[Progress Thread]: An Importing Journey

[Nomad]

Hi friends,

In an effort to keep myself accountable and to share my learnings with the forum I've decided to track my progress here. I read through the importing threads and the excellent write ups over at startupbros.com and decided to give it a shot.

My aim for this venture was to find a product on Alibaba.com which I could bring into the UK to sell for the following reasons:

• Learn about the importing business
• What kind of hurdles/obstacles does a business in this field encounter?
• Learn the process to set up a company (if successful)
• and of course, profit!

Having trawled through the mind boggling number of goods available, I found something which had the following characteristics:

• It is small
• Inexpensive
• Unusual

I contacted about 5 or 6 different suppliers with a template similar to Amail's (thanks!) and got about three replies. In my email I requested a small quantity of samples to test the product and had a few questions about branding/packaging etc.

After some discussion with the remaining suppliers I settled on one who had excellent communication skills and was willing to send me the samples I needed (this is why it is important to contact many, as either their communication is poor or they won't accommodate your needs).

I paid for the samples via PayPal (I also specifically asked about this in the email) and eagerly awaited their arrival :icon_super:

The samples arrived and were pretty good - I gave out a couple free ones to some friends to 'chum the waters' (Chumming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) which resulted in sales from curious people and others who liked the product.

I bought 15 of the products for about $2-3 each and sold them for £5-6 ($7.70-9.30) - A fair profit I thought although similar products are selling for more than this so some more testing is in order.

So since then, I've had a consultation with an accountant about creating a limited company to frame my importing purchases and set up various accounts to receive money/pay import tax etc and been developing a website to sell the product from.

Some observations/questions/takeaways:

• Maybe a product with higher re-sell value would be better (less volume for the same/higher profit)
• Is it better to have a 'generic' company and have the various imported products under this main umbrella or a separate company for each one?
• I have learnt quite a bit about this area just by diving in so any further products I order should be more straight forward the second time around.

I'd be happy to answer any questions except for what the product is - I think the barrier to entry is not that high so I'd rather keep it quiet for the time being; maybe ride the wave then get out (even though it's probably chump change).

Also, I'd be appreciative of any advice of people more experienced than myself.

Thanks.

 

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