Hi guys,
in my introduction thread a couple of months back I said that I was working on some other things and would start a progress thread as soon as I started working on my business in earnest. Now is the time.
What is the situation? I live in Germany, have a degree in electronics engineering and an MBA. For the past 5 years I worked at a research institution that doubled as a consulting agency. I have recently finished writing up my PhD thesis and have become the proud father of a baby daughter. The last five years I have worked my a$$ off for mediocre pay and little appreciation. Almost one and a half years ago I read 4HWW and since got hooked to designing a business suited to my life (but no, I don't intend to peddle supplements). I have spent all this time considering several different business models from inventing, consulting, self-pubbing and what not and have recently decided to go with .... *drumroll* ... Importing. A big thanks to @Vigilante, I believe that what you are doing is the most fitting to our life.
What productive things have I done up to now? After a lot of procrastination on the forum I have finally started actually scouting Amazon for good products. I am loosely following the product research approach provided by @JonnyC on the inside. I use Jungle Scout but not MerchantWords because apparently it does not work for German Amazon (anyone has different information? I haven't actually tried). Instead I use Longtail Pro which I already had a license for but for what I am doing, Keyword Planner is probably ok, too. I have also purchased and read @Walter Hay's book and while I can't claim to have made any money from it yet, I have a feeling it is worth at least 50 times its price.
Using what I describe above I have identified two products that I am confident I can become a top-ten seller on amazon for and that provide healthy margins as defined by @Walter Hay. I am not so thrilled about the monthly sales (good, but not great). However, you don't learn until you act, so I searched for suitable suppliers, not using Alibaba but the sites that @Walter Hay recommends in his books. I have also looked at countries other than China but, admittedly, only where search was relatively easy.
I have identified a total of 10 suppliers (both verified and unverified) from mainland China and Taiwan and have written to them all. 5 of them I have contacted two days ago and 5 of them yesterday (they had 1 or 2 business days to answer). Up to now, I have received an answer from only one company but they sent me a catalogue that was unrelated to the product I requested and in the meantime I had already found out that they are a trading company.
This is currently bugging me: So now I'm waiting and looking for other product categories in the meantime. Once I start, I tend to become a little impatient. For those of you with experience, is it normal for companies to take more than two days to reply to the request for a simple catalogue? I used the wording that @Walter Hay recommends so I think it should be professional enough. The problem could be that I use a disposable email address (thank God!) that contains my imaginary company's name but ends on @yahoo.com. Maybe this identifies me as small fry?
Side note (maybe I can help you): My consulting work in the last 5 years was with regard to quality management and process optimization. From what I have seen on the forum you guys take a healthy, uninvolved approach to quality, basically checking it end-of-line either yourself or using third-party inspection companies. Nothing wrong with that usually. If you have issues going deeper than that, feel free to contact me and just maybe I can help you. I would be very happy to do so. I have also consulted with Chinese companies in the past.
So, long story short: Welcome to my journey! I will keep you posted and feel free to ask questions and to keep me accountable ;-)
in my introduction thread a couple of months back I said that I was working on some other things and would start a progress thread as soon as I started working on my business in earnest. Now is the time.
What is the situation? I live in Germany, have a degree in electronics engineering and an MBA. For the past 5 years I worked at a research institution that doubled as a consulting agency. I have recently finished writing up my PhD thesis and have become the proud father of a baby daughter. The last five years I have worked my a$$ off for mediocre pay and little appreciation. Almost one and a half years ago I read 4HWW and since got hooked to designing a business suited to my life (but no, I don't intend to peddle supplements). I have spent all this time considering several different business models from inventing, consulting, self-pubbing and what not and have recently decided to go with .... *drumroll* ... Importing. A big thanks to @Vigilante, I believe that what you are doing is the most fitting to our life.
What productive things have I done up to now? After a lot of procrastination on the forum I have finally started actually scouting Amazon for good products. I am loosely following the product research approach provided by @JonnyC on the inside. I use Jungle Scout but not MerchantWords because apparently it does not work for German Amazon (anyone has different information? I haven't actually tried). Instead I use Longtail Pro which I already had a license for but for what I am doing, Keyword Planner is probably ok, too. I have also purchased and read @Walter Hay's book and while I can't claim to have made any money from it yet, I have a feeling it is worth at least 50 times its price.
Using what I describe above I have identified two products that I am confident I can become a top-ten seller on amazon for and that provide healthy margins as defined by @Walter Hay. I am not so thrilled about the monthly sales (good, but not great). However, you don't learn until you act, so I searched for suitable suppliers, not using Alibaba but the sites that @Walter Hay recommends in his books. I have also looked at countries other than China but, admittedly, only where search was relatively easy.
I have identified a total of 10 suppliers (both verified and unverified) from mainland China and Taiwan and have written to them all. 5 of them I have contacted two days ago and 5 of them yesterday (they had 1 or 2 business days to answer). Up to now, I have received an answer from only one company but they sent me a catalogue that was unrelated to the product I requested and in the meantime I had already found out that they are a trading company.
This is currently bugging me: So now I'm waiting and looking for other product categories in the meantime. Once I start, I tend to become a little impatient. For those of you with experience, is it normal for companies to take more than two days to reply to the request for a simple catalogue? I used the wording that @Walter Hay recommends so I think it should be professional enough. The problem could be that I use a disposable email address (thank God!) that contains my imaginary company's name but ends on @yahoo.com. Maybe this identifies me as small fry?
Side note (maybe I can help you): My consulting work in the last 5 years was with regard to quality management and process optimization. From what I have seen on the forum you guys take a healthy, uninvolved approach to quality, basically checking it end-of-line either yourself or using third-party inspection companies. Nothing wrong with that usually. If you have issues going deeper than that, feel free to contact me and just maybe I can help you. I would be very happy to do so. I have also consulted with Chinese companies in the past.
So, long story short: Welcome to my journey! I will keep you posted and feel free to ask questions and to keep me accountable ;-)
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