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I posted a thread a while back: https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/product-development-sourcing-importing/44708-let-process-begin.html after being inspired by Vigilantes & Amails thread.
Finally after a few months of waiting, my samples have finally came!!
The products I am importing are a specific type of footwear and my plan is to create a brand around them.
A few months back I met a really cool illustrator/designer who I convinced to help me out with the branding and sorted all of that out, got the logo designed up and vectorised and got it trademarked.
After a lot of back and forth with the factories via email they finally sent our products last week via air, which was expensive, cost around $300.
It has been a hell of an experience and although after reading threads about importing and asking some of my friends who have imported before, its amazing how tough the Chinese can be and how they can specifically make mistakes or supply lower quality samples to you, concsiouly. All part of business I suppose, have to accept that.
I was fortunate enough to receive the samples first around $1000 before paying due to connections from my partners family.
Now that we have the product and have checked the quality my plan is to, create the webstore; I actually worked for an agency that specialised in ecommerce stores for big brands so have some experience there
, and create a compelling brochure/leaflet/"lookbook" that we can take to small independant footwear retailers and try to convince them to take some stock. The plan is to get a bunch of orders from a few stores on the strength of our brochure and sample products and then order another batch from China.
I think I'm possibly in the "desert of desertion" as MJ calls it as I am having some worries going through my head: "Have we researched this enough", "is there enough demand", "what if on our next order the manufacturer screws us..", "people say our logo looks like comic sans.. (not our target market anwway)"...
I listened to Vigilante's call about selling big box retail, that you have to approach small chains and you are in a pickle if you put your product across the country but its not selling... so I was thinking of taking this approach. My friend and his family have around 20 shops in London that sell footwear, however some of the footwear is a bit cheap, would this damage our brand if we managed to get into his shops?
There are one or two REALLY strong brands in this sector however a lot of people complain about the price and that they want them. While I don't really want to compete on price, the margin are very high at our competitors pricing point, so I was thinking initially while the brand is not as strong to offer them a bit lower? Perhaps this is a mistake.
I am tempted to post some pictures..
Would love to hear your thoughts and advice.
Finally after a few months of waiting, my samples have finally came!!
The products I am importing are a specific type of footwear and my plan is to create a brand around them.
A few months back I met a really cool illustrator/designer who I convinced to help me out with the branding and sorted all of that out, got the logo designed up and vectorised and got it trademarked.
After a lot of back and forth with the factories via email they finally sent our products last week via air, which was expensive, cost around $300.
It has been a hell of an experience and although after reading threads about importing and asking some of my friends who have imported before, its amazing how tough the Chinese can be and how they can specifically make mistakes or supply lower quality samples to you, concsiouly. All part of business I suppose, have to accept that.
I was fortunate enough to receive the samples first around $1000 before paying due to connections from my partners family.
Now that we have the product and have checked the quality my plan is to, create the webstore; I actually worked for an agency that specialised in ecommerce stores for big brands so have some experience there
, and create a compelling brochure/leaflet/"lookbook" that we can take to small independant footwear retailers and try to convince them to take some stock. The plan is to get a bunch of orders from a few stores on the strength of our brochure and sample products and then order another batch from China.I think I'm possibly in the "desert of desertion" as MJ calls it as I am having some worries going through my head: "Have we researched this enough", "is there enough demand", "what if on our next order the manufacturer screws us..", "people say our logo looks like comic sans.. (not our target market anwway)"...
I listened to Vigilante's call about selling big box retail, that you have to approach small chains and you are in a pickle if you put your product across the country but its not selling... so I was thinking of taking this approach. My friend and his family have around 20 shops in London that sell footwear, however some of the footwear is a bit cheap, would this damage our brand if we managed to get into his shops?
There are one or two REALLY strong brands in this sector however a lot of people complain about the price and that they want them. While I don't really want to compete on price, the margin are very high at our competitors pricing point, so I was thinking initially while the brand is not as strong to offer them a bit lower? Perhaps this is a mistake.
I am tempted to post some pictures..
Would love to hear your thoughts and advice.
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