AMA Round Table With Max Anujorbhand From Amazon Global Selling Thailand

Joining us today is Max from the Amazon Global Selling team in Bangkok, Thailand. Max, a key member of our community, recently shared his expertise at one of our Chiang Mai ecommerce meetups. For event details, visit events.globalfromasia.com. Plus, catch Max speaking at our Cross Border Summit on Nov 16-17.

Thanks for tuning in! We hope Max’s insights inspire your ecommerce ventures. Don’t miss our Cross Border Summit on Nov 16-17 for more industry wisdom. Your ecommerce success journey begins here at Global From Asia!

√ Max’s VIP Page
√ Cross Border Summit November 16-17, 2023
√ Visit our GFA partner –  Mercury  – for US banking solutons for your ecommerce businesss
√ Visit our GFA partner –  Casia Cross Better Logistics  – for your logistics needs

Thank you, Max, for sharing your invaluable insights with us today. To our fantastic audience, your continued support fuels our passion for bringing you top-notch content.

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[00:00:00] Episode 4. Global from Asia. I am in Copenhagen Airport. This week’s show, we actually have Amazon, Global Selling, Business Development, Guru, and friend Max here sharing at a meetup we did in Chiang Mai, Thailand. So let’s tune in. Welcome to the Global From Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice.

And now [00:00:30] your host, Michael Michelini. Thank you so much for choosing to listen to, or watch maybe our Global From Asia podcast. This one I think is pretty amazing. We have the global selling team. This dev guy. Max he’ll also be at cross border summit. Give it a little speech and networking with sellers there So I’m super excited for that and I am still here [00:01:00] in Copenhagen Airport I’m gonna have to go through Copenhagen Prague, Vienna, Bangkok and then Chiang Mai for the next 28 hours or so Anyways, let’s tune into the show and then after the show I’ll talk about some Some of my experience with, with Max and Amazon Thailand team, as well as some hints of what to expect for cross border summit.

Let’s tune in. All right. We have Tommy, the sales manager at cross better logistics. How are you Tommy? Hi. [00:01:30] And I, we just got to meet here in Shenzhen, China. It’s great. They support the show at global from Asia and we also use them ourselves for many of our brands and e commerce businesses. And Tommy really cares.

They always are try to help us save money. You know, not, you have some products you keep for us in China, you have some products you keep for us in the U. S. warehouse, and I really appreciate that. And you’ll, you can talk to the seller, right, you can give them your advice. You work with many Chinese sellers a [00:02:00] lot, right, and you can help help the sellers understand more.

Yeah, we are very professional for the shipment to U. S. A. and Canada. Also, we have warehouse in U. S. A. and Canada. We can have our factory suppliers sell us for the shipment, for the e commerce business. Yep, and you even keep stuff in China too. So sometimes if you have the limitations of sending too much to Amazon, you can keep it here in [00:02:30] China with CrossBetter or you can send it of course to the U.

1. warehouse. They have many different options and they’re always trying their best to find find out what’s the best solution for you. So… Definitely talk to Tommy, talk to Crossbetter, and thank you for your support of the community. Yeah, so we have good pricing and better service. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining our Chiang Mai e commerce meetup. We have a special guest, Vax, here from Amazon Global [00:03:00] Selling Team in Thailand, right? Is that Global Selling Team? Yeah. Amazon Global Selling Thailand. Which is… The role is to, so global selling is basically to help find more, or just encourage to onboard sellers and, and and to support sellers.

Is that? Yeah, absolutely. So the team in Thailand, our main priority is to help Thai businesses or anyone who’s based in Thailand that you don’t have to be a [00:03:30] Thai nationality. But if you’re based in Thailand and you want to sell. Cross border e commerce to Amazon. com in the U. S. And the team here in Thailand is here to hopefully help you and make your journey a bit less painful.

Because selling on Amazon, you know, it’s it’s not hard, but it’s, at the same time, it’s not, it’s not a piece of cake either. As I’m sure most of you are aware. So yeah, the team in Thailand is is here to help everyone on that. And you know, we do have a few different teams in Thailand. We have…

One who’s looking after marketing, one who’s looking [00:04:00] after the sellers themselves. So, you know, if you’ve been selling for quite a number of years, then you probably have an account manager helping you out. But I’m from the business development team. And what my team does basically we find new sellers.

We recruit partners to help our seller journey a bit easier. So let’s say you got a ship from Thailand to the U. S., but, you know, shipping is so expensive, then… You can let me know and we’ll find more shipping partners who can give you more affordable prices. And [00:04:30] I guess the other thing that what I personally like to do is to actually listen to the seller’s complaints.

Because that’s the only way we can really improve and you know, fix different issues better. So, today, please, if you have any questions or any pressing concerns, anything you want to… Shout about regarding your Amazon selling journey. You know, I’m all ears. Great. Think of me as a friend, not as someone who’s from Amazon Yeah, thanks Max.

Yeah, Max is I’ve got a [00:05:00] pleasure to to to get to know you over over time here And yeah, he keeps you you’re a seller. You’ve been a seller yourself, right? Yeah, I have I have so I When I first started working for Amazon, you know, I I felt like I didn’t speak the same language as a seller Because I have no selling experience at all.

So I actually started a few of my own Amazon brands. And, you know, it’s not something that’s forbidden. It’s something that the company actually encourages, so you understand the selling journey better. And I’ve [00:05:30] started, I think, three, three brands. Cool. And I’ve lost 700K. Yeah. Type I, in total. I lost.

I lost. I lost. I lost money. But don’t they preference, you don’t get like, special treatment as an employee? No, no, no, no. We don’t. Nothing, so we start from zero like everyone else. But in terms of like, having access, finding like the right shipping partner. [00:06:00] Finding, you know, the best person to take photographs of your listing.

Of course I know that, right? But even with access to that, you know, I still lost 700K of my own money. That I cannot reimburse from Amazon. So, you know, I… We’re in the same boat. You know, I’ve… I’ve gone through all the pain of having your inventory stuck at FBA. Suddenly having your ace in yanks. Having your account banned, you know, I’ve gone through all that already.

So I, I know how it feels. Yeah, we, we [00:06:30] were… My last part for that, I had two questions, but my last… It’s kind of a funny part, but you also have to go through seller support. He still has to go through seller support. He was telling me he had an account problem. And even he works inside Amazon in business development of global selling, he has to contact through online, through the normal channel.

So he’s been through all the same pain that most sellers have been. I have to do my own identity verification when I [00:07:00] open the account. You know, I have to show, I work for Amazon, you really don’t know me. But yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, so let’s open the floor for questions. Annie, I think has one to

start. I would Like, obviously that’s valuable information, so we don’t know. Yeah, how did you lose 700k? So the, so I tried a few different ways, because on, when you’re selling on Amazon, you can, You can become a brand owner, you can do private [00:07:30] labeling, or you can do asyn matching and become a reseller, right?

So, of course, I, I tried the hardest way first, which is building my own brand. So I did some research on Jungle Scout, and for some reason I, I was convinced that the next product, the next big hit would be traveling coffee drip bags. Yeah, so let’s say you, you like fresh coffee, right? But you don’t wanna, you know, you wanna go camping or you’re traveling out of town.

Okay, so yeah, I, I came [00:08:00] across that product. And you know, coffee is actually something that’s grown a lot here in, in northern region of Thailand, so I can source it quite not too expensive. So, my price was right. But then, I think the first mistake I did was… I maximize the MOQ with the manufacturer.

So, the first shipment, my only thought was maximizing profit, not about like, getting reviews, getting ratings, but I wanted to make sure every unit I sold, I made as much profit as possible. [00:08:30] So I maximized the coffee order shipment, I maximized the boxes, and I ended up sending in like 300 kilos worth of coffee drip bags.

I think that alone is 300k, 400k. So that’s how I lost a lot of the money. And you know, I didn’t allocate enough funds for advertising. Which was probably a really stupid idea because, you know, you don’t advertise nobody’s gonna buy your product, but I did make some sales [00:09:00] I sold to my mom Sold to my dad, my auntie, my uncle, my sister.

Yeah Basically as I, please just buy one product But, you know, the good thing is my, my mom now she lives in Connecticut. She has, I think, three years supply of coffee. So, yeah, I ended up being a good son. But, yeah, that’s, that’s how I lost the bulk of the money from, from the first business. And then the other [00:09:30] one that I did after coffee was actually jewelry.

Yeah, so like handmade jewelry, that kind of stuff. But, you know, I… Like, if you look at me, I don’t look like a guy who knows a lot about jewelry. Right, so I, I didn’t know how to pick the right products. I didn’t know, like, how to, like, get the best content across. So, you know, it’s something that’s so far removed from me.

And then, for the third business idea, I tried matching ASINs, reselling. Yeah, and then I got kicked out by the brand owner. Yeah. [00:10:00] So some lessons, I guess, that I can pull from that is… But I maybe ordered too many coffee was the first time. Yeah, I think, I think maybe too much inventory. I think it was focused on the wrong thing.

I think when I first started off, I, all I wanted to do was to make sure every unit I sold was profitable. When, you know, if I, you know, if I had perfect vision, in hindsight, I would probably be focused more on like brand building awareness and just getting more eyeballs on the [00:10:30] product as opposed to just thinking about, you know, I sell this, I make X amount.

Yeah. Did you sorry, did you do like an inventory calculation so you could adjust how much you would buy over a period of time? You just went for it? I just went for it. So you didn’t even know how much supply you were buying? Nah. Nah. Yeah. Just like, so, the, the manufacturers said they wanted like 2, 000 coffee drip bags for me to get the lowest prices.

And I said, okay, sure. I want the lowest price as well, you know, it’s, [00:11:00] you know. Go ahead, go ahead. And do you, like, support only Amazon. com sellers or also EU and UK and other marketplaces, Japan? So that’s a, that’s a very good question. There’s been some changes in the past. So, at one point we supported EU, right, but at the moment we only support com, the US.

[00:11:30] I don’t sell Europe, I did maybe a long time ago, not in Amazon, but like just normal B2C. But yeah, Europe is very complex. But I think that’s also an opportunity, right? Some of my friends only focus on Europe and they make good money because they know how to sell there. But it’s like a skill in itself, just selling in Europe.

We went to the UK and the EU first and then we went to the US, but we did it kind of, and Japan as well. And then we went to the US in the end. But I [00:12:00] mean, just, just speaking personally, you know, not, this has no like, you know, no, no reflection on Amazon. If you’re asking me, I mean if you look at the average Thai seller it’s significantly different from this bunch, right?

So if we were to ask them to focus on US, EU, UK at the same time, it would probably be too much of an ask. Yeah. So, you know, just direct the attention on the biggest market, which is [00:12:30] us first, but then again particularly Middle East Australia, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve had a lot of interest from sellers, but at the moment we, we can’t support it.

Okay. What’s the language, sorry. No, go ahead. I’m just trying to, I’m looking for questions if, go ahead. What’s the language they use in EU platform? Depends on the country. If it’s UK and pretty similar to the US I mean, you need to. Localized, certain keywords like pajamas and onesies, that, you know, that kind of stuff.

So, [00:13:00] there’s actually different URLs? I think there’s lots of languages in, 13, I think, maybe? How do you categorize, like, EU and US? If every country has their own URL of Amazon? So, it’s basically Amazon US, and then, initially it was Amazon US and Amazon Europe, and then Brexit happened, right? So, it’s Amazon UK and continental Europe.

When you move across the pond to continental Europe, it’s essentially setting up new businesses in those [00:13:30] countries. Right, but, so, for different languages, what you’re saying is the EU platform actually has multiple languages. Yeah. But it’s not multiple sites. Multiple sites. There’s amazon. de, amazon.

dakota. uk, all of them. But the way it works is there’s seller central, seller central and then there’s the customer side. There’s the customer side and there’s the seller side. Seller side is seller central. Customer side is… It’s co. co. uk. e. [00:14:00] all of them. But then you actually have to apply to, it’s like KYC they call it, you gotta apply your tax, your VAT, and that’s, I think every, I don’t even know anymore, she might know better.

You can join PAN European, which makes like, you need to be maybe invited, now I’m not sure. But with taxing, like, you need to come to the EU to, like, maybe… The v a t stuff. ’cause you’re, you’re, [00:14:30] you’re importing the product in and when you import, you’ll pay v a t and then Amazon like yourself to pay the v a t on the product when you sell it.

And they should actually counteract and you have to get all the documents and you need someone to do that unless you want to do it. So the way I look at it though is it’s not really Amazon’s policy, it’s those government’s policies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, whether. Okay. Go ahead. I mean, I think if Amazon had to choose, they would, they would just want to make as much money as [00:15:00] possible.

They don’t really, I mean, I’m not saying them specifically, but any marketplace just wants to sell, right? They don’t want to do KYC and tax. They just, but they think they have to just stay in compliance with that country and not get banned. But they don’t, they don’t pay the tax, the seller does, and that’s what’s, you know, smart in one way, but unfortunate for the seller, because Amazon says you’re selling it, not me, so you have to pay the 23 percent VAT to the U.

S., There’s hardly [00:15:30] any import tax or v a T and stuff, but in, in the eu you’re looking at like a 20% average. So everything, yeah. So you need accounts for that to make sure you don’t, we just have to register for the packaging for Germany. Not, not round, because we do Germany on com. Mm-hmm. , we just had to register for packaging.

Before we can send the stuff off. So you have to register for the packaging and how much packaging you’re going to use that year. And then you pay that. Oh, that’s the [00:16:00] sustainability, like the carbon footprint stuff, yeah. Yeah, and they’re really, like, crazy. But I had a really good order, so I can test this stuff.

I blanked out Germany on, on all my stuff, yeah, because it’s a real pain in the arse. But on Etsy, I just got this, he tried to buy it on my website, which has blanked out Germany, but I hadn’t blanked it out on Etsy. So Etsy took the sale, and it was too, too good a sale, so I had to register for the, for the packaging.

So I’ve got it now, but, [00:16:30] how much cardboard are you going to use? How much plastic are you going to use? And then have an agent for it as well, so you have to have the agent, so you have six of that agent, and then and then you have to pay your, your upfront, and give your code number, and that has to go with the envelope that you send the stuff with, painful. My husband’s German, so I know all about that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, back to Thailand. So you said earlier, of course there’s, we welcome Thai, there’s some Thai sellers here, we more than [00:17:00] welcome Thai sellers to our events, to the community. community, but maybe it’s the language barrier or other reasons they’re not so active in this meetup.

But you, you support seller, but do they have to have a Thai company, a Thai seller account? What, what, what are some things that you would need to be under your… If the proprietor is based in Thailand, then we can definitely support. We have a lot of the expat community selling on Amazon and being based in Thailand [00:17:30] anyways.

So we have a big community in Chiang Mai, of course, and a similarly large one in Phuket. Interesting. Yeah. So if you’re physically here, then, you know,

we can help you. How do you prove you’re physically here? Meet Max. Yeah. Like you provide your… Bills or something like, yeah, like apartment rental agreement, some stuff like that. So it doesn’t have to have a company. You can visit this as an individual or, or as a company when you open your account, I think.

How do you get paid now? Well, I think, [00:18:00] hmm, pay there, but pay now once, once. Thank you one of those. They’ve got a company account for that. You have to have a company now on paypal. You do as well. If you want to try, you have to have it. They won’t take you on without it. You can only set up. We lost our paypal account for 12 months, nearly.

We couldn’t sell anything for 12 months. Unless you have a paypal account in America or something like that. But the Thai government, you have to register your [00:18:30] company with paypal just to get the paypal. I didn’t know Paypal still existed. Yeah, there are. It’s called Paypal Thailand now. I thought they just recently introduced it back in Thailand or something.

Yeah, there’s a new Paypal Thailand. I haven’t seen it yet. There’s a new Paypal Thailand, but you can only, you can’t, you can’t, if you’re, if you nick a tie, open a Paypal account. You can’t. You have to have a company, you know, to open up a Paypal account. So for the, for 12 months up until… A couple of months of this year, [00:19:00] the last 12 months, we weren’t able to take any money off our website.

Everybody just went dead. Etsy went dead. Everything. We couldn’t, we couldn’t sell anything. Yeah, it was a big problem. It cost us a fortune. So I, I think, I think there’s two parts to this. I think like I, I’m a seller, most of my sellers, I have a few seller accounts I mentioned last week. Through different businesses and partnerships.

One is a Thailand company with a Thailand seller account, but others are U. S. companies with U. S. seller accounts. But Max says he [00:19:30] can still help me because I’m here, even though I have a U. S. seller account. So I think there’s the support from global selling, and then there’s actually, like you said, the corporate, the tax.

I think what Max says is if you’re here, you can get their support. Hmm. It’s a bit different. I was talking about getting, yeah, so there’s two different, sell something, but you can’t get paid. It’s no good small type business. Go and get their money out. PayPal at the moment, having to wait like seven, eight weeks before they get their money.

I understand. [00:20:00] I, I’m not too sure about PayPal because I don’t think you can receive. Your funds from Amazon through PayPal, anyways. But through, through Payoneer. I think you can use just an ID card. You don’t need to register a company. I mean… There was, there’s one woman here that comes that she has an individual, she’s not a Thai.

But that was earlier. Be changing, but I guess I could actually be the one that will pay any team and help you out with that. Because I mean, last I spoke with them, they[00:20:30]

Yeah, I’ll give them a call because last I spoke with them, they didn’t require like a Company Registration.

You can get a tax ID here as an individual, even as a non Thai, you can get a tax ID in Thailand.

I’m not, I, I agree with you, I recommend using a company for, for For, you know, Linz and everyone. I, I would [00:21:00] not recommend doing it as individual anyways. I use companies to sell online, so I would not recommend it, even if it… Again, I wouldn’t open a company here. I’d open it in Delaware or somewhere like that.

Yes, that’s what I’d do. I’ve got one in the UK which I was going to flip it to. So I’m going to flip the whole company over to the UK. It’s all set up and running. Yeah, I remember that. But, but, so much shit I’ve But the main point I think is I want to highlight is you can get the global selling support Even if you don’t have a Thai seller account and you’re selling with the [00:21:30] US account or other countries But if you’re like located here, I think you could talk to Max to get some support On that note, can you have a company like selling through a company But receive the funding in your personal bank account through Amazon?

I wouldn’t, well, I’ll let him answer that, but. Usually it has to match, usually the name, they’re very strict about the name of the bank matching the company, the matching. They’ve been up, [00:22:00] they keep increasing the, they increase it, they call it the Informact now, they say it’s a US government thing, I N F O R M.

You can’t mix, if you’re a company, a business account, your bank needs to match the name. You can’t criss cross. It’s getting more and more strict. Once we had like, we’re called Be Conscious, and there was like a space between. Yeah. I had a comma once. And it was like, they shut us down. Yeah. I love Amazon.

Yeah, you gotta, [00:22:30] I had to ask my bank, cause I had You know, in the U. S. it says ink, but I sometimes put comma ink, so I say company name, comma ink. Yeah, not going to work. And then sometimes I don’t put comma ink, I just put the company name ink. And it didn’t match the bank statements and like the seller account.

And then, yeah. One thing you’ve got to do here. If you have a company here, and anyone wants your paperwork for your company, yeah, you’ve got to go all the way, every three months, you’ve got to go up to where your [00:23:00] company is registered in Chiang Mai, and get all the paperwork again, every three months, just to get a bank statement or anything.

It’s crazy, the paperwork. Yeah, so Ian, Ian, so you sell through a… Thai seller account, right? And your deal? I think it, I won’t put you on the spot, but I think you are using a Thailand company. Anything you do here, you’ve got to come here. Like, you have to have, you know, all the paper. I mean, so every couple of years they’ll ask [00:23:30] you for it all again.

So you have to go through it all again. If you slip through the net, you’re getting your money through. Because we had the old paper for quite a long time. And then they switched to Thailand. But we carried on for about a month or so. Okay. Thanks Ian. So anybody, I saw some people squeezing their hands up.

Yeah, Eric. A simple question which maybe is not even relevant, but last night I got a phone call from some guy. And he clearly is [00:24:00] from the United States, you know, he just told me he’s from the U. S. And he says You just got those, whatever I sell. I said, yeah. He says, I want to buy some. I said, okay, great.

I’ll just go to Amazon and buy them. I don’t want to buy them from Amazon. So I said, well it’s really better if you buy them from Amazon. But then I thought if I if he, he, if he paid me through my PayPal account, and I did a removal order from [00:24:30] Amazon and just mailed it to him. It doesn’t need to be a removal order, you can do a Amazon self fulfilled.

I mean, I forgot the, you can just ship it to him, you don’t got to do a removal. Really? Yeah, you can sell on multiple channels. You just pick up the items that you want to send. Go to the left hand corner, you got a drop down, click that down. It will say replace stock. Yeah, so, some people sell on Walmart or other channels.

I think it’s [00:25:00] MCF, I forget the name. Yeah, definitely. And you can… By the Prime. Yeah. How much does Amazon charge? There’s a few fees, you know, there’s a lot of fees. Actually, it costs more than selling it on FBA. Yeah, it does. I compared it. It was before, but now it’s just cheaper. Yeah. It’s very expensive and then we have a three, we have another, because we have a website and we have Amazon.

So we have a 3PO that sells our e commerce or our wholesale. And the price of shipping has gone up [00:25:30] considerably in the U. S. So is your 3PO less expensive than using Amazon to fill? Well, I’ve never actually, this is something that I’m about to do is look into the fulfillment service from Amazon. So I’d like to know where you can find that information and how, how does that work?

I, I’m blessed with a good team. So they, they did the math for me. Pull it up. But I think you could I don’t know if it’s in the [00:26:00] calculator, but there’s some way they give you the breakdown of the fees. Maybe Ian knows. Our item was, say it was sold, it was 9. Yeah, they would take that. And that was made up of shipping and 3 something.

Pick and pack and stuff. It was about 6 for shipping and 3 for Amazon’s commission. I’ve recently done two. In New York, since you asked me New York or California or New York. [00:26:30] Both of them, I did expedited, would normally be six, six dollars to nine. It was actually more money. Yeah, it cost more. They were actually charging, they sold it, shipped it.

Yeah, like so one of my products is a glass rimmer. So it’s like for people making margaritas and they they can put the lime juice in one circle and the other circle you put like salt or sugar. Yeah, it’s made in Thailand and I sell it. And to, we actually are approved on Amazon, I mean on Walmart.[00:27:00]

And we were thinking to use Amazon’s shipping to sell on Walmart. Because you can also take off the Amazon logo on the box. When you do this merchant fulfilled. You can take off. And can they do plastic free as well you think? That one I’m not sure about. But all I remember was it cost me like six or seven dollars to do a fulfillment of that glass rumor on Amazon for a customer.

It was like nine or ten if I sold it on Walmart and used the shipping and fulfillment from. Can you, if you use Walmart, can you, if [00:27:30] you sell at Walmart now, can you, can you Yeah I told, I talked to Walmart If you started they wouldn’t have to I know they hate, well of course they’re competitors and they hated it They’re like, if you use, Amazon will ban you But I think maybe it’s because also Amazon allows you to do it without their logo Cause I think Walmart doesn’t want the customer to get an Amazon package So I don’t know if maybe they even worked out between Walmart and Amazon Sometimes you can do plain packaging Yeah you can opt in for that But not always, sometimes It doesn’t allow me to do it.

[00:28:00] So, basically, my team, I let, you know, I’m happy, Christian, maybe they’re watching this, but I said, let’s just do it to see if it works, and even if we lose money on the order, because we’ll lose money. We can then figure it out, but they’re like, they don’t want to lose money. So we’re not selling on Walmart right now until we figure that out.

Cause it’s like 9 or 10 to sell it on, for shipping and handling. From Amazon’s warehouse for the Walmart. now. I’ll send it with PP shipping [00:28:30] now.

What is P. P. Shipping? is a company in Bangkok. They’re really good. P. P. Shipping? Yeah. You can ship up to just under a kilo. And they’re really fast. What you do, you send it to Bangkok with Flash or one of the others. Yeah. They do three flights a week. One on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Friday.

They send that with DHL straight to the States, I mean it might go to Hong Kong first and flip over to, it goes to one place in the States, but you get your [00:29:00] tracking within an hour of putting it on the site. So you go on to PP Shipping, yes? You put your, you put who it’s going to, what it is, the weight, you weigh it, yeah?

And then you, then… Send it, put it, package it all up and put it in a little, you know, one of the plastic things. What he was shipping on. Send it out to Bangkok. That gets there hopefully the next day. So you can catch the next flight. Yeah? Then they put it on that flight, go straight to the States. And then, but you’ve already got [00:29:30] the tracking number, and you’ve got the USPS tracking number.

Is that just one B2C package? Is that just one

order, or the And then they open it, off wherever it’s coming. Oh. So they put the invoice in as well. So each packaging has the invoice with it. So I’ve got no trouble with, you know, customs or anything like that. just to add. I haven’t lost one. And normally it takes 10 days to get there, 9 to 10 days. I’ve been there earlier than [00:30:00] that.

Do they go to Europe as well, or is it just the U. S.? Just the U. S., unfortunately. We use fast ship for Germany and places like that, because they’re quite good. Yeah, so another one to compare… I don’t use DHL anymore. Yeah, so some just do straight DHL. So I interviewed a… I mean, they’ve gone crazy. So I… We use FedEx.

They’re all my friends, so. Yeah. Farship are pretty good though. [00:30:30] They’ve got a mix of all of them. Faship. co. co I think is

the domain. So another one to add to your list is Unixpress. Also they’ve sponsored the cross border summit, which is great. And I’ll be interviewing them on Friday when I go to Bangkok. But they do something similar, I’m not familiar with PP. shipping, but what they, they started in China and what they, they’re expanding to Thailand and what they do is they get, they have their own airplanes or they have really good parades with the airplanes.

I [00:31:00] mean, PP Ship does the same. They consolidate yours with all of their other ones, it’s like one package, then they deliver to the US, then they open it, then they distribute it. It’s

like, yeah, they Yun, Y U N, like it’s Cloud and Chinese Express dot com. So it only goes to one, doesn’t go to New York or somewhere else, it just goes to one place. Yep. And then, and then they distribute it. The [00:31:30] beauty of it is though, you get your tracking number. Yeah, they give you like a EMS tracking or…

You put it on there, you go back on to people shipping’s website, yeah? And, and you’ve got your tracking number up. So if you’re doing, say say you’re doing Etsy, and you’ve got to have your tracking in by, within, like, two days, or a day, or whatever. You’ve got it, just put your tracking number… But how many days will that take?

Take then, for example, I think you said 10. Is it 10 days? It’s about 10 days. If you can get it, like it has to be if you, if you can get [00:32:00] it to PPP shipping by Saturday afternoon at five o’clock. Yeah, it’ll be on the Monday plain. Sorry, so you sent back a box full small boxes? Well, no, they do the, they do that.

I, I use, I use foil envelopes. They’re really nice, they’re quite bubble, they’re pink. And I just, I can put three or four of those together.[00:32:30]

You just send this pen into your package with the, with the address. They put it in a big package. And they save the money because they bundle it with all the other shipments that are custom. Can she send like four or five packages together in one head? Yeah, you could. Something like that to send it down to Bangkok.

Yeah, but you’d need it. You’d need it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you would need it. Each package has got a label. Yeah. You just put them together, put them in a package, [00:33:00] ship them down to Bangkok. Yep. They open them up. Yeah. And then all the labels are on there and that makes all the return labels up there on there.

Yep. So basically, like, do the separate fields like… Basically they’re saving money because they consolidate it. It’s a consolidation. They only treat the output from here. Yeah, they, they save money because they put it all on one plane. THL, HL, THL, yeah. And they didn’t help. If you use T posts about four weeks.

Yeah. No, that’s, it gets lost at the airport or something. That’s why I don’t use [00:33:30] them anymore. Don’t use typos, , and how much you spend like on your product life, right? But how much spending in shipping for, for America? I can send two items for 2 65.

Yeah, of course. Very good. But I use really good packaging now. I used bubble packaging comes from [00:34:00] China. It’s quite smart. You size penny on what? I’m sending this bubble and it’s spoiled finish and it’s really tough. Is so just to be clear, this is not really F b A, maybe you do FBM with this or you do FBM with that.

I, I used to go bm, but I mean, we have so much, we, we split from BM to F B A. Yeah. So F B A, you’d have to send it first to Amazon. They have to check it in, then they ship it. So this kind of, these kind of like shipping services is more like maybe [00:34:30] Shopify, maybe F B M, maybe. I don’t even know if they’d accept.

Could you do FBM from, from like Unixpress or people, can you do FBM from Thailand? Yeah, yeah, I think all the, all the carriers does it, FastChip also do. Oh, I think, yeah, I think I did talk to them. I think FBM, I think it’s just BP Sheffield. Yeah. I had a friend trying to do this and he said that he was getting quite many complaints that It’s too slow, right?

The shipping time was roughly like 10 business days, so Yeah, 10 days [00:35:00] If it’s just like before 2 weekends, so it can be like a 14 days kind of thing And Amazon customers, when they buy it from, they’re spoiled. Yeah. They complain about it like some express within three to five days, that’s fine. But the 10 days is, is a little bit two months.

Basically, I, the main rule is over communicate, don’t over under promise. Over deliver. So if it’s gonna take 10 days, say like 14 or 20 days, And try to be so clear, that it’s gonna, cause if they buy it and they think it’s three days, they get [00:35:30] upset. So you just, however you can, you gotta be really, really clear, it’s gonna take that long.

By shipping in December, they go through the letterbox, so they’re not sitting on the front floor. So they’re not gonna get stolen. Got it. So it’s much easier, they’ll just go through the letterbox. You know, tons of stuff’s getting stolen in America. Mm hmm. So, okay, so we got about ten minutes left. for this session.

I just think we can also talk to Max, Ian and others [00:36:00] in networking. So, so let’s do a couple more questions and then we’ll go into networking. So we have products, they come in like a beige, like a cardboard. We use natural cardboard, plastic free packaging. And at the moment. They have like barcodes for stores.

So we always have to put the 18 barcode like the, the Amazon barcode. We have to stick it on top, right? But then we’re thinking like some of our products sell so much on Amazon that we wanted to [00:36:30] get that code, that barcode printed on our packaging, but then the packaging is like carton and I’ve read somewhere that it has to be like white background for the barcode.

Otherwise they won’t accept it. Is that true? Yes. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t risk, so you’re basically trying to print a barcode directly onto the packaging. On our packaging. With a brown or… With a brown packaging. It’s like a beige. Beige. Beige, yeah. Like off… Is it like khaki? It’s just a matching [00:37:00] card. It’s like a recycled card in.

So, yeah. And we put barcodes on there. But if, so you’re saying don’t do it. I’m sticking to the white budget. I wouldn’t, yeah, I wouldn’t do it. Then I have another question. Good, no, I think it’s great. I believe there is somehow in Amazon there’s opportunities for small business or social enterprise where you get some kind of benefit.

Can you tell us about those benefits and how to apply for them? So I think the [00:37:30] one that would be most relevant for you is the Climate Pledge. I’m not sure whether you’ve heard of it. Yeah, but it’s essentially, do you have the climate badge now? Yeah, so, that’s I think that’s one of the most beneficial things for sustainable, you know, themed businesses, where it’s essentially you’re being like, incentivized to minimize the size of your packaging so you don’t, you know, so you reduce carbon footprint and stuff like that.

But what, what you get additionally. If you get a Climate [00:38:00] Pledge badge, it’s inclusion to Launchpad. Which I think you are already on, if I’m not wrong. Yeah. And you know, it’s supposed to give you a bit more traffic, a bit more visibility on the website. So if you’re already using Climate Pledge I think the other thing you can do is different affiliations.

So like, you know, women owned businesses, small medium businesses. But whether these badges, Effectively increase conversion is a different issue [00:38:30] because, you know, it’s almost like a stamp of approval that you can put on your listing saying that your company, you know, is so and so, but then it really depends on whether you’re driving your traffic to the right audience in the first place to see whether really those, you know, badges will help in the conversion.

But yeah, these are the programs that you can definitely join. And also Amazon Handmade. Yeah, that one will significantly reduce your FBA spend. But at the same time, you know, [00:39:00] there’s always like both sides of the scale. So if you go on Amazon Handmade, then the inherent traffic going to Amazon Handmade page, is less compared to Amazon.

com main website. So you kind of have to weigh the pros and cons to see whether you can test it out first, you know. If you get similar traffic, similar sales from Amazon Handmade and significant savings from your FBA fees, then of course, but you test it out and it’s not worth it, then probably no. Okay, one, [00:39:30] maybe one or two more questions, then we’ll wrap up the…

Can I ask about Singapore? Yeah! I haven’t, I’ve sort of signed up for it, but I haven’t finished signing up for it. What’s it like, trade wise? Singapore? Okay. Company, you mean? Selling on Amazon in Singapore, right? Yeah. Oh, he’s selling ins. Let’s clarify the questions. anybody, because I get people come through to my website from Singapore.

But I wondered what sort of traffic it gets, because we joined [00:40:00] Australia when they started. We ran it for about six months and pulled out in the end. I still got stock over there. Had to get it sent to a friend of mine. Oh, wow. But hopefully they’ll bring it back. I mean, I’m definitely not the expert, because my team, we only do Amazon.

com. But if you just look at the population, right? Yeah, it’s small. Yeah. But they got money. Yeah, they definitely got money. But Aussies don’t like Amazon. Yeah. I think he’s talking about Singapore, I think. Yeah, okay, Singapore. [00:40:30] So 340 million in the U. S. versus… 8 million in Singapore, and of that 8 million, your real target market, the expats, probably half.

So 4 million. So it’s essentially what, 90 times smaller? Yeah, 90, 80 times, 85 times smaller. Sixty percent of my market is Asian women anyway. They’re smaller, and I only do the smaller ones. So, because I specialize in that [00:41:00] side, you know, I have to look to where, I mean, Japan is what’s… I guess it’s about testing, or maybe trying to do a survey, trying to maybe do some market research there, to see if they’d buy it, you know.

One tricky thing to do is, is to do ads, and sell it, if you don’t have it, maybe not on Amazon itself. Or even try 3FPM on Singapore. I’m not saying add it on Amazon, you can do it on Facebook. See if it’s, see if, or, yeah, I guess your [00:41:30] category is difficult to launch, right? Anyways, anyway, the best way would be somehow do some market research or even keyword research if people are searching in Singapore on Amazon or other.

Just a quick one, because we’re talking about supermarkets. So, if I want to target, if I want to sell on Amazon and I want to target Singapore, I have to register as a Singaporean. Yeah, so you have to, you have to go amazon. sg and then sign up. So every time I launch a new market, I have to be registered to that particular [00:42:00] marketplace, correct.

Yep. Okay. I saw a very long time ago, when I was trying to register as a seller, there was an option where you can take like, I want to sell globally. You can but typically what happens is you finish the registration process for one country first. Yep. And then you can use a feature called Build International Listings.

Right. And then you can kind of expand internationally. But it doesn’t automatically just show your product. Exactly, exactly. On every site. Because different countries [00:42:30] got different regulations, right? So we can’t like copy and paste a single product over to other countries. Right. For example, if something is allowed for consumption in the U.

S., you might not be able to sell that in the U. K. I know if you’re selling like high fructose corn syrup in the US, they drink it like water over there. But UK you can’t. My stuff, I grew up in the States. I can say my stuff to sell, sorry, my stuffs to sell on Amazon and in Saudi Arabia, I, [00:43:00] I mean sometimes it defaults to selling it across.

I forget the programs. There’s so many programs in Amazon, but sometimes when you do a Amazon, US. There’s ways that they can make it available in other markets, but it’s still, you’re still selling as a U. S. based seller. It’s different than opening an account as a seller in those countries, but you can self cross border from the U.

S., but… Ah, yeah, that’s, that’s a different thing. That’s, I forgot the name of that, but whatever. That’s three different things, right? First, you can open [00:43:30] your Amazon store individually in each country. That’s the hardest, but also the best way in terms of like, driving your ads. It requires a lot of energy to maintain and…

Yeah. Or if you’re selling to a proximity country, let’s say, Minnesota, Canada, or Mexico. They can use, then you can use Pan America, FBA. Right. So you can just ship over there. Or you can make your product available for international shipment. Right. But then, but then, the person in Singapore who wants to buy your products gotta go [00:44:00] to amazon.

com in US. Yeah. And then put their Singapore address. Yeah. Yeah, so it’s easiest but the worst. Right. Right. Yeah. So it doesn’t really, like, there is no simple options, I guess, to list. Yeah. It’s brought up everywhere. So it’s actually, it’s back to your strategy, it’s back to your strategy. So some sellers, I think there’s three ways to grow as a, I guess not just Amazon seller, but any kind of a seller, but let’s say Amazon.

One way is you’re doing really well with this, selling this cup [00:44:30] on Amazon US. You could go, I guess, horizontal. Nick’s not here now. He, he’s been regular here. He specializes in taking one product and going to like every market of Amazon. That’s one way to grow, right? You go to Dubai, you go to Australia, you go to Europe.

That’s one way to go. The other way to grow is add products in the U. S. and just stay in the U. S. Right. Or variations. Or variations. Right. And then the other way is kind of similar, but, but trying to get people to, you know, buy [00:45:00] more or upsell, cross sell. It’s kind of similar to the second one, but usually it’s called vertical or horizontal.

It’s how I think, but like I did an interview with Nick on a show and he talked about, he called it horizontal. So he likes horizontal because he doesn’t want to keep making new products. He just kind of has to get good at logistics and all this paperwork in all these countries. Because you got to do VAT, you got to do…

Every country has different ways of doing it, and he kind of likes it. I, I am the [00:45:30] opposite, so I, I, I like to, I like to be creative. I like to make products. I keep making brands and products in the U. S. I only sell in the U. S. So it’s different ways. So if you sell the same products but different markets, aka different stores, right there is no consolidated, like, SKU management.

Okay, you have to manage every store separately. Yeah, basically, inventory is different, everything is different. You log into a different account. But if you choose Pan European, the EU is then consolidated. And you manage it from one [00:46:00] platform to EU or the US or Japan. So you have it all there and there are tools that will like, translate everything for you.

Right, right, right. You can actually do the EU kind of all together. It used to be UK too, but they’re on the out now. You can prop your curtains from wherever it’s manufactured to like, Czech Republic. Well, you know, importation is slightly friendlier than, you know, Germany. And then you can, you know, do inland [00:46:30] European transportation, put it in one of the European FBA centers and then sell it.

And thank you to our sponsor, our returning sponsor, mercury. com online bank. Well, it’s a real bank, but you can totally online for us. Our blimp program participants are going through this as well. Thank you. Mercury. Travis is great. There’s been on our shows, been in our events. We’re going to have another event where.

We will have them attending as well. And if you wanna get a little bonus for you and us, if you sign up and do some special circumstances, you can go to [00:47:00] global formation.com/mercury. I also have a video tutorial that we use even for the BLI people. I use the same exact video to learn how to use it. Oh, hope you can check it out.

Totally free. Why not you there? So thank you all for listening or watching this episode, 404 of Amazon, Thailand. We had fun. Max is so, he keeps it so real, you know, he’s so genuine it’s the good, the bad, the ugly. I really appreciate him sharing [00:47:30] with us. I’ve, you know, I’ve met a lot of their team in Bangkok, as well as in Chiang Mai with their conferences, also in Singapore.

They’re really helpful here, very supportive, also they’re going to be very supportive at the Cross Border Summit. They’ll Max will be sharing there, they’re going to have a few other reps there it’s a. Talk to you that are attending to help you. There are ways, I think he said in the recording as well, there are ways that you can get support here in Thailand even [00:48:00] if you’re not maybe a Thai person or Thai company.

Cool planes over here. So it’s just what it’s all about, you know, new border, open borders, new beginnings. And you know, I’ve been, I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with the connections I’ve made with Amazon here. Thailand and Singapore global selling team, so I hope to extend that over but Flight is preparing to [00:48:30] go so I’m going to keep this one shorter.

Thanks for watching. Have a great day To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website at www. globalfromasia. com. That’s www. globalfromasia. com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.