Many of the products we buy were made elsewhere. To get them to market where we live, an importer/exporter made the business decisions to get the product from the foreign assembly lines to the local stores.
Unfortunately, importing and exporting (IMEX) can be a business that drives entrepreneurs away. There are many laws – put in place for consumer safety and to promote at-home manufacturing – that can sometimes infuriate the person who wants to start their IMEX business.
The industry itself seems so nebulous. Where do you start? Who do you turn to? Who can help you along the way? With hundreds of countries creating millions of products, there isn’t necessarily one business strategy to follow for guaranteed success.
Here are some resources and ideas to help you get your foot in the IMEX door.
1. Start small. Rather than looking for buyers and sellers of products, and matching them up, start small and get used to the idea first. Pick a product that you’re interested in and the next time you have some vacation time, go to a country that makes that product, buy some of that product and bring it home and shop it around. A friend of mine owns 3 successful cultural goods stores selling tribal masks, ancient musical instruments, and beautiful cultural clothes. He stocks his shop during a month-long annual vacation to some tropical paradise. He got his start by buying just a few products and bringing them back and seeing if friends, family, or flea-market shoppers were interested. Then he went back and got more of the hot sellers.
2. Start with wholesalers and drop-shippers. Let them worry about the laws and headaches of getting products into the US. After all, you’re interested in selling and making money, not necessarily fighting with bureaucrats to get your products through customers before the importing documents expire. There are many available online. Here are some sites to get you started (or you can Google “wholesale supplier” for more:
www.wholesale411.com
www.USellCorp.com
www.wholesale-suppliers.net
www.pricester.com
www.WholesaleMarketer.com
Once you have built up a reputation, experience, and a customer base, then you should consider branching out on your own. Start by identifying some of the products that are popular on your site that you can begin by swapping out for products that you import. By selling both at the beginning, you’ll have the assurance that there will always be a product there, even if your imported products are held up somewhere (which is a fairly frequent problem in the IMEX industry).
3. Turn to a site like : www.alibaba.com to help put you in touch with manufacturers and suppliers of the products you want, or find an online directory for the country you’re looking at exporting from. Some governments will host a page of companies looking to export. Other times, you might find what you’re looking for by typing “Import Export” and the name of the country you want to do business with, into Google; like “Import Export India” or “Import Export China.”
4. Check your country’s government-based trade and industry websites for more details. Governments love exporting goods because it brings an influx of outside money into the country (as opposed to money moving around the country because of local manufacturing, or leaving the country from importing goods). If you’re in the US, check out www.firstgov.gov or www.business.gov to start the search for your area of IMEX interest.
