There are many suppliers in Shenzhen that offer you a Western Digital Hard Drive 500GB with USB 3.0 port for only 18USD, do you believe that it is true and real, or it is just a fraud?
May I ask you a question?
How much would you pay in your country for a regular 500GB hard drive?
Your answer would be 70USD to 90USD.
Now if you could get it for 18USD, plus shipping cost (if you buy up to 100 pieces, the shipping cost per unit would be 1 USD), and custom duty, it would be approximately 20USD.
Now you could sell it for 80USD, you make 60USD per unit, the profit is 3 times as much as the cost. What business is better than that?
Do you think that all the poeple in your country do not know this good deal, only you know that, do think you are so smart that you find a very good source?
What I am telling you is that you find a scammer.
If you are not so greedy and will spend some time on researching and find out a reasonable price for that, it is hard for you to get scammed.
If you don’t know what is a reasonable price for the item you are looking for, why don’t you pay us a little to find out what it is.
You can also pay us to visit your supplier.
We hate fraud and scamming.
I got a lot of complaints from people who got scammed by some people in Shenzhen China.
There are many types of scams, and everyone got scammed in a different way.
The most common way that the scammers use is that they put a very low price for a popular item to attract your attention and want you to pay in advance to their bank account or via Western Union, as soon as they get the money, they would either disappear or send you something that you don’t want.
1. Don’t be greedy. Do not believe that there is a free lunch, or there is something that is extremely cheap.
2. Check on the internet and some official sources to make sure that you understand what is a reasonable price for the item you are looking for.
3. Check the supplier’s address, make sure that the address makes sense. Or you can pay us to verify the address.
4. Pay via Paypal if possible. Only pay with Telegraphic Transfer or Western Union to a reliable supplier.
After the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, many foreigners want to visit Shenzhen, where exactly in Shenzhen do they want to have a look, what markets will interest them?
There are 2 big shopping areas that you might want to visit:
Huaqiang Bei electronics marketplaces: There are over 20 buildings where you can find all different kinds of electronics parts, components, accessories for mobile phones, tablets, computer and industrial devices.
Dongmen Shopping Area: Here you will meet a lot of young girls who come from all over Shenzhen for cloth and shoe shopping.
The most interesting place for foreigners is Luohu Commercial City.
If you have problem finding this place, you can send a text message to +86-15915484313, we will send the building name in Chinese to you so that you can show it to a Taxi driver, when you arrive and you still can’t find it where exactly it is, we will have someone to guide you to this place.
Luohu Commercial City is a building with 7 floors where you can buy sunglasses, watches, clothes, leather belts, wallets, handbags, suitcases, jewelry
Where is this Luohu Shopping Mall so interesting to the foreigners?
1. Foreigners also call it Copy Place or Copy Building, it means that you can see a lot of big brands that many people can’t afford to buy in their daily life, but here most of the people can afford it because the prices here are so reasonable (relatively reasonable but you can still negotiate down to the prices you like), the quality is not as good as original, but if you can find a good copy, the quality is not bad too, it is totally worth the money you spend.
2. Many sellers here speak more or little English, communication is not a problem here. However, some of the sellers might not speak very good English and you need better communication, or you just want to negotiate down to the prices you like, or you can want to make sure that you are getting some good quality items. In any of the cases a local guide here will help you a lot.
It is not easy and not cheap to come all the way from your country to Shenzhen and you want to make it worth for your trip, you will need to come to Luohu Commercial City and find something for family and your friends as gifts, they will like it but please be honest to them that they are not original, they are just good copies, and you still like the quality.
In case you don’t search my post, you can also try to reach us by Lowo Shopping Mall, Lowo Copy.
Many people believe that they can make a lot of money when they do some international trading business, however, international trade business is not as easy as you think, and international trade is probably not as profitable as you expect.
1. International trade is more complicated because it involved with import and export, international shipping, language and culture barrier, international payment. There is import or export duty that you need to check, some items are easy to import and export, some of them are not. You need good packaging when you do an international shipment, and it takes longer and costs more than domestic shipping, if you don’t speak your trade partner’s language or your trade partner’s language, you might need a translator’s help. International payment transferring might cost you some fees as well, and there is limit to transfer the payment crossing the borders, for example, Paypal charge you 3.9% + fixed amount per transaction, Western Union charges you with a fixed amount which is quite high, and there is a limit for cross-border transaction.
2. International Trade is not as profitable as it used to be because of the Information Technology, it is much easier nowadays to find leads, easy to find your international trade partners. There can be less or no middle man in between you and your trade partners because of websites. Many suppliers from China can easily set up an account on Alibaba, and there are so many competitors on Alibaba, they have to lower their profit, so some prices that you see on the website are actually too low, sometimes they are even lower than the local prices, because they want to attract the customers to send them inquiry. And eventually you will find out that the lowest prices always have some problems.
3. Many people have a wrong consumption that if you go direct to the manufacturers of product, they can get a better deal, well, this is a wrong idea, with the Information Technology, there is no difficulty for the manufacturers to post their information online, and you will have no problem to find them, however, some manufacturers don’t want to deal with every customer, they just want to deal with a few big distributors or trading companies, because they don’t have much time or they don’t want to focus on customer services and international trade, it is much easier to sell to a few big distributors and pass the customer leads to their distributors, when they receive a new customer inquiry, they just give it to their distributors. If you are new in international business, it is better for you to start dealing with those “middle men” because they give you better customer services and they are willing to sell to you in a small quantity, when you are set up with your sales channels and you can handle in big volumes you can start to talk to the manufacturers.
To avoid the middle men and still want to get the services provided usually by the middle men, you need to have an international trade agent who can provide you services like import and export documents, international shipping, translation, and cross-border payment handling, then you can deal directly with the manufacturers if your MOQ meet their requirements.
More and more foreigners come to visit Shenzhen, and they want to visit a few factories in one or two days because their schedule is very tight, some suppliers are always willing to pick you up at your hotel and drop you back, but some of them are not very willing to do that, even if they are willing to do that, you don’t want to take this kind of offer because:
1. You don’t want to feel like that owe them anything.
2. You want to be very efficient, you want to travel from one factory to another one. Usually you stay at the urban area, but most of the factories are located in the industrial areas. And you don’t easily find a taxi in the industrial areas. You will need a private Taxi to travel from one factory to another, but please make sure that these factories are not far from each other, the factories can be located in different industrial areas of Shenzhen, and they can be very far from each other. For example, you can visit Bao’An District in one day, visit LongGang District in another day.
It is usually minimum 200USD per day, excluding gas, toll and packing.
However, I would like to offer you very good rates for the next 3 months (from March 1st to May 31th), I want to charge you only 150 USD per day for a limit of 8 hours (every extra hour is 15USD) and include 100 Kilometers (every extra kilometer would be 0.5USD), toll and packing fees are also included.
It is better if you can make appointments with all the companies that you are going to visit, and also ask them to send you their addresses in Chinese and the contact persons’ cell phone numbers, if they can provide their addresses in Google Or Baidu maps link, it is even better.
Maximum 4. If these companies are located in the same district, it is possible to visit 4 companies in one day, assuming one hour visit for one company.
We usually drive a basic car which can be a Hongda Fit, Buick Excelle, Kia K2, if you need a fancy car, it is possible but you will need to pay extra.
How many kinds of manufacturers are there in China?
When you are looking for a manufacturer on Alibaba, you are not sure if it is a trader or manufacturer even though they always prefer to claim that they are the manufacturer, but sometimes they are not, they can be just a trading company.
1. A trader who has partnership with a manufacturer.
A trading company that deals with electronis likes to focus on marketing and sales, as well as sourcing and quality control, but sometimes a trading company has only one source of their product, they have partnership with one factory, sometimes they are one of the shareholders of a factory, or they might develop one or two items and have them manufactured at a factory, in all these cases, they always claim that they own the factory.
2. An assembly house.
Some companies are actually an assembly house with a lot of focus on marketing and sales. This kind of companies have a very small assembly house with one or two production lines, but their focus is on marketing, sales as well as sourcing and quality control. In the electronics business such as cell phone or tablet PC, this kind of assembly factories arrange PCBA boards, plastic housing, LCD display and batteries, and hire a few workers to put them together and do some burn-in test. And They call themself a factory because they do have a couple production line and a few labors for assembly and QC.
3. Genuine manufacturer.
This kind of companies start from purchasing the raw materials, and they have their own R&D team, they own some heave machines such as SMT machines, injection mold machine, and etc. Usually their producing capability is very big, they can produce hundreds of cell phone or tablet in just one hour.
I am sure that you all want to deal directly with the genuine manufacturer, however, if your volume is not big enough, most of the manufacturers will not deal with you, you might need to deal with their distributors, sometimes it is better to deal with an assembly house or even a trading company.
I have heard a lot of my clients that they have never get a response from their suppliers and they have to ask my translation help on that, sometimes they just want me to call them and if they are available, I will make a 3-way phone call, put both you and your supplier on the phone, I act as an interpreter in between. In this case, I charge my clients on a hourly basis.
Here are some tips that might help you get some replies.
1. When you are sending an inquires for quote, please make sure that the suppliers understand what items you need, and how many pieces you need for each item. If you are looking for an electronics item, they will either sell you one sample or thousands of pieces, if you only need 100 or 200 pieces for a customized item, most of the time they are not interested.
2. When you are writing an inquiry, please make sure that your English is easy to understand. As many Alibaba suppliers receive too many inquiries every day, they need to hire someone cheap to read the inquires, I am sure that many big Alibaba suppliers have someone who speaks very good English, however, the one who is reading your inquiries might not speak good English, hense, they might have difficulty to understand your emails.
3. Do not create a standard letter and send it to a lot of suppliers. Many indian people like to create a standard inquiry, and try to send it to as many people as they can, and eventually they get one reply at all. People in China have no interest in people who will talk to too many of their competitors. So most of the time, a short email is better than a long one.
4. If you are looking for a cheap item with a small quantity, most of the suppliers are not so interested unless you can place a big order after that. If you have a nice website that introduces yourself and your company, if you describe your project very well and your project will require a lot of the item you are looking for, most of the suppliers will show interest and give you a good price.
5. If you don’t get the response in one or two days, you can send it again. Or you can send a text message to their cell phone, or you can just give them a call, if you can’t communicate well with them on the phone, you can hire a phone call interpreter service.
If you still have no way to get the response, why don’t you contact me, I will help you get some response, please be aware that I will charge you on a hourly basis. My hourly rate is usually USD30.
