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Newbie Importing and Selling on Amazon

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Superwoman

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Food for thought: I wanted an extra cord to charge my FitBit. I already have one, but wanted a spare, so I wasn't in a big hurry for it. Ordered the cheapest one I found on Amazon. Took a few weeks, (not sure how long because I wasn't sitting around waiting for it). Hubby asks when he brings the mail in, "what did you order from Shanghai?"

My sister ordered nail art supplies from China because it was so cheap.

So don't fool yourselves. If people want something, but realize if they are willing to wait they can pay a third of the price, they are buying from China directly.


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Hassen

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Food for thought: I wanted an extra cord to charge my FitBit. I already have one, but wanted a spare, so I wasn't in a big hurry for it. Ordered the cheapest one I found on Amazon. Took a few weeks, (not sure how long because I wasn't sitting around waiting for it). Hubby asks when he brings the mail in, "what did you order from Shanghai?"

My sister ordered nail art supplies from China because it was so cheap.

So don't fool yourselves. If people want something, but realize if they are willing to wait they can pay a third of the price, they are buying from China directly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And none of us would be willing to sell at that kind of price. I mean obviously people buy from China, but the point here is sellers shipping directly from China rarely compete in the same demand market as we do. We offer convenience and they offer savings, we are happy with our price and the money we make, and they are happy with their price and the money they make. Customers are happy with the prices they can pay and the times they need to wait, whether it's higher price/shorter wait or lower price/longer wait.

The point is those Chinese sellers are not a threat to us; not no one buys from them, which is obviously untrue. We and they operate on different business models and meet different demands, which is a good thing, because we both win and we give customers like you mentioned in your examples more choices.


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EPerceptions

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My 24 year old daughter has an ali express app on her phone and loves getting cheap stuff from China. She also has Amazon Prime and loves 2 day delivery.

An older couple I know seem to be all about how cheap they can get things and he loves ordering from China through ebay. They're frequently disappointed with low quality and refuse to spend more because they assume its all that way.

My military kids care more about quality and potential piracy/counterfeit so they stick with Amazon Prime. The list goes on.

I guess my point is that it depends on your buying market. If you cater to the penny pinchers or compete on price alone you'll struggle to stay in business. If you tap certain mindsets (quality, pro-american, legal, etc) then you're more likely to thrive for the long term.
 

AllenCrawley

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Deleted2BB3x9

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Update:
  • 18 years old now. Been working on my business for a year and a half.
  • Got an email from Fox News inquiring about my Instagram account. But i couldn't do anything since it was for U.S. citizens only.
  • Applied for a 5000$ grant.
  • Ordered 7 samples of a new product to test the market.
Looking forward to seeing results!
 

PTP

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MTEE1985

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Just stumbled across this and considering the wealth of information provided I can’t believe it ended like it did.

What’s been happening the last 18 months @BusinessBen?

Like you said, that business may have failed but the lessons are worth it. My first failure was losing $2,000 to an overseas manufacturer but it was worth the knowledge gained from the process.
 

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