mmmm, MOQ really varies from manufacturer. Ask for a lower MOQ with a higher unit price.

 

[SJVC]

@John Z Yes Amazon only shows you the top 100.

I do not believe there is a list that shows you the best 1000 sellers, however when you are looking around on Amazon you can see for example that this product might be 'ranked 648 in Kitchen supplies'.

Hope that helps.

 

[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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[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.

 

[MMatt]

What is your system for finding new products that dont have massive competition and good margins. I have days where I search three hours without any success.

Average amount of profit per sale?

How many products for sale at one time?

How many sales per day on average, do you have one item that is much more popular than others?

Do you rebrand niche products or import anything that sells well?

Do you have an LLC setup, if so how long were you selling before you set it up?

 

[JimClark]

Do you go to China to source your products and meet with the factories or deal with them using Alibaba/email? Have you or do you use importing agents?

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

My first post here so I thought my first thread would be to answer any questions anyone has regarding to Fulfillment By Amazon (or any other questions on Amazon/eBay) or importing goods from China. I have been importing goods and selling them online for around three years so I know a decent amount but am not an expert yet

Thank you for offering up the AMA.

 

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[SJVC]

Just curious -

I know you said "whatever sells" but do you stick to a general niche since you have suppliers already (like electronics or kitchen stuff for example)?

I'm also wondering how many total products you have attempted VS how many you are successfully selling

Are you doing fulfillment yourself?

Thanks for doing this!

Hey man, to be fair I stick around maybe 4-5 niches that I know suppliers will be able to get a hold of. But the great thing about is Amazon is that you can sell products from several niches which gives you a lot of potential. I have tried a lot of products... the key is to keep the initial orders low so you don't blow all your money on dead stock. Everyone buys iPhone cases thinking they will sell 30 a day and then you sell one in two weeks for 20p profit ha. Learn from that, look for items that still do a good volume of sales but are not really obvious. I did fullfillment myself for like 2 and a half years and it got to the point where I was hating it because it was basically a really repetitive job; I considered hiring someone but FBA just makes so much more sense.

 

[SJVC]

Will you avoid an item if it has X amount of sellers already?

Also, what is your most efficient method for finding items with a greater sales rank that 1000? On amazon, I have found the list of top 100 sellers, but these are mostly branded merchandise and where are the other 900? Is there a more advanced search option?

I also have tried the route of finding products on aliexpress then checking their amazon ranking but this process and long and time consuming.

In terms of sellers, it really depends on how active they are in being competitive on price, there could be ten sellers who are dormant on one page where you c ould take the buy box and on the other hand you could be up against one seller who is constantly checking their prices. For items with a sales rank of >1000 it takes a bit more time to find them, usually its a case of searching amazon yourself and checking products for their sales rank. You will get quicker at finding products the more your practice, its a process!

Hey SJVC...Thanks for the thread. Are you building a brand? when you say your're looking at other avenues for sales to retain control, im assuming that would be opening an ecommerce store? At the moment would that not look like a we sell anything and everything type of a store front or you only operating in one vertical or one niche/type of a product?

Your welcome man, atm on Amazon no, but it is something I need to do (just takes more time to get sales). Good question about the diversification. The second biz I'm working on is not an 'everything' store - directly competing with amazon would never work; so yes the new biz is a brand focused around a few niche products.

 

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[Harley]

Hi.
I'm seeing conflicting posts with items < and > 1000, which is it?
Are you looking for the more popular selling items, or the off the radar items?
This might be a stupid question, but when I look on Amazon, they are typically number 1-100? if I click best sellers.
Or, as an example, if I type sd cards (something that will have more than 1000 hits), then they all show, but I don't see any rankings listed. Even if I click on the item, I can't see that info. Is it a case of clicking most popular sort, then counting the pages, or am I missing something?
Many Thanks

 

[z6Evolved]

Do you find it hard to compete with products that Amazon sells themselves or with big sellers? I've found a couple items I can make a great margin on but they're either sold and fulfilled by Amazon, or sold by guys with hundreds of feedback across dozens of items. The funny part is those guys are selling the same items I'm seeing on DHGate and slapping their brand name in the title. They don't even brand the product and most of them use the stock photos from the manufacturer. Go figure.

I want to take a crack at a couple of these items but I'm worried that competing with Amazon or a power seller like that will just end with me holding a lot of unsold inventory or taking a loss.

 

[SJVC]

Hi,
Do you generally use the stock images form the manufacturer, or retake/use professional images? and do you find it actually makes a lot of difference in sales?
Thanks

I have a very little studio that I use with my DSLR. The background is never completely white so outsource that (elance) job so the background is pure white, you can get that done for like 10p a photo or something silly cheap

 

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[z6Evolved]

Hi there, looks like @Luke1213 has already made some good suggestions so I'll add too. I don't directly compete with Amazon a page they sell on, however if you have a separate page then you will be still be able to get sales for the same/similar product if you are cheaper or you can differentiate yourself in another way. I wouldn't worry much about other big sellers, they all started from scratch too so its case of being on top of your game from the start (ie great customer service etc). Yeah branding can be a funny thing sometimes on Amazon, in regards to the photos in some cases the manufacturers have taken them from sellers so don't always assume its the sellers taking it from the manufacturers. If you are worried about being left with a load of stock, see if you an order a really small amount, even if you only break even you will know next time when you order more that you will profit. Hope that helps!

I didn't really explain myself well but you managed to answer my question anyway. I was asking more along the lines of how to compete selling a product that Amazon or another large retailer sells. If I understood correctly, you're saying don't use their ASIN (so it shows up as a "price option" underneath the Amazon offer or price leader) and instead use a fresh ASIN so my product gets its own page, right? And then focus on building quality for my product over theirs - good copywriting, photographs, etc.

That was what I figured but I didn't know if there was just so much competition against those types of products that it wasn't even worth it. I'm going to give it a try and see what happens.

Thanks again!

 

[Azif]

You can always use a card that has no foreign transaction fees like that mileageplus chase card.

 

[SJVC]

@mosdef 370USD is mad for ten lamps... I would either try and negotiate them down or tell them where to go!

 

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[Trevorjc]

No, I live in a small 3rd world country and everything is batshit expensive due to taxes. My plan is to import stuff buying from amazon, I have to pay an extra for the weight so heavy stuff aren't very profitable. Thanks for the reply I will research more on this subject.

Would it be possible to import from the likes of Alibaba / Allie Express to your home-country? Lots of the products on Amazon have been imported from these sources so by importing from there rather than Amazon you are cutting people out of the loop and potentially increasing your profit margin.

 

[BGLefty]

Is your product fullfilled by Amazon? Pretty sure that helps your ranking.


Sent from my GT-I9100M using Tapatalk

 

[SJVC]

@Harry3000 Branded products that we all know (such as Nike and Adidas) do not use Aliexpress as wholesalers. So yes there is a ton of fake goods on Aliexpress, stay clear because you will be the one who gets in trouble for selling them.

On the other hand there are branded goods that are not counterfeit, often this will be a generic item that a particular manufacturer has branded in China. The way to tell these apart is if you have never heard of the brand!

 

[SJVC]

@Ajay2390 Don't be surprised that they are both made in China! Keep looking for legit products.

 

[Ajay2390]

Understood. Back to researching i go haha. Thanks for your wisdom throughout this tremendous thread @SJVC

 

[Ronak]

Not necessarily...if your price is significantly lower, then you can get the buy box w/o FBA...you may or may not be able to create a child listing off the current one, contact support and see if they'll let you add a child listing...

Just reread your posts...so are you the only seller, since its a private label product? In that case, I don't see why you wouldn't have the buy box??

 

[throttleforward]

Once I had them under FBA, I got the box immediately.

Amazon rewards those who agree to give Amazon more of their money. Don't be suprised that when you start giving Amazon more money (via use of FBA, pro seller account, etc.) that they will start "favoring" your product in the form of higher SERP rankings.

That said, you really have to match your title and copy to what people are already searching for. Analyze your competition, steal their keywords, and consider getting a Merchant Words account.

 

[Harry321]

@SJVC So I've just spent the last few hours trying to source my first product, but what I seem to find is that most products are branded, and that the mark-up on non branded products is non-existant. I hate to constantly ask for advice, but could you shed some light on how you found your FIRST product? Or is it a case of continual searching...?