Looking through the eyes of your Supplier

I am often advocating purchasing goods from China to sell in the UK as it can reap substantial benefits such as allowing for higher sales margins and providing access to niche or bespoke products that would sell well in the UK with limited competition.

Part of my day to day job is arranging shipping and logistics solutions for clients once they have made the purchase to make delivery to the UK run smoothly.  This is the easy bit.

During this process I am often copied in on emails back and forth between buyer and supplier which sometimes can be almost endless before a mutually agreeable sale has been agreed.  These emails will usually cover similar subject matter and often are perfectly understandable questions made by people who are usually fairly new to importing and obviously wary of parting with their hard earned cash.

Much negotiation time could be saved and the process could be less frustrating if the buyer could perhaps understand things from the supplier’s point of view before you start contacting them.

Where should I Import from?

This is one of the million dollar questions, but will very much depend on the type of product you are looking to import.

China are now the biggest player when it comes to supplying goods and you can pretty much source anything within reason from there for a good price.  One huge warning about importing from China is to not touch ‘Branded’ goods.   By this I mean Brand names such as Apple, Nike, Prada… You get the picture.  Although more than often these will be manufactured in China, the ones you order will be fakes as they do not have the necessary licences to sell these goods outside of official routes.  They may well look the same but underneath the skin they will be cheap imitations that will fall apart or burst into flames at the soonest opportunity.  If the goods happen to not be fake they will be goods from the ‘grey market’.  Simply put these will come from the same factories that produce the ‘official’ branded goods but they are sold illegally.  In either instance these will in most cases be seized by the authorities on arrival in the UK.  Stay clear of Branded goods from China.