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Liran is with us visiting suppliers in China
- Wanted to go visit his two suppliers he’s had since 2016
- Hadn’t met them in person yet so decided now was a good time to go meet
- Needed 10 days there and dates worked
15hrs Flights
- From Australia to China was about the same as flying from US to China
- 15hrs direct flight on Business class (and well worth it)
- Used points to help pay for it – through Delta and China Eastern
- China Eastern was really good
- Slept 10 out of the 18 hours
Into Shanghai visiting Suppliers in China
- Flew into Shanghai to go visiting suppliers in China
- Felt better going with another person to China
- Took a taxi to the Hotel on Monday night
- Tuesday morning went to meet his translator for travel and translation
- Recommend you get a translator when visiting suppliers in China
- Supplier came and picked Liran up
- Hour and a half drive to the factory (Liran trades direct with this Factory)
Trading Companies work
- The 2nd Supplier is a Trading Company and President Xi was in the area so Liran couldn’t go and visit the Factory
- Some Trading companies are brilliant and worth paying a little more for
- Factories don’t always want to deal in English and prefer a trading company to go through
- Also, Trading companies can bring in components from multiple factories and get you a product you would struggle to make yourself
Dinner with Supplier
- Benefits to going to China nad meeting your supplier is helpful
- In the factory they go to the back room and show you samples of other customers that didn’t make it to order
- These could be new ideas and potential new products that you don’t get across the Skype call
- Did research direct with the Factory in there and looked through products on amazon for Q4
- Liran positions himself as an Amazon expert and helps him negotiate great terms
- No substitute for meeting the Supplier nad having dinner and drinks with them – it’s a really good experience
Chinese not English
- China is huge
- Hardly anyone speaks English
- Danny spent 3hrs trying to wave down a taxi
- The food – to make a booking is hard
- You are reliant on the supplier to help with logistics too
- Liran downloaded an app that you can talk to and it translated to Chinese for him – iTranslate Pro is invaluable!
- Worth its weight for the taxi that needed to turn on his aircon
Canton Fair – English Hotel
- Stay in an English speaking hotel in Canton Fair – don’t go off the grid when visiting suppliers in China
- Going in April and October is a good time to make the trip as you can take in the Trade Shows and catch a load of Suppliers all in one place – check out the ‘phases’ of the Trade shows
- You could source new products and go see the factories
Negotiating
- Chinese people often also choose and use an English name
- One factory gave amazing terms and now Liran wanted to get better terms with his other supplier
- Put 30% down and pay remainder 90 days after goods arrive at port
- Pay 30% upfront and remainder when the goods arrive in USA
- Wanted a better deal and so raised that Q4 is coming up
- Could do 5 new products or with some help from the Supplier could do 15 new products
- They are receptive and looking at 30% deposit, next 30% when it gets to Port and the remainder maybe 40 days after
- Not sure this would be considered if Liran hadn’t met the Owner of the factory in person
- Helped the owner do a US bank wire transfer on his own computer
- Went and did lunch, dinner nad karaoke with him too
- Much easier to talk a deal when you’ve built a bond with them
Factory Quality
- Andy with the Amazing Freedom group went over
- He met some suppliers on Alibaba
- They planned to get some samples ready for him while he was visiting suppliers in China
- One factory had great samples but the factory was a nightmare and not high quality
- If he’d not gone and checked he might have had a great pre-production sample but a nightmare mass production
- Doing a pre-production inspection audit will highlight these issues before you get into a production run
- Important to check them out beforehand
- People like to do business with people they like and trust
Trade Shows
- In 2016 Danny went and saw a Trade show
- He found some floors that had different countries and the quality was visibly different
- In Canton Fair you might have 50 stands all selling the same product and very hard to tell the quality difference
- Hong Kong stand costs are higher which makes it harder to cut good deals
Boost
- Liran went to Boost straight after flying in from China
- Is content pretty dry?
- Meeting all the other Sellers and Amazon employees is the value from going to Boost
- Content is not going to be as good as among Sellers who share content
- Networking is pretty good
- Amazon had 15-20 different booths with medium to senior level managers in these depts
- Some give you out their business cards and some even respond to emails too
Amazon Socialising
- Was an opportunity to socialise for a beer later too
- Had a prepared bar-crawl that you can go on as well
