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How to Become a Wholesale

Import/Export Middleman
But there’s another twist to an import/export business — and that is becoming a “middleman.”
This is the part of the business that enables you to compete with other importers and exports for
major multimillion-dollar deals.
The learning curve may be a bit steeper than other aspects of an import/export business — but
the rewards and benefits are greater as well.
Many countries and companies have insatiable appetites for thousands of different types of products.
For example, there are companies that import millions of cubic tons of soybeans, tea, coffee,
corn, wheat, steel, coal, copper, zinc and aluminum.
Often times the purchasing directors place orders directly with manufacturers in other parts of
the world.
The problem is, although they purchase millions of cubic tons of product, in some cases they
need more — a lot more!
That’s where you come in!
You will simply identify the companies that are importing the largest quantities of products and
then find secondary suppliers for them.
For instance, listed as a Buying Lead on Alibaba.com is a company in Singapore interested in
25,000 metric tons of Wheat (Durum).
Singapore imports tens of millions of metric tons of wheat every year. They’re buying it from someone!
All you need to do is locate a company that is able to fulfill this request.
You could work on a retainer or commission basis to begin with if you don’t have the capital to
“float” deals this size.
In other words, you would locate a company that is able and willing to fulfill an order of this size
(25,000 metric tons per month). Then you would contact this company and tell them you have a
prospective buyer in Singapore. If they’re interested in submitting a quote they will need to “retain”
your services.
The exact wording of a proposal will vary.
But most companies want to move product as quickly and trouble free as possible.
You’ll find that many companies will be eager to work with you.
But as you can see — this is a great income opportunity.
On the other hand, if you do have the capital to float deals like this you would simply obtain a
quote from the manufacturer or producer for 25,000 metric tons of wheat (durum).
You would submit this quote (with a 15% premium added — your profit) to the interested party.
If the quote were accepted you would arrange for payment and delivery.
It’s that simple!
What’s more, money flows very quickly in the import/export industry, unlike hundreds of other
industries.
An import/export middleman simply facilitates large product orders by bringing buyers and
sellers together and making a “premium” or percentage of the deal.
Here’s a Short List of MAJOR Import and Export deals
(tens of millions of dollars).
All of the middlemen facilitating these deals earn a percentage.
Crude Palm Oil – Mainland China
Soybean Oil – Mainland China
Wheat (durum) India, China, Pakistan, Malaysia
Corn – Brazil, China, Singapore, India, Australia, Egypt, South Africa
Fishmeal – China, India, Japan, Pakistan, Thailand, Korea, Chile, Argentina
Ma Huang Extract – Mexico
White Rice – Malaysia, China, Japan, UK
Peanuts, Poland, Thailand, UAE
Olive Oil – Portugal
Saw Palmetto Extract – China
Black Tea – Iran
Cashews and Almonds – India
Palm Oil – United States
Bananas – Turkey
Soybean Meal – Bangladesh
Copper – China, Japan, India
Steel – China, Mexico, India, Indonesia
Crude Oil – all countries
Natural gas – all countries
The list of products goes on and on!
The opportunities for import/export middlemen have never been greater.
Once again Alibaba.com is a great resource to help you identify these deals. But Alibaba.com is
not the only resource! There are dozens of websites to assist you in getting your import/export
venture off the ground.
Additional Resources to Help You
Become An Import/Export Middleman
InfoBanc / Indian Bazaar
http://www.infobanc.com/
Global Sources
http://www.globalsources.com
Thomas Global Register
http://www.thomasglobal.com
FITA
http://fita.worldbid.com
ImportEurope
http://www.importeurope.com/
ForeignTrade.com
http://www.foreign-trade.com/
Export Bureau
http://www.exportbureau.com/
Berlinkauf – Trade Leads
http://www.berlinkauf.com/
Muslim Trade Network
http://www.muslimtrade.net/b2b/
Export Zone USA
http://www.exportzone.com/
Trade India
http://www.trade-india.com/
In the next chapter we’ll show you how to dominate the major search engines and directories.
Dominating the search engines and directories will help promote your import/export middleman
strategies, or promote specific products and services.
The first step toward building a profitable Internet based import/export business is taking the
right action.
That is what this chapter is designed to help you do.
After completing your first deal your entrepreneurial juices will start to flow. New ideas,
approaches and methods will begin appearing as if out of nowhere.
Ask any successful entrepreneur what the single most important element to their success is and
invariably they will tell you — taking action on an idea.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft (and richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine),
said in an interview recently that hundreds of people were developing software programs and
operating systems for personal computers. The one thing that set him apart was that he acted on his
idea of becoming “the” operating system for personal computers.
Taking action — no matter how large or small — will make a difference in your business success.
Once you’ve decided to take action the next step will be to determine what area of importing and
exporting you would like to focus on initially.
Don’t make this step too difficult — it’s simply a matter of what aspect of this business interests
you the most.
If you’re interested and become passionate about a specific area the details and money will
follow if you take the right action.
Four Main Areas of an Internet Import/Export Business
_ Matching Buyers with Sellers
_ Import Products for the Wholesale Market
_ Exporting Products to Overseas Buyers
_ Importing Products for Resale on the Internet
We‘ll develop an Action Plan for each of these areas. Your plan may be slightly different, but this
will give you a start in the right direction.
Matching Buyers with Sellers
This is easy with Alibaba.com. Go to http://www.alibaba.com now.
Near the top of the page next to “Search,” you will see a pull-down menu that includes Buying
Leads and Selling Leads.
By the way, if you haven’t registered as a member you should do so now (it’s free).
Click on Buying Leads and you’ll see 30 Product Categories. Select Agriculture. In today’s listing
there is an entry entitled Buy Onion. ("Alibaba is constantly updating its buyers and sellers so by the
time you read this, these directions may no longer show you a lead for Buy Onion, but I want to use
this example to illustrate how easy it is to match buyers with sellers and profit from it!") This is
a company that is interested in buying large quantities of size 5-7 red onions. The company is
located in Malaysia. When you click on their listing you also learn they need the onions shipped in
10kg mesh bags.
We’re making progress!
Save this web page — and open a new window in your web browser (File -> New Window) and go
to the Alibaba.com home page again.
Click on Selling Leads this time.
Search for “red onions” in the Selling Leads.
In today’s listings there are several companies that are selling red onions.
Let’s pick the company with a “TrustPass” certification. This will help us identify the most trust
worthy company; one that is experienced at exporting.
If we click on this Seller’s Listing we find out they sell red onions (sizes 5-7 are very common) and
ship them in mesh bags.
Further down in their listing we’ll see the Contact Information. Click on the Inquire Now button.
We need to ask this seller to send us a quote for twenty 10kg mesh bags of number 5-7 red onions
including shipping costs to Malaysia.
Once we’ve obtained this quote we can contact the interested Buyer and give them the quote.
But remember if you’re Matching Buyers and Sellers you will need to make a reasonable profit.
When you send a quote to the Buyer our suggestion would be to add 15% to the quote. This 15%
charge will be your profit.
When the Buyer agrees to purchase the product (in this case red onions) they will send you from
one third to one half of the purchase price. You will need to send this same amount to the Seller.
After the product has been shipped by the Seller and received by the Buyer the remaining funds
will be sent to you (typically by wire transfer).
You will in turn send the remaining balance due to the Seller (less your 15% markup/profit margin).
That’s it!
In this case let’s say the quote that you received from the Seller was $75 for each 10kg mesh bag
of red onions (this includes shipping to Malaysia).
The Buyer has requested 100 bags, so 100 bags x $75 each = $7,500.
But that’s not the quote you’ll send to the Buyer — when you send a quote to the Buyer you will
need to include a 15% profit margin on the total order.
To calculate your profit margin, multiply the Seller’s price x your percentage profit margin:
$7,500 x 15% = $1,125 (your profit margin).
The quote that you send to the Buyer will be $7,500 + $1,125 = $8,625.
When this deal is completed you will have made $1,125.
The only things that are involved with matching a Buyer and Seller on Alibaba.com, are sending a
couple of emails (or making a couple of phone calls), overseeing the shipment, and collecting $1,125
for your efforts.
Importing Products for the Wholesale Market
Importing products for the wholesale market is quite simple, too.
We’ll need to identify which products have the greatest demand.
In Chapter 10 we discussed ways of identifying some of the products that have a strong demand.
But let’s use 100% cotton t-shirts for illustration purposes (there are actually thousands of
products that could be used).
How many stores, shops and retailers sell 100% cotton t-shirts in the U.S.? Canada? Australia?
U.K.? Middle East? Africa?
We think it’s safe to say that hundreds of thousands of stores sell 100% cotton t-shirts!
Let’s identify and contact twelve stores to see if they would be open to receiving a price list from
you for 100% cotton t-shirts.
Most of the largest retail stores have already established relationships and/or own the factories
overseas that produce 100% cotton t-shirts.
So let’s focus on five medium-sized clothing retailers for this illustration.
We provided a link to RetailNet http://www.retailnet.com let’s go there now.
On the left hand side of the homepage you will see a category entitled Apparel — click it.
We’re going to scour the headlines and/or databases to identify five medium-sized apparel retailers.
The following five companies work fine for this example:
Stein Mart Inc.
1200 Riverplace Boulevard
Jacksonville, FL 32207
Phone: 904-346-1500
Fax: 904-398-4341
Web Site: http://www.steinmart.com
Bebe Stores, Inc.
400 Valley Drive
Brisbane, CA 94005
Phone: 415-715-3900
Fax: 415-715-3939
Web Site: http://www.bebe.com
Finish Line Inc.
3308 North Mitthoeffer Road
Indianapolis, IN 46235
Phone: 317-899-1022
Fax: 317-899-0237
Web Site: http://www.thefinishline.com
Gymboree Corp.
500 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Phone: 415-278-7000
Fax: 650-579-1733
Web Site: http://www.gymboree.com
Charlotte Russe Holding Inc.
4645 Morena Boulevard
San Diego, CA 92117
Phone: 858-587-1500
Fax: 858-587-4902
Web Site: http://www.charlotte-russe.com
The next step is to identify the purchasing manager or apparel buyer at each of the five
companies listed above. You can do this by going to their website, clicking About Us or Company
Profile — and digging. If you can’t find a specific contact then just call or email the company for his or
her contact information.
Once you have obtained the appropriate buyer contact ask them if they would be open to receiving
a wholesale price list from you. You can mention that you are an importer of 100% cotton t-shirts.
If you are unsuccessful with these companies continue identifying and contacting other
apparel retailers.
You WILL find someone that is willing to look at your wholesale price list!
What’s more, these five companies may be medium-sized retailers but they are still very large.
You can contact much smaller retailers in local areas, too — try search on Google Local for an
apparel retailer in a city of your choice!
The next step is to locate a company that manufactures, sells and is able to export 100%
cotton t-shirts.
Again we go to Alibaba.com.
Search for “cotton t-shirts” on the Alibaba.com main page.
You will find hundreds of companies that manufacture, sell and are able to export 100%
cotton t-shirts.
Simply identify twelve of the most promising companies — click on their listing — and click on
the Inquire Now button. Ask them to send you a quote for 5,000 100% cotton shirts in various sizes
and colors.
When the retailers that you have contacted respond in the affirmative and want to see a
wholesale price list you can send them one.
Important Note: When you are sending a wholesale price list to retailers it needs to look similar
to the ones they receive from hundreds of wholesalers. When you inquire for a price quote from the
exporting companies ask them to send you a wholesale price list for t-shirts. You will use this
wholesale price list as a “template” to design your own (with your name at the top, etc.). In addition,
you will need to include a 10-15% profit margin (or more) on the items. This is how you make
moneyexporting
products for retailers.
Let’s see how the profit calculations work when importing products for the wholesale market.
Finish Line Inc. agrees to purchase 15,000 100% cotton t-shirts from your company at $1.95 each
plus shipping ($4,200) for a total of $33,450. This amount includes all taxes, fees and insurance.
ABC Export Company in China agrees to export 15,000 100% cotton t-shirts to your client (Finish
Line Inc.) for $1.25 each plus shipping ($4,200) for a total of $22,950.
Your profit when this deal is completed would be $10,500!
You can see why so many entrepreneurs get hooked on importing products for the
wholesale market.
What’s more, there are tens of thousands of items and products waiting to be imported and sold
to the wholesale or retail market.
Exporting Products to Overseas Buyers
Exporting products to overseas buyers is quite simple and can be a lot of fun, too.
Thousands of companies in practically every country of the world need to import products
because they lack the resources in their own country.
For example, China is one of the largest importers of agriculture products in the world and the
trend continues to rise! They have an insatiable demand for hundreds of different products including
corn, wheat, soybeans, oats, vegetable oil, foodstuffs, coffee, tea, sugar, orange juice, rye, barley and
many more.
Granted, most of the billion dollar deals and shipments are handled by multi-national
corporations like ADM, Cargill and Dupont.
But there are still unlimited opportunities for small to medium-sized exporters.
For example, on Alibaba.com on any given day you will find hundreds, and in some cases
thousands of Buying Leads from people and companies that are looking to import products from the
U.S., Canada, Mexico and the U.K., etc.
For instance, this morning a Buyer from Portugal is looking for 4 metric tons of canola oil per month.
You can search Alibaba.com to see if you can match this Buyer with a Seller (as we mentioned earlier).
But another way to approach this is to find a company that produces canola oil and is able to
export it to Portugal.
You see there are thousands of companies that produce and manufacture and export products
that are totally unaware of sites like Alibaba.com.
Alibaba.com can be your secret resource.
You simply identify companies that need products now (Buyers) and then locate companies that
produce, manufacture and can export those products.
It’s fun!
How to Find Companies that Produce,
Manufacture and Export Products to Overseas Markets
There are many ways to find this information, but the search engine Google is a pretty good place
to start.
Let’s find a company that produces, manufactures and is able to export canola oil to this Buyer
in Portugal.
Go to Google http://www.google.com
Enter these words in the search box: we produce canola oil
Our first search returned results on a company in Canada that produces and exports canola oil.
There were hundreds of other search result pages but this one sounds the most promising.
Upon further investigation we find that this company is willing and able to export canola oil to
Portugal. Although they have never shipped canola oil specifically to Portugal – they have exported
product to Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
So this company appears to be a good fit.
All you need to do is contact this company with your prospective buyers specifications and ask
for a quote. Oftentimes the companies will want to talk to you by phone — and remember you have
an international exporting company.
As we’ve said, deals like this are plentiful!
Importing Products for Resale on the Internet
This is perhaps the most exciting aspect of an import/export business because of the profit
potential. But it’s also a quick and easy way to get into this business!
The objective is to import products as inexpensively as possible and resell them on the Internet
with an online store.
The trick is to identifying the hottest markets and trends so you don’t have to carry a large inventory.
For example, let’s import sunglasses as inexpensively as possible and sell them on the Internet.
What’s more, we need to get a website up and running, and be able to accept credit cards as
quickly as possible. One of the best ways to do this is with “instant storefronts” like the ones we
suggested in Chapter 9.
For this illustration let’s use an eBay storefront and/or auction because it receives monster
targeted traffic, and you can set up a store in just a few minutes.
In time you might want to secure your own domain names and implement your own ecommerce
applications (like those we mentioned) so as to maximize profits!
You can open an eBay Store in about 20 minutes and the pricing starts at about $15.95 month:
http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/seller-landing.html
It is highly recommended that you spend a few minutes reading the tutorials because you’ll learn
everything you need to know about eBay Stores, policies, procedures and best of all — additional
marketing and promotion ideas.
Okay — we’ve opened our storefront and we’re going to focus on sunglasses because it’s a fairly
hot item and because we can import them inexpensively (as you will see).
The next step is to locate a company that can export sunglasses as inexpensively as possible.
We go to Alibaba.com once again to find sunglasses manufacturers.
Important note: There may be companies in your country that manufacture products like this
but generally speaking the least expensive products are typically found in Asia, India, Pakistan, South
America and Mexico).
Enter “sunglasses” in the search box at the top of the page (in the Selling Leads category). You will
find more than 712 Selling Leads in this category!
Let’s choose the first company (they are also a TrustPass Member which enhances the credibility).
Upon further investigation we find that this company is located in China (no surprise there) and
is extremely competent when it comes to exporting their products anywhere in the world.
We also learn they ship most of the product line in cases of 300.
Most of the time you will find that exporting companies have minimum order requirements.
That’s okay — because when you are first starting out in your import/export business you will only be
placing minimum orders — because you don’t want to maintain large inventories.
The cost for a minimum order of 300 assorted sunglasses is approximately $285 (or $.95 each)
plus shipping of $75. The total cost for this order is $360.
Here’s the exciting part!
Let’s go back to the eBay main page and search for sunglasses. The prices and styles vary a great
deal but sunglasses sell for $6.95 to $150 each.
We’ll need to test different price points to see at which level we can move the greatest number.
But even if we sell them at the lowest price point of $6.95 each we’ll make a significant profit.
If the total sunglasses order from China is $360, that means that we’re paying about $1.20 each
($360 divided by 300 = $1.20).
In this scenario we generated a profit of more than 550%!!!
Sunglasses are only the tip of the iceberg!
There are literally thousands of products in hundreds of categories that you can import very
inexpensively and resell them on the Internet for mind-boggling profits!
NOW is the time to make it happen.
Take action today.
Discover the hottest products on the Internet — import them as inexpensively as possible and
resell them for big profits. What’s more, we only used eBay in this example!
There are dozens of high traffic sites, marketplaces, online classifieds and storefronts that you
can utilize to sell imported products for major profits!