Hi /biz/ I have posted here on an off for the last couple years

>>1955459
Yeah I remember you.
>I'd appreciate any advice from those who have also started up a business.
Get the cheapest lawyer and a decent accountant.

What's the tax rate in Sydney? Also, what are the import/export tariffs?

>>1955459
Hey Aquarium Guy here, I'm actually in the process of looking for industrial/space myself.

First things first you need to have your Business Plan or concept in order which I assume you have. Find out about the

You need to decide if you are going to sell wholesale or retail. There's a big difference between the two. One of them sells to the public at lower risk the other to other business at a higher risk. Sounds more like you in wholesale at this point, just be aware of the requirements selling to the public vs distributors.

If your in the market for industrial space be aware its a totally different animal vs residential. Location is important but for other factors that don't necessarily meld with what you normally think when buying a house. Space is sold at a $/sqf ratio and generally speaking the more space the cheaper it is per square foot/meter.

Keep mind your distance to the docks/terminals and major roadways. Normally you wouldn't concern yourself with distance to something like a container terminal but since you will be the one hauling to your warehouse it can make a Huge difference.
Determine also if you will need HVAC and if so who is responsible, you or the landlord for maintaining it.

Last but no least don't be afraid to talk to other business doing the same thing for advice. Completion or not people are more then willing to give you advice. If anything you want to be in the know/close with your competition as much as possible.

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>>1955459

Steel trader guy here.

What exactly do you need advice on? I'm assuming it's not customs and logistics costs because you can very easily ask a shipping agent about those.

pic related is as close as you're going to get to >broofs ;-DDD

>>1956795
Honestly I am not sure. I am still researching this and learning as I go.

I know construction very well but not business unfortunately.

>>1957518
Thank you for the advice.
We have a whole sale and retail business model. Some formwork will be leased (Elevator shaft formwork machinery and column clamps) while I will be getting our other products sold as a sole distributor to whoever can move it in decent quantities.

Currently have my eye on a $80 per m2 warehouse/office. Has roughly 300m2 of warehouse space. I am hoping this will be enough to start.


>HVAC
Did not consider this.

>>1958160
Well the customs and logistics is what I am trying to sort out now to be honest.

I have my FOB price of my products but not the CIF. I am trying my best to figure out my how to estimate the costs for the freight, insurance, duty, taxes, clearance and then the logstics cost to the clients warehouse (or my own).

I need to then figure out how to factor these costs into my products markup. Does that make sense?

I have clients waiting for quotes but I am still trying to estimate these costs and trying to include them into my products markup.

Also hard since I don't know how much can fit into a 20 or 40 foot container.

i rent out my mouth by the hour on craigslist.

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>>1958628

CIF price is easy to find out. Assuming your Chinese family have exported before, ask to use their shipping agent and he should be able to quote you prices to whichever port you need in Australia. If not, contact some of the major shipping lines in Australia (Maersk, Evergreen etc.), ask them for the contact deals of an agent who deals with Aus-China trade, and speak with him about it. He will also be able to sort your insurance.

Though to do that you need to know how many containers you need, which I assume is going to be a stumbling block in the meantime. This is something your Chinese family should know if they've ever exported their products before. You said you have the FOB price; are they not delivering the formwork to you in a shipping container? This is typically the case when you buy FOB. I'm not familiar with formwork, but the maximum tonnage is 25 tons for a 20ft container and I think the same for a 40ft container, so if you're buying by the ton and the formwork don't take up much space inside a container, then assume 24 tons/container (just to be safe, don't want to go over) and hire them on that basis.

Duty, clearance and logistics can be performed by an Australian customs agent. You should try to find one. I don't know how you'd go about doing this in Australia, but we get one in Russia by simply asking a few friends who also imported which guy they used. I believe you can also get the name of someone by contacting any of the shipping lines. DDP prices can be obtained by asking a domestic freight company how much it costs to hire a lorry or space on a train to get your container from point a to b. I don't know domestic prices in Australia, but it costs ~$40-50/ton to ship a container from Qingdao to Iran and ~$60-70/ton to ship from Tianjin to St. Petersburg; DDP Moscow from Beijing, Suzhou or Qingdao generally costs ~$170-180/ton. You can use those are price benchmarks so you don't get ripped off.

cont

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>>1959051

As for how to factor in the costs, it depends on how value-added formwork is. Sometimes we tweak the shipping price depending on the volume and marginal cost of the goods we ship.

For example, we will keep the price totally transparent when shipping stainless steel to Russia, Azerbaijan etc. because we're typically only shipping 60 tons, sometimes up to 200 tons, and stainless costs roughly $1000/ton at a minimum; typically somewhere around $2200/ton, so it doesn't make sense for us to mark up the shipping. We already get enough value from driving down the price through negotiation with our suppliers and marking it up (but still undercutting) Russian market averages. There's no need to add an extra $5/tonne on the margin to shipping costs. The additional transparency is worth it. However, when we ship more ordinary steel, typically somewhere around $600/ton (we can't ship the really cheap stuff because shipping costs form a proportionally larger amount of the cheap steel and it's easier for the Russians or whomever to get them domestically), we usually ship several hundred tons of it, like 500-600 tons. In this case, because the material base cost is low and our margins commensurately low, we sometimes mark up the shipping cost a few dollars to help keep the cost of the goods themselves competitive; for some reason clients are less finicky about shipping costs than material costs.

So for formworks, it it's the former situation, don't mark up the shipping, just already have your profit margins within the price quoted to the customer and add shipping on top. If it's the latter, mark it up a bit but not too much.

Something you also should know, China has something which is called the '退税' in the business, which is the VAT refunded on exported goods. The amount refunded depends on the specific product code, the HS编码.

cont

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>>1959065

Make sure that the VAT refund is INCLUDED in the price quoted to you by the Chinese. Don't let them fuck you on the margin. It could be worth up to a 17% discount.

Also, I know that your Chinese family is, well, your family, but still you'll want to shop around and make sure their price is competitive and they're not just using you as a cash cow. Chinese are cunts like that. I assume you speak Chinese. You'd better speak Chinese if you're dealing with that God-forsaken country.

Shop around for other formwork suppliers online (NOT ON ALIBABA, if you use Alibaba then you deserve to lose your money). Ask around, find out which manufacturers supply formwork on major projects, which ones the government uses to construct train stations and government buildings, which one supplies the Chinese railway bureau's construction division, that sort of stuff. They're the only marks of reliability in the Chinese market, do NOT trust third party verification as this can be very easily forged or gotten through bribes, trust where people consistently put their money when they need something done well in China.

If you need anything else you think I can answer, ask.

>>1959074
You seem to be a man of substance, keep it up

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>>1959127

Just trying to help the lad avoid the trial-and-error shit I had to deal with when I set up my company. Hope it helps.

>>1955459
isn't nepotism a lovely thing?