Reselling

Importing into UK I assume wouldn't be so much a problem, but are more buyers buying directly from China now to make a reselling business less viable?

What is tat?

I import stuff from china and sell into australia, may be able to answer some questions

>>965284
"tat" being a UKism for anything and everything!

Do you find types of products that sell are seasonal? And what advice can you give on sourcing and choosing merchandise to sell

>>965290

Stay away from seasonal/general goods.

Find one niche and build a business around it. I only buy 5 products from china, they all do the same thing at different price points. Once I get this business to the point that it can run passively I will do it again in another niche.

Alibaba is fine for sourcing a supplier if you don't have a network. I buy from a supplier I was introduced to through my network, but I only get like 5% less than alibaba charges for the same shit.

The key is loyalty, don't constantly screw the supplier on price, instead build a long term relationship even if you have to pay a little more. I visit china once a year to check in on my guy, and I even flew him out to Australia once to meet my office. This is just how business works with Asians.

>>965294
Interesting, thanks for the comments.

Do you sell online or brick+mortar?

>>965308

online, there's no money in brick and mortar anymore

I also sell b2b not retail, but I think you could do retail too with this strategy

My biggest expense by far is marketing, I spend thousands per month on ad words and I also have a guy in india working full time to keep me on the first page of google

>>965316
Aye, I'm planning to budget the most on advertising.

I could, but I don't fancy writing my own software for the site - would you recommend an off-the-shelf ecommerce solution like prestashop for selling?

>>965320

I had a bad experience with weebly, eneded up totally rebuilding from scratch with wordpress one year in and it cost a lot of time

My understanding is that you really need to build from scratch for the best results on SEO, but I am not really a technical person so that could be wrong

>>965322
I'm totally sick of building sites for Google, only to then have to change them when Google says websites should be something else instead of what they were yesteryear.

I just want to make a good site for the consumer, not Google!

>>965328

This is the correct way to think now, that's what google wants you to do. It's also the path I am taking.

I started this 4 years ago now so things were a little different then.

But I'm already on the first page of google, not sure what you have to do to get there now.

>>965333
Being on the first page is a bit of a fallacy. Google is starting to bubble its users. That is, it gives different search results for different users depending on search history.

>>965349

Yeah but because my business is so niche I'm pretty insulated from that, there are only like 10-20 people in the country who sell what I sell, and only like 5 of us are nationwide.

Also another note on supplier loyalty, the benefits of a good relationship are significant. When I have a problem or need something special it gets done immediately, and when cash flow is tight, I have gone for stretches of 90 days after landing before paying for a container.

You don't get treatment like that if you switch suppliers every container to save a dime per unit.

>>965355
I guess I have some serious niche research to do - how would I get started for that?

>>965374

that question i cannot answer, i fell into this product completely accidentally, i was trying to do something else entirely

Maybe just poke around on alibaba until you see something weird?

>>965376
low cost items, or high cost items? I'm tempted by high-cost because of the more profit per unit potential.

>>965377

margin is more important than cost, buy whatever you can make the most on

shoot for 40% or less cost of goods (landed in your warehouse) in each sale

sometimes I feel like I should open a store for really cute things you can't find in any store. I'd get a bunch of items and have a little mobile stall in the supermarket.

Would it work?

>>965390

Probably, but it's not really scale-able

You might earn some good beer money, maybe even enough for a modest lifestyle (think public school teacher)

But it can never really be more than that

>>965396
yes of course I wouldn't try to live off of it at first.

It's so fucking cheap anyway. you can pay under 2$ an item that will easily sell for almost 20 over here.

>>965401

You'd be lucky to clear $100/day imo, you'd almost certainly clear less than $200

that's hard to live on

>>965390
no. whose your market?

>>965535
chicks who like cute things and young girls

>>965379
Might I ask what you sell?

>>965668
not him but bleep off
>:^(

>>965412
and don't forget that you'd ahve to shift a lot of small items to account for import costs

Any niches to stay away from?

>>965694
import costs? I'm in canada and order the merchandise in question and never get any additional fees than the few bucks I pay online. Is that a US thing?

>>966057
I'm pretty sure tax and import duty is a world-wide thing, troll...

>>966088
I'm serious though. When does this apply? When you buy more than X items?

>>965684
What? I have no intention of taking business away as I have one of my own. Sorry for the curiosity.