A
ANON29512
Guest
I made this thread as a source of motivation, accountability, recreation and a source of value to others.
My company: We officially started in 2015, March 1 in Spain, Valencia. "We" means me and my brother, Adam and David. We first came to Spain in 2014 Aug, to check out the place for ourselves (via Spanish internship). We then proceeded to do the LLC (S.L. here) which was relatively painless (public sector seems to be okay, at least comparable to Hungary), but private sector is very bad (ex. banks, phone/net providers, all companies in general). We saw lots of reasons how we could add value to this market, which I detail a bit more below.
We're Hungarians not Spanish, despite we choose this market for the followign reasons:
- very underserved market (in terms of costumer support, offers, web infrastructure, treating the customer as inconvenience), language barrier (keeps out good foreign competition; higher barriers to entry), weak competition.
- market is big (47m) and easy to enter other Europeans markets as we grow (Portugal, France, etc.)
- cost of living and doing business a lot cheaper then other Western Europeans countries
- It's a nice place to live, sunshine!
- Situation in Hungary so bad, we were planning to move anyway after I finished university
- Amazon (and Ebay) still new here, but growing so we got to hurry up
Master plan:
We're sourcing products directly from Chinese manufacturers, and sell them online via our website and other online platforms. This way, one our biggest competitive advantage is price (we can undercut everybody and still make 50-150% profit) along with providing great service and customer support, fast and cheap delivery, a great buying experience through our website, product differentiation, own-label products (we tell the Chinese what we want!), etc which makes a nice, stable, varied foundation for our business. Basically optimize, provide the most value and treat the customer as king, which isn't as common here as you would think (not like USA or GB at all).
By the way, we're in the electronics and DIY-tools industry. We decided we won't niche down, as we plan to be a big marketplace (like kogan.com/au), which we feel is still possible to do here.
Progress so far (4th April):
Our website is up, and we're giving dropshipping a try until we wait for the Chinese products. Wholesalers usually give prices higher than large retailers, so we ditched them. DS seemed okay, but prices are barely good enough to make 10-15% profit margin plus competition is rough. Basically, we don't have a competitive advantage here, so this we do just as an experiment. On top of that, the dropshipping companies' (2 of them) communication is shitty, terms not clear/transparent among others, so we're pissed at them. Plan to give them the finger as soon as possible. Feel like this about Spanish companies in general.
Chinese products are being manufactured and will arrive in May (2 shipments). Until then, we figured we might order some products from Hungary, which has similar margins as the chinese products while undercutting everybody.
So, March revenue: 0$ (mostly setting up website, payment gateways, bank account, etc.)
April's going to be our first profitable month!
My company: We officially started in 2015, March 1 in Spain, Valencia. "We" means me and my brother, Adam and David. We first came to Spain in 2014 Aug, to check out the place for ourselves (via Spanish internship). We then proceeded to do the LLC (S.L. here) which was relatively painless (public sector seems to be okay, at least comparable to Hungary), but private sector is very bad (ex. banks, phone/net providers, all companies in general). We saw lots of reasons how we could add value to this market, which I detail a bit more below.
We're Hungarians not Spanish, despite we choose this market for the followign reasons:
- very underserved market (in terms of costumer support, offers, web infrastructure, treating the customer as inconvenience), language barrier (keeps out good foreign competition; higher barriers to entry), weak competition.
- market is big (47m) and easy to enter other Europeans markets as we grow (Portugal, France, etc.)
- cost of living and doing business a lot cheaper then other Western Europeans countries
- It's a nice place to live, sunshine!
- Situation in Hungary so bad, we were planning to move anyway after I finished university
- Amazon (and Ebay) still new here, but growing so we got to hurry up
Master plan:
We're sourcing products directly from Chinese manufacturers, and sell them online via our website and other online platforms. This way, one our biggest competitive advantage is price (we can undercut everybody and still make 50-150% profit) along with providing great service and customer support, fast and cheap delivery, a great buying experience through our website, product differentiation, own-label products (we tell the Chinese what we want!), etc which makes a nice, stable, varied foundation for our business. Basically optimize, provide the most value and treat the customer as king, which isn't as common here as you would think (not like USA or GB at all).
By the way, we're in the electronics and DIY-tools industry. We decided we won't niche down, as we plan to be a big marketplace (like kogan.com/au), which we feel is still possible to do here.
Progress so far (4th April):
Our website is up, and we're giving dropshipping a try until we wait for the Chinese products. Wholesalers usually give prices higher than large retailers, so we ditched them. DS seemed okay, but prices are barely good enough to make 10-15% profit margin plus competition is rough. Basically, we don't have a competitive advantage here, so this we do just as an experiment. On top of that, the dropshipping companies' (2 of them) communication is shitty, terms not clear/transparent among others, so we're pissed at them. Plan to give them the finger as soon as possible. Feel like this about Spanish companies in general.
Chinese products are being manufactured and will arrive in May (2 shipments). Until then, we figured we might order some products from Hungary, which has similar margins as the chinese products while undercutting everybody.
So, March revenue: 0$ (mostly setting up website, payment gateways, bank account, etc.)
April's going to be our first profitable month!
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