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News & Updates

Posted

January 26, 2021 at 11:24 pm

Announcement: Pre-booking for Chinese New Year 2021 (Limited Slots Only!)

Shipping during Chinese New Year is very different compared to shipping during regular business days. During this holiday, expect delays and other fulfillment and logistics disruptions ahead.

To reduce your risk to these disruptions, consider pre-booking for our special Chinese New Year offer.

When you pre-booked for our CNY offer, we will give you special priority so that your shipping and fulfillment processes would go as smoothly as possible during the Chinese New Year.

But hurry, this special offer is open for only limited slots! To avail, let your dedicated Account Manager know and he/she will guide you through the process!

To pre-book for Chinese New Year special offer, click here:

Fulfillmen Chinese New Year Pre-booking Form​

Holiday shipping is very different compared to regular business days. During holiday seasons, the shipment quantity is super big and most of them will have a tight deadline. There’s a big chance that it may impact your business. Fulfillmen is here to help you.
Book Us Now

To know more about the pre-booking, click here

Have a happy and prosperous Lunar New Year!

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eCommerce Order Fulfillment

Posted

January 10, 2021 at 9:00 pm

How to Prepare Your E-Commerce Store for Chinese New Year 2021

If you source your products mainly from China, you should understand the effects of the Chinese New Year to e-commerce and retail businesses and be prepared for it.

The Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival, marks new beginnings in the Chinese lunar calendar. As a holiday across in most of China, Chinese New Year halts business operations during these days as Chinese celebrate new beginnings in their lives.

As an e-commerce or retail entrepreneur who sources most of his or her products from China, it is important to prepare ahead of the Chinese New Year to ensure that your business will still run smoothly despite the temporary halt during the holiday.

In this article, we are going to discuss some of the things you can do to prepare for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Let’s get started.

Tips on How to Prepare Your E-Commerce Store During Chinese New Year

1) Order early

It is very important that you order as early as possible before CNY 2021 comes. For 2021, the Chinese New Year date is on February 12.

Right now, you have the full month of January to order and stock up on your products. But don’t get complacent – if you ordered late or near the Chinese New Year, you can encounter partial or even total delays of your product deliveries!

Keep in mind that aside from regular businesses, big industry businesses like shipping industries will close too during the Chinese New Year. So, order early – and by “early”, we mean very early!

2) Stock up your inventory before CNY

You will need a lot of stocks before Chinese New Year approaches. For one, you need to consider the days prior to the CNY. Then, there’s of course the Chinese New Year, where businesses celebrating it or are following the lunar calendar are closed.

Be sure that you’ll have enough stocks on your inventory before the Chinese New Year comes. Once you’re running low on supplies during the Chinese New Year, you may reduce your advertising efforts to a minimum to keep you staying afloat until new stocks arrive after CNY.

3) Find supplier alternatives

You may not be able to find alternative suppliers a month before the Chinese New Year comes (and that’s understandable), but after the holiday, finding and diversifying your suppliers should be one of your main goal.

Your ideal alternative supplier should have factories in countries where businesses and operations remain open during the Chinese New Year. If that is the case and those factories can produce the same quality as you are originally receiving, then that’s a great supplier to work with!

4) Prepare your fulfillment system in advance

Finally, you should lay a plan on how you will deliver your products during the Chinese New Year. Aside from stocking up inventories, you should also consider how you will deliver your products to your customers.

If you need any help, Fulfillmen can advise you on what you can do during this holiday season. Simply reach out to us and our dedicated team will help you with your matter!

But again, you need to plan this in advance, not right before the Chinese New Year comes!

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News & Updates

Posted

January 6, 2021 at 8:35 am

Announcement: We want to Know Your Opinion

Dear valued customers,

Fulfillmen is always committed to bringing you our quality service. We always find ways on how to better serve you and your business.

However, we also need to know how we are doing to see how we canimprove our services. You can let us know how we are serving you by answering our survey. This will only take around 10 minutes or less. By answering our survey, rest assured that our team will find innovative ways to serve you in the future. Thank you!

Please click this link to take the survey

Fulfillmen Customer Satisfaction

Fulfillmen continuously strives to improve and enhance our customers' business by providing the very highest quality, up-to-date, value added products and services possible. In order to achieve our goal we would highly appreciate your feedback.
Take the Survey Now!
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News & Updates

Posted

December 30, 2020 at 8:59 pm

How Brexit Will Impact Ecommerce In the UK and EU Region

Ecommerce in the UK and EU region will be affected following the Brexit starting this coming year, January 1, 2021. Sellers to and from the UK should expect new regulations, duties, customs and other obligations to meet which resulted from Brexit.

If you are selling to and from the UK (or if you are selling from the UK to EU), you should learn the new rules and prepare for it before they are implemented. Otherwise, you may experience problems such as blocked shipments at customs, possible fines and annoyed customers.

How Brexit Will Affect Your Ecommerce Business

Brexit will directly impact merchants selling from and to the UK by reinstating a customs border between the EU and the GB and by introducing new VAT rules for goods imported into the UK.

If you are selling to and from the UK, Brexit will affect your e-commerce business by re-establishing a customs border between the Great Britain (GB) and the European Union (EU). Brexit will also affect your store by adding new VAT regulations for any goods imported to the UK.

Depending on where you’re from and where you sell to, here’s how Brexit will affect e-commerce stores:

If you are from outside UK selling to UK

  • You’ll need to collect VAT any orders sold to the UK worth below ￡135
  • E-commerce businesses will need to file for VAT to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) on a quarterly basis.
  • Any orders worth ￡135 and above are subject to import VAT and other duties.

If you are from UK selling to EU

  • You are not required to collect VAT on any orders delivered from the UK to the EU as long as the EU customer will import the order.
  • Buyers carry the responsibility of paying respective import VAT and duties for their orders.
  • Customs documents will be asked by respective authorities with orders that are being delivered to the EU.

How to Prepare for Brexit E-Commerce

Although the changes being made to regulations within the UK-EU region sounds confusing, getting prepared ahead of the time is key to manage these changes. Here’s what you can do to prepare for Brexit’s effect on e-commerce:

1) Apply for VAT whenever applicable

If you sell to the UK and ship orders below ￡135, you will need to register your store for VAT purposes at the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). However, this rule does not apply to goods delivered from the UK to any parts of the EU except if the goods or products specifically comes from Northern Ireland.

If you are not sure about the new VAT rules, contact a tax professional or authority in your country of sale to give you advice on the matter.

2) Adjust your tax rates

Depending on where you’re from and where you’re selling to, you may need to adjust your tax rates to ensure that you’ll profit after the new VAT regulations. Otherwise, you may find yourself losing money due to the new VAT rule.

3) Prepare for Brexit customs

Apply for a UK and EU EORI number to clear goods: Regardless of      where your business is based if you sell into the UK and/or the EU, you’ll need two Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) numbers: a UK EORI (register for one with HM Revenue and Customs) and an EU EORI. Used on customs declarations, an EORI number uniquely identifies the exporter in customs procedures and documentation.

Regardless of where you’re from – UK, EU or anywhere in the world – if you are selling on UK and/or EU, you’ll need two EORI numbers: EU EORI and UK EORI. These are used on customs declaration for identification and documentation purposes.

Here’s the information needed during customs declaration and compliance:

  • EORI number
  • VAT registration ID
  • Amount of VAT collected on your goods
  • Country of origin, harmonized code, description and the total value of each product in your shipment.

4) Review your shipping options

Shipments between the UK and EU will be subject to customs starting Jan 1, 2021. There are two options available to your business when it comes to dealing with customs fees:

Imports and exports between the EU and UK will be subjected to customs borders by January 1, 2021. Depending on the new customs rules, be sure to update your shipping options based on the location of your delivery.

Here are two options you have when it comes to customs fees:

Delivered Duty Paid (DDP): you are responsible for any import costs and your customer don’t need to pay for any fees regarding the shipment of the product.

Delivered at Place (DAP): You only need to ship the product and the customer has to pay for any import fees.

5) Update your shipping and return/refund policy

Finally, be sure to update your shipping and return/refund policy as you see fit for your business.

Based on the new rules, let your customers know which shipping policy is applicable to them – if it’s DAP or DDP. If it’s DDP, let them know that you are collecting import and customs fees on their behalf.

Also, let them know if the customs fees are refundable or not. While it’s possible to have them refunded, this policy is always not clear.

 

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News & Updates

Posted

December 22, 2020 at 11:07 pm

US E-Commerce Market News: What Will Happen To The US E-Commerce Market After the Blizzard?

Recently, the northeastern region of the United States was struck by a blizzard which caused accidents, power outages, heavy traffic and even some casualties. Needless to say, the blizzard will affect the e-commerce market situation in the US, especially in the northeastern region.

So, if you are selling mainly to the US market, read more to find out how the blizzard will affect the US e-commerce market from the time it happened.

Blizzard and Its Aftermath

In the past few days, a blizzard struck different states in the northeast part of the United States, including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Due to the blizzard, several northeastern states declared a state of emergency to address the weather disturbance and its aftermath.

In New York, the snow in Central Park, New York exceeded 10 inches according to the National Weather Service. To put into perspective, this is double of the snowfall from last year – which is 4.8 inches only!

In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency to address the issue concerning the blizzard. He even ordered state offices to be closed as the blizzard hit the state. Rail and bus services are also suspended by the New Jersey Department of Transportation due to the weather disturbance as well.

In Pennsylvania, several trucks slipped out of control at Interstate 80. A total of 66 vehicles – 55 commercial vehicles and 11 passenger vehicles – were involved in the said accident. This incident also caused multiple injuries and two casualties – one from the crash and one due to the person’s medical condition while being stuck on traffic.

In short, the blizzard’s effects on the northeastern part of the US is really bad – note that there are other accidents, injuries and casualties caused by the blizzard in the different parts of northeastern US.

Needless to say, businesses are also affected by the blizzard. One apparent effects of the blizzard against businesses is the delay it caused due to accidents which led to heavy traffic.

More Than Just The Blizzard

However, the blizzard and its aftermath are just the tip of the iceberg. If anything, the blizzard only worsen the already problem currently being faced by many Americans today – the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, among others.

Here are some of the factors got worse the situation after the blizzard struck the country:

Pandemic-Related Financial Problems

Because of the lockdowns and restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, many people were laid off from their jobs and businesses – especially small businesses – closed down. This apparently took a toll on many Americans’ wallet.

According to a MagnifyMoney survey, 43% of consumers will have to tap their emergency funds due to the coronavirus pandemic. To those who got laid off due to pandemic-related reasons, that number will even jump to 64%!

As long as businesses can’t get up due to the lockdown restrictions, unemployment may continue to rise. The US government’s solution since the beginning of the pandemic was to offer stimulus checks – but where is it?

Where Are The Stimulus Checks?

The $1,200 stimulus check was expected to be delivered to millions of Americans eligible for it, however, they still hadn’t received the stimulus check. In addition to that, the new rounds of stimulus check for December dropped from $1,200 to $600, making many Americans angry – considering that the first check was already delayed for nine months.

What This Means For Your Business?

Due to the financial and economic problems faced by many Americans due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can expect that they will spend less for pure consumption. Even if they are willing to spend for the holidays, the high demand coming from high volumes of orders plus the recent blizzard that struck the northeastern part of the US meant that deliveries will be slowed down and delays will increase as couriers like FedEx, USPS and UPS are dealing with high volumes of orders.

Right now, many Americans are concerned with winter, especially to those that are struck by the blizzard. For instance, heaters were easily sold out for many stores due to very high demand. Many Americans are also looking for winter-related products to ease the cold. If you can address this demand, it will be good for your business and your customers.

In short, e-commerce business in many parts of the US would be slow and low. Hopefully, in a short period, the American economy will rebound and grow again so everyone is happy – it will be a win-win situation for businesses and their customers!

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Uncategorized

Posted

December 7, 2020 at 10:24 pm

How To Use Chatbots to Make More Sales in E-Commerce?

Chatbots are becoming more popular in the recent years. Whether you’re clicking a tiny “Chat” button on a website or you’re interacting to an obviously automated message from a Facebook page, you know you’re interacting with a chatbot – and chatbots are here to stay!

Businesses are beginning to use chatbots in their marketing campaign. They are beginning to learn that chatbots can be very helpful in making sales – in fact, it can help them make plenty of sales!

But don’t just go create your chatbot yet! You must first learn the basics of chatbot marketing and how you can use it for your business – and this article will help you with that, so read on!

What is Chatbot Marketing?

Simply put, chatbot marketing is a marketing strategy that uses chatbot in one’s marketing campaign. A chatbot is an AI bot that responds to the customer’s basic questions so that the customer can get a quick answer to his or her inquiry.

But the main benefit of chatbots is not just giving customers a quick response, but giving the business the ability to respond to questions even if no one is available on their end to respond to the customer. This makes interaction quick and easy for both the business and the customer.

Of course, you cannot use chatbots for all your interactions (so, don’t fire your customer service team please), but it is very helpful especially when the business cannot respond at a given time (such as if they are offline or no one is available at the moment).

Is Chatbot Marketing is Better Than E-Mail or Website Marketing?

Compared to traditional online marketing such as website and e-mail marketing, chatbot marketing is apparently just a relatively new form of digital marketing. However, chatbot marketing is already showing promising potential compared to its older counterparts.

One of the main assets of chatbot marketing is immediate interaction. When customers send a chat to your website or page, they obviously want a fast and quick response. They are willing to interact at the time, so if you message back as soon as possible – be it a human or a chatbot – your customer is willing to interact to your chats so long as he or she finds your business or offers interesting.

On the other hand, e-mails are less interactive. To begin with, your customers may not even open your e-mail. If they finally did, they don’t necessarily mean to interact with your message – maybe they just want to scan your message or they just want to mark your email as “read” to put its notification off.

Of course, chatbots won’t necessarily replace e-mails, but in terms of immediate interaction, chatbot marketing has the upper hand!

How To Use Chatbots to Make More Sales in E-Commerce?

So, let’s now go to the interesting part: how can you use chatbots to make more sales for your e-commerce store? Here are 5 steps that you can do to use chatbots in earning more sales!

Step 1: Make a Facebook “Contest” Post

An engaging Facebook post will surely draw attention to your business. However, to make things more interesting for your audiences and potential customers, run a Contest where you offer your special product to that one lucky winner.

Running a Contest does not only promote engagement, but it encourages a lot of your audiences to join in because they hope to be that one lucky winner of your special product!

Step 2: Build a Growth Tool

Growth Tools are special tools used in ManyChat to help your chatbot marketing campaign grow. You can use these tools to make your CTA (call-to-action) or simply encourage your users to engage with your business via your chatbot.

If you’re using ManyChat, which is the best chatbot tool for Messenger right now, you can have a look at their in-depth guide on Growth Tools.

Step 3: Build a sequence of automated messages for sales

Finally, you need to build a sequence of automated messages to lead customers to your sales funnels.

Again, you cannot create a full-blown interaction using your chatbot alone, but you can craft a creative sequence of automated messages that can lead to potential sales.

Of course, you must understand how your customers behave and interact with you before you can create such sequence. It may take time, but once you’ve figured it out, it can bring you plenty of sales!

Step 4: Make additional sales with broadcasts

Remember, you had a contest? Let’s say that you had a contest for shoes. Once you got a new model of shoes to sell, you can send it out as a special offer to your “Shoes bot list”.

This means that once you have a new product to sell, you can promote it to your chatbot as well!

Step 5: Drive traffic using Facebook ads

This is quite simple: if you want to get more sales, get more traffic via Facebook ads. From there, you can get sales via your chatbot marketing (and other marketing efforts for that matter)!

Win in E-Commerce With Fulfillmen!

If you need any help with e-commerce fulfillment, Fulfillmen is just here to help you!

We specialize in China fulfillment and Special Line for certain countries such as US, UK, etc.! We also specialize in China-to-India shipping fulfillment!

If you need our help, you can contact our dedicated customer service team!

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News & Updates

Posted

December 4, 2020 at 12:13 am

Announcement

Dear valued customers,

Earlier this year, we waived off our handling fees for all plans at Fulfillmen due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We understand that many businesses are suffering from the pandemic, and we like to help you by temporarily removing all handling fees. 

However, we would like you to know that since November this year, our handling fees are back as according to your plan. Thank you for your understanding. 

Sincerely,

 

Fulfillmen Team

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Uncategorized

Posted

November 30, 2020 at 6:14 pm

Use Custom Packaging to Grow Your E-Commerce Business!

When you strategize for your e-commerce business, what do you usually think about? Choosing which products to sell? How to source product? Fulfillment operations? Warehousing? Shipping? Costs and regulations of shipping?

Of course, these things are important to consider if you want to make your e-commerce business successful. However, did you ever think of this: packaging?

When e-commerce entrepreneurs think about packaging, many of them think only of dull, brown, “formal” packages. No design, no brand, no personality, just a dull, brown package!

Why Packaging is Important?

“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.”

Paul Rand

What do you expect when you’re about to receive a gift? Aside from the gift itself, there’s one thing we expect to look good – the packaging of the gift! Whenever we receive those beautifully-packed gifts, whether we think about it or not, we appreciate the packaging of the gift.

If we appreciate the packaging of the gift, don’t you think that your customers will appreciate the packaging of their products, too? Even brick-and-mortar retail businesses find creative ways to package their product in a beautiful way and one that will represent their brand.

Here are some of the reasons why you should consider customizing your package:

1) Customize your packaging for design

It’s obvious that design is one main reason why you are encouraged to customize your product’s package. As said earlier, we appreciate a beautifully-packed gifts; the same is true for our packaging!

When we have a beautiful packaging, it will be memorable to our customers even though they may not consciously think about it.

2) Customized packaging gives you an opportunity to represent your brand

When you design, you don’t just put design on your package. You should also think about your brand and how you can represent it through your package.

But of course, you don’t just slap your logo and you’re done; you still need to think of how to design your package while aligning it with your brand!

3) Customized packaging can boost your sales

Of course, there are many factors that affect your sales. But if you’re doing things right, packaging can give you an extra boost because if your customers find out that you package your products beautifully, they will buy again from your partly because of the packaging (even though, again, they don’t consciously think about it).

Fulfillmen’s 3 Simple Guide to Customized Packaging

Here at Fulfillmen, we can give you tips on how to jumpstart on your customized packaging. Here are the 3 simple guide to get you started to Customized Packaging!

 

Custom Packaging

 

Budget for Packaging
 

 

International Shipping Tips

Custom Packaging

Here are some of the ways that you can package your products:

Mailer

Paper Mailer

Boxes

To boost your branding and customer relationships, you can also have these add-ons on your customized package:

Collaterals

Flat cards 

You can present it as a voucher or sales promo

Folded cards

You can add cute letters here

Sleeves

You can also use it as a voucher

Pamphlets

You can use this to promote or attract interest to your business

Publications

you can grow brand awareness through publications by letting your customers know more about your business and products. Here are some examples of publications:

a. Magazine

b. Newsletters

c. Catalog

 

Now that you’re package are set, the next thing you’ll do is to pack and label them. Even here, there’s design opportunities waiting for you! 

More Add-Ons

Here are some additional add-ons that you can add for your customized package:

 

Custom Issue Paper

 
 Custom Product Tags
 

 
Custom Void Fillers

Budget for Packaging

The next thing to consider is your customized packaging’s fee. Here at Fulfillmen, we offer the lowest price possible for your customized package fee.

We calculate the custom package fee based on your product’s price (2-5% of product’s cost) and other factors such as package size, material, handling and labor costs. To save up money, be sure your package’s size is just enough for your product – not too big but not too little.

International Shipping Tips

You may wonder, why is international shipping part of customized packaging? Well, because here at Fulfillmen, we want to keep costs as possible – from beginning to end. In other words, we want to help you save as much costs as possible on shipping in the same way you just saved up for packaging.

Do you know that around 70% of e-commerce businesses fail because of high shipping cost? This is why shipping cost is important, too – it can make your break your business!

Let Fulfillmen Help You!

Here at Fulfillmen, we can help you with customized packaging, customized shipping and plenty of services which you can use to benefit your business! Simply head on to our website to learn more what we can do for you!

Custom Packaging & International Shipping

Want to know more about custom packaging and international shipping? Download this resource now!
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News & Updates

Posted

November 25, 2020 at 9:23 pm

E-Commerce Black Friday: 6 Tips to Make It a BIG Success

Black Friday presents e-commerce entrepreneurs and businesses an opportunity to make BIG sales and BIG profits for their stores or companies. Just think about this: just last year, in 2019, e-commerce and digital businesses acquired a whopping $7.2 billion in digital sales! On top of that, these all happened in the US alone!

In short, you can make way plenty of profit this coming Black Friday! However, with its opportunities comes responsibilities that your e-commerce store should be able to handle. This includes potentially very large order volumes and dealing with couriers as they are expected to deliver massive amounts of products to customers.

So, you should prepare for the upcoming Black Friday event if you want your e-commerce business to get the maximum profit it can generate! To help you with that, here are 6 fulfillment and e-commerce tips that we can give you to help you make your Black Friday sales a BIG success!

6 E-Commerce Tips to Make Black Friday a BIG Success

1) Adapt and Earn!

Black Friday is certainly not a normal day for e-commerce businesses: expect massive amounts of order volume, potential new customers that will flock on your store and other stuffs that can disrupt – yes, disrupt! – your regular fulfillment system.

In this case, be flexible and adapt to your current market situations. Be willing to change your fulfillment system a little bit if you have to. Maybe it’s paying overtime for your staff, increasing your operational time for your warehouse (as much as high as 24 hours), or laying out a new structure for your team to manage your entire fulfillment and e-commerce system for Black Friday.

Whatever it is, be willing to adapt to meet the potentially high demands from plenty of customers!

Most important of all, you should have your customer service representative team ready for floods of questions and inquiries. Have a plan on how your customer service rep will manage such amounts of potential questions – without losing it down to your customers.

If you want to earn big this Black Friday, be sure you’re willing

2) Prepare Your Bestsellers Before Black Friday

We like to promote bestsellers all the time because, well, they sell best! If we heavily promote bestselling products on any given day, it makes sense if we would promote them too during Black Friday!

As a bestseller, your product will mostly be in high demand, so you should prepare your bestselling product/s before Black Friday!

Be sure that your warehouse and fulfillment team know where your bestselling products are located so that once they are ordered, they can readily shipped it. Better yet, simply put your bestselling products out in the warehouse so everyone can easily see them and deliver them when the order comes!

3) Make checkouts easier for your customers

Complicated checkouts meant lower sales simply because your customer don’t even know how to deal with your checkout process.

If you find that your carts are often abandoned, maybe it has to do with your checkout system – so, to avoid any potential sales loss, ensure that your checkout is simple and easy for your customers.

Also, give as much options for your customers as possible during checkouts. Whenever possible, be flexible with shipping options, payment methods, etc. Sometimes, a customer really wants to buy your product, but because their preferred or only option is not available, they can’t get the purchase – and you lose their sale!

4) Coordinate with your partners

Prior to Black Friday, be sure that you will coordinate with your partners – most especially, couriers – and let them know what to expect ahead this coming Black Friday. By letting them know the potential order volume they have to deliver, they can be prepared in time (or let you know of any limits).

Regardless, you and your courier partners won’t be surprised when Black Friday sales start pouring in.

5) Take time to build relationships with customers

As mentioned above, prepare your customer service rep in engaging plenty of customers – this time, not only for questions, but for follow-ups during delivery. Until the product is delivered, keep in touch with your customers so they know that you won’t leave them alone until they get their product.

6) Be prepared for returns (Boomerang Thursday)

Black Friday may be boom for sales, but be prepared for the bust: Boomerang Thursday. Expect returns from many customers, and prepare your fulfillment warehouse team to process any returns for efficient processing in the warehouse!

Conclusion

Black Friday comes with massive amounts of potential sales. But with potential sales, comes responsibilities that you should do to ensure you get the profits that you can get from Black Friday!

With Fulfillmen, we will take care of the fulfillment and warehouse side of things! We will make sure that your store’s fulfillment side will be prepared for Black Friday – from beginning until the end!

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Tips & Tricks

Posted

November 16, 2020 at 2:08 pm

10 Helpful Tips to Level Up Your Sourcing Techniques

Product sourcing may sound simple, but it is certainly not an easy task. You don’t just find a supplier that will supply the products that you want to sell, but you have to consider key factors such as finding the right supplier, purchasing products on a low or reasonable price, ensuring product quality, etc.

In this article, we are going to give you some helpful tips which you can apply whenever you’re sourcing for products. So, let’s not take this any longer; let’s get started!

10 Helpful Tips to Level Up Your Sourcing Techniques

1) Define your ideal supplier

cargo ships docked at the pier during day

Of course, you need to work with the right supplier, but not all suppliers will work for everybody – you need to work with suppliers that are right for you.

In general, there are three types of suppliers: manufacturers, trading companies and sourcing agents. Each have their pros and cons, so you need to understand how each supplier works differently from another.

Manufacturer

Manufacturers produce the product themselves. Hence, production, inventory (supply chain) and quality control are their greatest assets.

 

Pros:

  • Theoretically, less problems with supply chain as they control the very inventory of their products.
  • They have total control of the product’s quality; if there’s a problem with the product’s quality, they can just fix their errors to avoid quality problems in the future.

Cons:

  • Working with manufacturers is less flexible: if something went wrong with the manufacturer, your supply chain could be in great danger
  • You can mostly order only in big bulk (not ideal for small businesses)
  • They mostly only work with stable, medium-sized or big business to secure income. If you’re just starting out, finding a manufacturer that will work with you could be very difficult.

Trading company

Trading companies buy products from manufacturers and sell them to store owners. They work with different manufacturers to ensure secured supply chain in case one manufacturer had a problem.

 

Pros:

  • You can order in smaller amounts. Oftentimes, you can even receive discounts if you buy in small quantities.
  • They are flexible: because they work with different manufacturer, they usually won’t have a problem in case one or two manufacturers had a problem and won’t be able to deliver the products.
  • They are more open to work with small and starting businesses compared to manufacturers.

Cons:

  • Trading companies are still at the mercy of the manufacturers that they work with. If their manufacturer partners faced problems, it can hurt them as well, and so would you. (Of course, this is countered by working with multiple manufacturers, but it does not change this nature).

 

Sourcing agent

 

Sourcing agents don’t own the products. Instead, they’ll help you find suppliers at the best deal possible. Sourcing agents can appear either as an individual or as a company. Regardless, their role is the same.

 

Pros:

  • They are willing to work with almost everybody, including starting businesses.
  • If you found a good sourcing agent, they can lead you to some of the best suppliers in your market.
  • Like trading companies, they are also flexible – probably even more flexible than trading companies.

 

Cons:

  • Potential scam or fraud: because being a sourcing agent is relatively a low-barrier business, this is a target for many fraudulent individuals and companies – virtually anyone can claim that they are sourcing agents! Here are two common red flags for any potential “sourcing agent” scammers: 1) they make unreasonably good promises and 2) they are very eager to get the money first before doing their services.

Now that you know the different types of suppliers, let’s take a look at some of the factors that you need to consider before working with your supplier, regardless of the type:

  • Compliance to laws and regulations
  • Supplier location
  • Factory size (mostly for manufacturers)
  • Export market

 

Compliance to laws and regulations – needless to say, your supplier should be compliant to laws and regulations. Otherwise, they may lose their business and you can lose your supply chain. Even worse, you could be tangled with their legal problems!

Supplier location – find a supplier that is as near as possible to you or to your target market’s location to save time and cost. The nearer the supplier, the lower the delivery time and its costs.

Factory size – if you plan to work with manufacturers, consider their factory size: is it big enough to consistently meet my supply demands? While factories are big by nature, remember that they serve multiple customers. If the factory can’t keep up with the demands of their customers, it can cause problems.

Export market – it is ideal if the export market of your supplier is market or location of your customers.

2) Don’t just talk about the price – negotiate more than the price!

Negotiations are not only limited to price and costs. Consider negotiating about other factors such as labeling, packaging and compensation for any possible quality issues. When you’re talking about payment terms, consider a 30/70 payment term as this is better for your cash flow – not too much, but not too little!

3) Be very specific in your product specifications

person touching and pointing macbook pro

When you bought your first brand-new car, you might be surprised that the black car you want is labeled as graphite black by the dealership. Even mind-blowing is that there are different kinds of black: graphite black, metallic black, black pearl, etc.! This is what we mean by being very specific: pinpoint exactly what you want.

In the example of color, suppliers will show you their “super exact” color options, so when you choose your color, go with their names and not the general name of color (e.g. “graphite black”, not just “black”). This applies to other areas of the product specs. Be specific as possible to get what exactly you want.

4) Communicate properly with your suppliers

We have already talked about being very specific about the product specifications that you’re looking for, and that’s just one example on how you should communicate to your supplier.

Be specific with what you want. When you send out e-mail, keep it short and simple. If you have to, use bullet points to make your message more concise.

Lastly, although e-mailing is the common way of messaging your suppliers, you don’t need to stick to professional e-mailing: if you have to, you can communicate via messaging apps like WeChat.

5) Protect your business from “quality fade”

Quality fade is a gradual decline of a product’s quality over time. While all products will eventually “fade” their quality away over time, “quality fade” specifically happens when the product is made up of low quality raw materials – hence, the product is “doomed” to lose its quality over time. Although there could be a variety of reason, one common reason why suppliers choose low quality material is to simply increase their profit margin – yes, bad business!

So, what can you do to protect yourself and your business from “quality fade”? Here are some things that you can do:

  • Inspect every product that comes to you and see if they meet the quality standard.
  • Source products from more than one supplier (this is a good sourcing practice in general)
  • Hold your suppliers liable in case of any defect. Let them know that if the product does not meet the promised quality, they will be held liable for it.
  • Whenever possible, consider conducting a pre-production inspection to make sure that they’re manufacturing your products at the highest quality level possible.

6) Inspect first before you pay

magnifying glass near gray laptop

This is one great way to check your product’s quality control. Tell your supplier early on that you are going to inspect their products for quality check. Let them know that you’re willing to pay at least 30% of the advanced payment, but you’ll only pay the rest 70% once the pre-shipment inspection is done.

7) Plan your sales around Amazon FBA’s holiday selling dates

To ensure that your products are available during peak seasons, be sure that your supplies arrive at your fulfillment centers by the following dates:

  • November 5 – Black Friday and Cyber Monday
  • December 5 – Christmas
  • December 17 – First day to start sending inventory

8) Plan for Chinese New Year holidays

When selling for Chinese New Year holidays, be sure that your inventory is packed for the months of January and February. If shipment is needed before the Chinese New Year, place orders as early as before Q4 because during Q4, many stores are already ordering their products for Chinese New Year. If you ordered only during the Q4, it may take a while before your product arrives, possibly even after the Chinese New Year! So, order early on so you’ll have your supplies ready before the Chinese New Year.

9) Try “trial order” for low MOQs

If the MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) may come as low as 50% – that is, around 500 to 1,000 products – then you can order them from the supplier and tell them that you’re testing out the product. The supplier may increase the price in this deal, but that’s alright because you’re just buying in “trial” quantities.

10) Buy products in small quantities at Yiwu to test the products

100 US dollars bank note

Yiwu is a very big wholesale market. You can buy around 1-2 cartons to test your products on Amazon. This does not include special features such as custom packaging; the only purpose here is to test the products on Amazon. Nevertheless, Yiwu is the best source from China for testing product!

Conclusion

Product sourcing is not easy, but these tips will help you level up your sourcing process or even make it a little easier for you in the long run!

If you need a Chinese fulfillment services and support, check out what Fulfillmen can offer you.

#ChinaFulfillment #SourceFromChina #FulfillmentandSupport

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