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.
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.
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.
1. The information you get online might not be true or complete, sometimes the address you found on their website might not even exist, or not complete, and sometimes you can never reach them via phone. We can help you verify the suppliers and make sure you get all the information you need.
2. There are more or less some communication barrier between you and your suppliers, we can help you improve your communication efficiency.
3. Many suppliers are not very committed to the lead time, especially when they are busy, we can go and talk to them, try to understand the status and report to you so that you will always have updates.
4. Small suppliers do not pay attention to their Quality Control, if they know that an inspector on your behalf will come and check the goods, they usually will do their best.
If you hire a freelancer to be your representative to help you with the jobs above, you will only need to spend a very small amount of money and your business in China will be more secured.
Here are some freelancers who can help you with your business development in Shenzhen China. We are not just interpreters, we are helping you not just because of the language barrier.
We can do some preparation jobs for you before you come to China, sometimes you might not be able to get all the responds from the inquiries you sent, we search online and find more contact information and we can make phone calls on your behalf, they will feel very confortable speaking to a local guy in their native language, so that you will get the most responds, and we will translate what the conversation for you.
With a point of contact in China, your business partners will feel very confident in doing business with you, some bad businessmen in China will need to hesitate if they want to play games with you, they will have to provide true information for you because you have someone in China.
There are more reasons why you need a point of contact in China…
If you are new to China, if you don’t know how to do business with the Chinese, if you want to develop your product in Shenzhen, if you want to find your electronics in Shenzhen, if you want to have your items made in China, you might need a local consultant like me to answer your questions and give your some guidance to avaid problems before proceeding. Hiring a consulting service is much cheaper than hiring a full-term employee to perform similar functions.
Sometimes I might not be able to answer all your question, but I can still do some research in Chinese, while you don’t usually do that.
I charge my clients on a hourly rate basis for my consulting services. We can arrange Skype meeting if you need my services.
What if your earphone doesn’t work, will you be able to replace the original earphone.
How about camera not working?
What if you drop your Iphone or Ipad and it damages so badly. Will you be able to check and see if it functions? If yes, you are luck, you will just need to replace the “glass”.
Do you want to send your broken Iphones and fixed in China?
If you go to a local Apple store and repair your phone, you would probablly like to get a new one because it is too costly. However, if you send it to China, and they put a high-copy parts for you, it will function the same, and it is hard to see the difference between orginal and copy, but the cost is much different. That is why you want to ship your broken phone to China. However, you need to be aware that Not all the broken phones are repairable, only 80% of them are possible to be repaired.
Do you know that purchasing an Iphone or Ipad without 2 or 3 year subscription at a local service carrier is not affordable to everyone in China? It is also a good idea to ship the used Iphones or Ipads to China because local Chinese people are tired of copy Iphones. Second hand Iphones or Ipads are still welcome in China if you are selling them in a very reasonal price, but don’t give it to them as a gift, because of an old Chinese saying which is that if it is not something you like, do not give it to others.
Here are some technical terms that you might want to learn when you are searching for a good and reliable suppliers to fix your Iphones.
FPC (flexible printed circuit) 柔性线路板
ACF (Anisotropic Conductive Film) 异方性导电胶膜, You need an ACF tacking machine to attach this film to the glass/LCD before lamination.
How do you remove your touch panel from your Iphone? As you know, when you laminate your touch panel on the LCD, you need a film called ACF. so as a reverse engineering technology, you need to head this film up and use a small steel wire (smaller than this file) to remove it, of course, this is done by a touch panel removal machine ( Iphone LCD disassembly machine).
OCA (Optical Clear Adhedive) 光学胶 it is used in between cover len and sensor glass.
Cover len 盖板 is usually the top layer of your Iphone.
Polarizer is on top of the LCD glass, it is the top part of LCD module.
ITO (tin-doped indium oxide), it is an transparent layer for capacitive sensing of screen.
We, as interpreters and consultants, in a very important position of your business model, will help you achieve your target in a very effecient way.How do you do business with the suppliers in China, how do you negotiate with them, how do you set up a good relationship with them?
Here I would like to take an example of LCD/LED TV to explain to you.
Most of these factories only have one or two production lines (assembly lines), only some big companies can make their own electronics boards (The main chipsets are mostly from Mstar the models are usually MST6M181 and MST6M182), very few suppliers have their injection machine to produce the plastic cabinets, only a few big companies have open cell technology for the panel, the panels are mainly from Chimei, some companies are using LG/Samsung/AUO/BOE
This assembly line can produce 100set per hour, medium and big companies can produce 200 thousands set per month.
As the LED TV are getting cheaper and cheaper, most of the companies are only now producing LED TVs instead of LCD TVs, CRT TVs are now out date.
A good price lists from a big LED TV suppliers based on a 40’ container:
15.6” 69USD
18.5” 88USD
21.6” 110USD
23.6“ 129USD
26“ 162USD
32“ 189USD
42“ 349USD
One 20’ container can take 700set of 22” LED TV.
If you have very good relationship with the suppliers in China, you will get very good price at the very beginning, and your will get good product/ good deliver lead as well as services after you place the order. Here are some tips to build good relationships:
Hire an inspector to check your product before shipping. Sometimes it is not because that the suppliers want to deliver your bad quality product, but because the sales persons are too busy or their quality people are careless, so they might forget this or that, or just make a small mistake like this or that, so to be sure of your order, double check is always go
1. Some big manufacturers will have their marketing and sales team, they attend all the big trade shows, they don't advertise so much online, because they think the serious and big buyers will attend the trade shows as well, the customers that they get from the internet are mostly small "fishes", and they don't treat these small fishes very well, sometimes they just ignore their emails, if you are a small fish, when you place the orders to them, the delivery time can be very long.
2, Small to Medium size of factories and the trading companies like to advertise a lot online, they spend 2 to 10 thousands USD on Alibaba, Made-in-China and Global Sources, just to be members, and spend time and human resource to update their product and answer inquiries.
3. Some small manufacturers can't afford to be a member on these international website, they spend 400USD to 1000USD on the local Alibaba, and they can't afford to hire someone who speak English, they do not have an export license, so they have problem in selling product overseas directly, they have to reply on the trading companies.
You might remember the German philosopher Hegel's saying, trading companies have their reasons to exist, and sometimes they are very professional, they provide very good services, they are good for certain types of customers, they get paid just because they add value to your transation.
---What do you need to know if you want to customize your products and have them manufactured in China?
If you are selling some consumer electronics product, and you want to differentiate from your competitors, you will need to customize your product and make it special and different. However you need to produce 100 or 200 demo samples first to show to your customers, and if your customers like your product, you will place a big order to your suppliers.
Then you start to find and contact some good suppliers (you might want to hire someone who speaks both English and Chinese to help you), the suppliers will tell you that their MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) is 1000 pieces, if you need samples, they can hand-make one or two for you which they would call it “prototype”, and the quality of the prototype is not as good as the one made by machine in massive production, from this prototype, you can only see what your product will look like in reality other than on the computer. A prototype is quick necessary because if there is anything you don’t like, you can change it easily.
Why would the suppliers ask for a MOQ of 1000 PCS?
Because what you need is not exactly what they are currently producing, you need to have something different, you might want to change the mechanical parts, or features and functions, or packaging and printing.
1. If you want to change the mechanical parts,
2. If you need to change the features and functions of your electronics product,
3. If you just want to change the package and printing on the box,
4. In China, most of the suppliers don’t charge you for the consulting and prototype, but you need to show great interest in placing a big order to them, otherwise they will not be interested in working with you.
In addition, there is not so much difference in marketing and sales cost to the suppliers between 200 PCS order and 2000 PCS order.
As for the customers, you need to get your new electronics certificated your country, in Europe, CE certificate is required, in America FCC or UL is usually required. Your supplier need to submit a sample to a laboratory to get your certificate, and this costs thousands of dollars as well.
If you need someone who is good at electronics manufacture process, please don’t hesitate to contact me, I will be happy to help you by saving you time and money.
1. Identify your suppliers/manufacturers online or through tradeshow. You can also use our sourcing services. If you send me a list of these suppliers, we can check and verify if they are legal online.
2. Contact your suppliers/manufacturers, you might need a translator to help you communicate well with them.
3. Visit your suppliers/munufacturers with a local interpreter or a business guide, you can visit multiple factories in one day if they are not far away from each other, it is better if you hire a private driver with a car, some suppliers maybe arrange a driver to pick you up at the hotel, and then send you back to you hotel again, this is not very efficient if you plan on visiting many suppliers.
4. Get quotes from your suppliers/manufacturers, an interpreter or business guide will help you get reasonable prices, if you only want cheap price, or some suppliers would like to offer you very cheap price, but it usually ends up with bad quality on product or service.
5. Order samples or make prototypes at the suppliers that you want to do business with. You local business guide can help you consolidate all the samples from different suppliers, and check them all before ship to you.
6. Get sample or prototype approval. You need to do it yourself, and it is very important.
7. Start trial order. Usually there are a lot of problem and you need good and quick feedback.
8. Place big order. During production, it is better if you arrange an inspector to see how they run the production line, make sure they take good care of your product.
9. Arrange inspection before shipping. This is very important, after checking by your inspector, you will need to pay the balance.
10. Watch your suppliers load the containers. If you trust your suppliers, you don’t need to do that.
