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I'll do you one better.
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How do you pay yourself?
I've always wondered this with small companies
Ya sell GMs?
Ya sell GMs?
1) The job opened my eyes to see the potential and seeing first hand that you can grow a multi-million dollar e-commerce business. There are many people who have done this, the first who came to mind was this 28yr old guy who started buying and selling screen digitizers from alibaba and selling them on ebay. He mentioned with his growth suppliers came to him. He became a titanium powerseller (over 1m in sales) The thing that discourages most people is the huge risks and work that go along with it. There are several wholesale trade shows where many chinese wholesalers and manufacturers go. Check out http://www.asdonline.com1) I know youve elaborated on the luck you had about your supplier, and being in a company that also had similar business model helped, but if you were never in that job, do you think an average joe can get a business going just by information from the internet? Like is your supplier taking customers from online too? or just locally and you lucked out because of your chinese friends parents? I understand that there are suppliers online but i would think they charge more than a supplier straight from china. that would equal to less profit margins and less confidence in the business. plus as a reg joe, going to china to supplier hunt for an idea you might not even know would work is a risk when you got a 9 to 5 already (not you, avg joe).
2) you talk about warehouse and containers. do you buy containers of random things, keep them in the states and hope people buy them on amazon? or is it ordered first by the customer and then shipped china -> US -> amazon warehouse -> person?
3) is there a cliffnotes version of the basic rules of importing goods from china? such as max 10k value a month or something? i just made this up, but can you really just buy countless pallets of stuff from china like that?
Nah. lolYa sell GMs?
At this point you cant beat amazon, their network of fulfillment centers is not something a start up ecommerce vendor can compete with. We also save a ton because we send all of our inventory to one main amazon distribution center and they split it up and send inventory to other fulfillment centers (on their dime) across the US (west coast mid and east coast) so that they get that 2 day shipping at very low costs. Amazon doesn't make money which is a worry because at any moment they can kill you with fee increases. Because of this I don't see amazon as a long term partner.Congrats OP. Keep up the great work.
Do you feel like your business profits could be larger if you were not an Amazon business, or do you feel like the Amazon affiliation is a fair trade off for the huge volume of business that the partnership generates?
Very nice. I'm working on a couple of projects now and hope to have one of them crawling by this time next year. Great to see a fellow NTer successful and keep us posted on your progress.At this point you cant beat amazon, their network of fulfillment centers is not something a start up ecommerce vendor can compete with. We also save a ton because we send all of our inventory to one main amazon distribution center and they split it up and send inventory to other fulfillment centers (on their dime) across the US (west coast mid and east coast) so that they get that 2 day shipping at very low costs. Amazon doesn't make money which is a worry because at any moment they can kill you with fee increases. Because of this I don't see amazon as a long term partner.
At the moment for us it is worth it, SEO, pick+pack+ship, customer service=more employees+time+money which comes out the same and much slower results. Possibly in the future we will look into the fulfillment center business, but the start up costs for one of those is :x and you need minimum of 3 too. I have met with a few start up fulfillment centers in the east coast but they still many issues to be figured out.
I keep telling people here that money is easy! I do the same thing as you but I sell to stores, at mall kiosk , electronic stores friends ,family,. flea markets,ebay,amazon etc. I work by myself but i hire temp help from time to time
I will not disclose my amazon store name, or specific products.
No PMs, someone else might have the same question as you.
I am 24yrs old, College drop-out. We Import directly from Chinese manufactures. I have a Chinese partner and we work from a 5,000sq ft warehouse. His father in China helps us get the inventory for CHEAP which allows us to sell it on amazon for big profits.
100% of our amazon inventory is "Fulfillment by amazon"
I probably won't be able to help answering the "getting in contact with Chinese factories" because thats my partners job.
I am doing this because NT has given a lot to me and I want to give back and help some of you guys out.
My inspiration was these guys:
http://www.inc.com/profile/yagoozon
1) The job opened my eyes to see the potential and seeing first hand that you can grow a multi-million dollar e-commerce business. There are many people who have done this, the first who came to mind was this 28yr old guy who started buying and selling screen digitizers from alibaba and selling them on ebay. He mentioned with his growth suppliers came to him. He became a titanium powerseller (over 1m in sales) The thing that discourages most people is the huge risks and work that go along with it. There are several wholesale trade shows where many chinese wholesalers and manufacturers go. Check out http://www.asdonline.com1) I know youve elaborated on the luck you had about your supplier, and being in a company that also had similar business model helped, but if you were never in that job, do you think an average joe can get a business going just by information from the internet? Like is your supplier taking customers from online too? or just locally and you lucked out because of your chinese friends parents? I understand that there are suppliers online but i would think they charge more than a supplier straight from china. that would equal to less profit margins and less confidence in the business. plus as a reg joe, going to china to supplier hunt for an idea you might not even know would work is a risk when you got a 9 to 5 already (not you, avg joe).
2) you talk about warehouse and containers. do you buy containers of random things, keep them in the states and hope people buy them on amazon? or is it ordered first by the customer and then shipped china -> US -> amazon warehouse -> person?
3) is there a cliffnotes version of the basic rules of importing goods from china? such as max 10k value a month or something? i just made this up, but can you really just buy countless pallets of stuff from china like that?
2) We purchase our inventory from what we see will sell in large volume based on Amazons sales rank (Huge hint here) We buy enough inventory to fill up a 40' container. They stuff it at this terminal in china and sent to the US on a cargo ship.
We research product>Order>Shipped to us>label everything>Ship to amazon>amzon ships to customer
3) When you are ready find a transport broker, they do everything and not very expensive.