Tag: general

Selling on Amazon.com From Overseas: By Ariel B. C.

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist

Almost half of our readers are located outside of the United States and the European Union. Yet, the majority of our customers in these countries are mainly selling in the US or Europe. Or both.

One of our subscribers, Ariel, is one of them.

In this article, he explains how he started selling in the United States, on Amazon.com, while being based in Israel and Europe.

Please tell us a bit about yourself and what you did before starting with your current business

I was born in France, and moved to Israel about 20 years ago.

I always had a passion to travel, so, logically, I always searched for source of incomes that can be managed from any places in the world.

I studied economics, but worked a very briefly as an employee. Only about 2 years, then I began to import goods from the United States, to France for several years when I still lived there. Essentially motorcycles and accessories.

When I arrive in Israel, I first worked in software for a big company.

In parallel, I began to sell online about 10 years ago, at Ebay France, managing the shop digitally from Israel while having a partner in France taking care of all the “physical” work.

Then I discovered Amazon FBA nearly 4 years ago, and I found it was a perfect fit for me.

It allows me to be free of all the worries about warehouse to stock my inventory and also I don’t have to deal with packaging and shipping every unit sold to the customer.

It also can be run from any place, so I can make a living while travelling around the world.

About a year ago, I was able to quit my job as an employee and work full time on my online business.

For half a year, I have a VA from the Philippines helping me with recurring tasks and social media. Continue reading Selling on Amazon.com From Overseas: By Ariel B. C.

How to Return Goods to Your Chinese Factory

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 16 Comments

Suggestion: Watch the 10 minutes video tutorial before reading this article

You just received a new batch. You did everything right, including clear product spec sheets and a pre-shipment inspection. And still, the supplier manages to mess up your order.

Sometimes, quality issues slip through, and you need to know how to deal with situations that involve returning defective items to your supplier.

In this article, you will learn how the entire process works:

  • How to report defective products to your supplier
  • Why you should not even ask for a refund
  • How to write a ‘product remake action plan’
  • How to incentive your supplier to remake or repair the defective items

1. Check your products and report defects immediately

Defective or damaged products must be reported immediately. Preferably within 48 hours of receiving the shipment. The longer you delay, the harder it will be to support a claim that the supplier is responsible.

You don’t need to do a visual check on every single unit, but check at least 10% of the quantity.

If you find any quality issues, that are not in line with the pre-shipment inspection result, you must provide the following:

  • List of defects
  • List of defective units
  • Value of defective units
  • Images
  • Video

This must be sent by email to the supplier immediately.

Now, keep in mind that I always assume that you have ordered a pre-shipment inspection, and yet discover additional quality issues. An inventory check-up is not a substitute for a quality check. Continue reading How to Return Goods to Your Chinese Factory

Top 10 Wholesale & Dropshipping Websites in China 2020

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 3 Comments

Suggestion: Watch the 10 minutes video tutorial before reading this article

Why bother with making custom-designed or private label products when you can simply import off-shelf items from one of the many Chinese wholesale websites?

While importing wholesale products is not as straightforward and risk-free as you might think, you should still be aware of the top China wholesale and dropshipping websites in 2020 – and learn how they all differ.

Alibaba.com

Alibaba is known as the world’s largest B2B supplier directory. While a significant number of wholesalers and trading companies are listed on Alibaba.com – it was not created as a wholesale website.

Since it was launched, and until today, Alibaba.com is primarily a manufacturer directory.

That said, they have implemented some wholesale and payment functions.

In the future, it’s likely that Alibaba.com will evolve into a platform that enables transactions for both off-shelf and ‘make to order’ products – directly on the website.

Notice that you don’t actually do business with Alibaba.com. They provide supplier listings only. Continue reading Top 10 Wholesale & Dropshipping Websites in China 2020

How to Improve the Supplier Response Rate on Alibaba.com

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist

wayne-qulito

If you’ve ever tried to reach out to suppliers on Alibaba.com, you know how hard it can be to make them respond to your request for quotation.

That said, Alibaba suppliers often have good reasons for not responding to inquiries.

In this interview, Wayne Zhang explains what you can do to improve your Alibaba supplier response rate, which communication apps to use and much more.

Wayne, please tell us about yourself and how you got into sourcing

Oh my, unfortunately, I do not think this will be a type of an answer that packs in a lot of “Hollywood” like action, but just a plain simple reality. I used to work for a company that provided similar services to foreign clients from around the globe.

And, truth be told I worked there for a while, right after I graduated from University.

I studied commerce, and one of my foreign languages was English, so it seemed like a great idea at the time, and it was. My responsibilities included finding clients, going through their requests, find products at a price they requested, place an order and make sure the final shipment was sent out. So, I did everything from door to door, sort of speak.

I considered this to be a great start of my career because already back then I saw myself working in this industry for a long time because, in my opinion, it had potential.

I was right.

I learned a lot while working for my first company and it equipped me with a very valuable set of skills that eventually proved to be very advantageous in building my own business. I knew that I want to have my own company one day, so I worked hard, saved money and just went for it. Continue reading How to Improve the Supplier Response Rate on Alibaba.com

Quality Control and Inspections in China: A Complete Guide

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 16 Comments

Suggestion: Watch the 10 minutes video tutorial before reading this article

Once your products are paid for in full and shipped, you’re beyond the point of no return. If you were to find quality issues once the goods arrive in your country, it’s game over.

Forget about getting a refund or returning goods to your supplier.

Instead, you need to be sure that your products are matching all technical specifications and quality requirements before you pay the balance.

In this article, I answer the most common questions about the practical aspects of ordering a quality inspections in China.

Keep reading, and learn how much you should pay for an inspection, how to book one online – and why you should not let your supplier do the inspection by themselves.
Quality Testing

Why do I need quality inspections when importing from China?

Manufacturing is not an exact science. The question is not if, but how severe the quality issues are.

I have inspected hundreds of orders in person, and this is what I often found:

  • Scratches
  • Dirt
  • Marks
  • Minor cosmetic issues

This is even to be expected. However, there are also more severe quality issues:

  • Loose parts
  • Incorrect labels
  • Incorrect design
  • Incorrect colors
  • Damages

Quality issues are, in a way, as certain as death and taxes. This is not unique to China, but the case when manufacturing in any country.

However, what is unique to China, and most other countries in Asia, is that you cannot return goods if you find quality issues in your own country.

For this reason, quality inspections are a crucial step of the process. You simply cannot skip this part of the process. Continue reading Quality Control and Inspections in China: A Complete Guide

Importing Medical Devices from China: By Jason Lim of Stendard

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 3 Comments

Importing medical devices from China requires full compliance with all applicable safety standards and regulations in the destination market. For many Startups looking to import medical devices, it can hard to even know where to look for information.

So, we decided to ask an expert.

In this Interview, Jason Lim, co-founder of Stendard, explains everything that you must know before importing and selling any product that may be classified as a medical device.

Jason, please introduce yourself and Stendard

I’m Jason Lim, CEO and co-founder of Stendard, a cloud-based platform that help companies generate documents to meet international regulations, such as ISO 13485 and US FDA 21 CFR of the medical device industry.

Having experience working with the local government, technology incubators and innovative companies here, I personally feel there are still a lot of improvements to be done when it comes to the entire compliance ecosystem (both from the industries’ and authorities’ standpoint).

That’s why I started the company together with Vincent Lim, COO of Stendard.

Our aim is to make compliance easily understood for businesses so to encourage standards adoption. This includes the usage of technology to accelerate the speed of document creation and management.

We are also planning to include partners to make the entire training, certification and registration process a breeze, and that’s what we meant by the term “compliance ecosystem”! Continue reading Importing Medical Devices from China: By Jason Lim of Stendard

Exclusivity Agreements with Chinese Suppliers: A Complete Guide

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 4 Comments

Exclusivity agreement

An Exclusivity Agreement grants a company with the right to be the only importer and seller of certain products.

The purpose is to prevent other buyers from importing the same product, and compete with the buyer on their home turf. Or, prevent the supplier from doing the same thing.

In this article, I will explain how such contracts work, and why they rarely make sense for most businesses looking to import products from China.

1. Does the Manufacturer even own the product design and IP?

Most suppliers are not actively developing new and unique product designs. Many factories have their own brands these days, mainly for the purpose of selling on Taobao or Tmall.

However, in most cases, such products are relatively generic, and largely based on their customers OEM designs. Most suppliers simply don’t have any Intellectual Property to speak of, and therefore, an Exclusivity agreement is a non-starter.

If you intend to buy a private label product, or create your own OEM product, an exclusivity contract is also irrelevant.

Keep in mind that not any product can be patented or protected. In order to patent or protect a product, the following criteria must be fulfilled:

a. The product design must be new

b. The product design must be unique

c. The product must have a new and unique function Continue reading Exclusivity Agreements with Chinese Suppliers: A Complete Guide

The 8 Best Books on Importing from China: An Overview

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 5 Comments

Best Importing Books

As an Importer, you must act as a jack of all trades. You need to understand everything from product development and sourcing, to shipping, customs and taxes.

It can take years of real-life experience to truly understand the ins and outs of managing a supply chain stretching halfway over the globe.

But it’s not all about technical specifications and legal terms.

There’s also the human element. The mindset of your supplier, belonging to a culture that has developed in a very different way from us from the West.

What is common sense to you, may not be so in the mind of your supplier.

I’ve been in China for years, and I am still but a learner. In this article, I share the 8 Best Books on Importing from China – that you simply have to read.

Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the China Production Game

Whether you’re working on a small scale or run a huge corporation that imports or plans to import goods from China, this book is a must-read for you in any case.

The author of this book, Paul Milder, not only has a degree in Chinese history, he has also had a vast amount of experience in the Chinese work industry, which enabled him to understand the mindset of Chinese suppliers and manufacturing over there. Continue reading The 8 Best Books on Importing from China: An Overview

The Importers Guide to Global Sources Trade Shows – By Meghla Bhardwaj

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 2 Comments

Meghla Global Sources

Global Sources started as a media company more than four decades ago, and has now evolved into both a leading supplier directory (2nd largest after Alibaba) and trade show.

This combination makes Global Sources unique, as it acts a hub for both buyers and suppliers – both offline and online.

In this interview, with Meghla Bhardwaj, head of content marketing at Global Sources in Singapore, explains why startups and e-commerce businesses should use their directory – and attend the upcoming trade shows and conferences in Hong Kong.

1. Meghla, please tell us a bit about yourself and how you started working at Global Sources

I’ve been working at Global Sources for about 17 years. I started in the India office where I wrote sourcing-related articles for our magazines, and managed the freelancer network there.

Then I moved to the Philippines office in 2003, where I led a team in Manila and China producing the company’s research reports, China Sourcing Reports. This is when I started traveling to China, touring factories and meeting with suppliers there.

In 2006, I moved to China where all the action was. I lived in Shenzhen for 9 years, where I visited hundreds of factories, worked with suppliers and buyers, and got a good understanding of how the supply chain works, and the issues buyers face when sourcing from China.

More recently, I’ve been working with Amazon and online sellers, trying to understand their pain points, and helping determine how Global Sources can meet their specific needs.

I’ve been organizing Global Sources Summit, a conference for online sellers sourcing from China. The conference is held every April and October and s co-located with our trade shows in Hong Kong. Continue reading The Importers Guide to Global Sources Trade Shows – By Meghla Bhardwaj

How to Pay China Factories By PayPal: 5 Things You Must Know

Posted on by Fredrik Gronkvist — 1 Comment

PayPal supplier payment
Sending money through telegraphic transfer (T/T), or paying by letter of credit (L/C), is slow and relatively complicated.

The wrong beneficiary name, or even address, can delay the payment for weeks, and there is no effective way to request a refund in case you get scammed by a supplier.

So, why aren’t more importers using payment services such as PayPal, that can send money instantly to suppliers – while also offering the chance of getting the money back if the products are not matching the specifications?

Keep reading, and learn why many suppliers refuse to accept PayPal payments, and what you can do to change their mind.

1. Most suppliers only accept PayPal payments when ordering product samples

PayPal is available to both businesses and individuals in both Mainland China and Hong Kong. Opening an account only takes minutes, and is as easy as anywhere else on the planet.

Yet, many Chinese suppliers, both factories and trading companies, don’t accept payments via PayPal.

Why is that?

First, it’s a matter of old habits.

Most suppliers are accustomed to the established payment methods, such as telegraphic transfer and letter of credit – while they are quick to dismiss newer payment methods.

The suppliers that do accept PayPal payments tend to restrict it to sample invoice payments only. As such, most suppliers don’t accept PayPal payments for larger orders. Continue reading How to Pay China Factories By PayPal: 5 Things You Must Know