You may owner of small store or this is maybe your first time trying to start business of importing from China, so you prefer start with small business.
But you may found, cause the”SMALL” most factories seems not that coordinate, they require a moq, or they offer a high price than mass orders. Another problem is freight, most small business send by express delivery is more economic than less than container loading by sea. So how to deal with all these problems? Now follow me:
1. Select your target goods:
You need to make sure you have local market and you could sell them very well.
You have to make sure the goods are not of very high value.
Both packing size and gross weight of this goods are not big so you could save much costs for the freight.
For example, festival gifts are good choice.
2. Find a supplier, this supplier maybe not a big factory nor a big trading company, but they could supply what you want.
Discuss with them, do not show you quantity first, after you got most info such as packing size, gross weight, price, and other necessary info, you could let your supplier know that you need to place a trail order. In fact you really need to place trail order to your supplier even you are a big customer.
Then you supplier may require a high price, then you can negotiate with them, let them give you a different price level depend on the quantity, depend on my experience the price you got will be much better than if you show your quantity first.
3. Freight
You could ask your supplier help to ask a quote from their local express deliver company, or you could check it yourself.
Generally you could ask a discount from the express delivery company, cause they calculate the cost depend on the packing size or gross weight.
4. Payment
This is really a big problem for small business. Normally for international business, supplier and customer will choose % TT in advance, balance against copy of BL.
But for small business, most supplier do not accept that, if you are a good negotiator, you could do prepaid by paypal(because you can ask refund if any problem happens on you goods, so the supplier has to suffer some risks via this payment method).
Or you can choose west union, still do the % down payment, balance against copy of express tracking NO. and photos can show your goods was send.
5. Another shipping method is ship by air for small business, shipping by air(airport to airport) the cost is lower than shipping by express delivery, but because they can only send your goods to the airport, you will need to do the Customs clearance and your inland transportation.
6. Customs clearance, that depend on different Customs rules, for example, if you are Australia guy, if value of your goods are lower than AUD, you may not need to do the tax.
For that info, you’d better ask advice from your local Customs
There is another way you could save the duty~write lower value of your goods, you can do this, but remember, never out of the line too much, your Customs are not fool.
By the way, if any interest maybe you can also contact me for the small business, but only small business. from: http://www.asianfactory.com/how-to-start-small-business-by-importing-from-china/
Web: http://www.asianfactory.com/