Optimizing Your Logistics From China (& New Business Deal) with Brian Miller & Justin Lin

In this episode, we explore the intricacies of optimizing logistics for exports from China, featuring our exciting new business venture with Easy China Warehouse (ECW). Join us as we discuss the benefits of this strategic partnership, opportunities for current and future customers, and practical tips for enhancing your supply chain. We’ll also share expert advice on keeping stock in China for on-demand needs and global shipments, with insights from industry leaders Brian and Justin.

√ Brian and I had a podcast here talking about the early stages of the business 
√ Shenzhen meetup where we recorded this – check photos here 
√ Easy China Warehouse
√ Early Stage of Hamza Marketplace

√ Visit our GFA partner – Mercury – for US banking solutons for your ecommerce businesss
√ Visit our GFA partner – Loadpipe – to leverage the power of web3 and the Loadpipe protocol and community to bring ecommerce on-chain.

Thank you Brian & Justin of Easy China Warehouse for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Hey everyone. It’s your host, your girl, Asha. Again, back to you. Welcome to another exciting episode of our podcast, which is episode 433. Stay tuned as we delve into content for today’s discussion. 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 your host, Michael Micheli. [00:00:30] Hello guys. So again, it’s me, Yasha, and I have Michael with me. So today we are going to talk about new things, new topic. Fresh. And today our topic would be optimizing your logistics from China. And mind you guys, this is a new business deal for GFA. Congratulations to.

Your comp. Our company. My company, our company. There you go. Our company to you for having this new business deal [00:01:00] and this business deal, this, this new business deal is actually for, for, for investing in easy China warehouse. Yeah. Now also. Yep. Mike was on a road in China, actually that was last April 30th, if I’m not mistaken.

Yes. May, May 30th. Yeah. Oh, sorry, sorry. May 30th. I’m flying here. Ty’s flying. My brain is mashed potatoes right now. I’m sorry. Okay. And now you are in Vietnam, right? Yeah. Ho Chi man here in Ho Chi Minh [00:01:30] just got in last night, so it’s been a Mm-Hmm. Whirlwind. Whirlwind trip for sure. And yeah, got to, but got to have some great meetups and masterminds while I was in Chien China.

Right. No live streaming, right? We didn’t get to live stream that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No guys, no live stream this time, but working on making sure next time. So we’ve invested in, in, in a new business here at GFA, which we will talk about on this show called Easy China Warehouse. [00:02:00] Yep. It’s super exciting. So yeah, we made a strategic investment recently into eating China Warehouse.

It’s a great company, actually. Brian Miller was the founder. We, he was even on our podcast in 2018 Mm-Hmm. About the story of how he got it going. And now we’ve we’ve gone all in and working with him and and some other partners there. Justin is general manager, CEO Mm-Hmm. So we, we are gonna share more.

Wow. Well, Mike, I, or not just me, for sure, but we would love to [00:02:30] hear more about your future plans. Let’s get into a show and hear from Brian and Justin and you. Great. Yeah. It’s, it is a, it’s a, it’s an intense one, right? We, we recorded at the meetup, so it’s a very interactive, there’s some guests and Right speaking.

So let’s go in and then after that we’ll also talk about, about the story and then our, our reflection. So let’s tune in. All right, let’s go guys. Are you looking for USA banking solutions for your e-commerce business? [00:03:00] I am proud to say mercury.com is supporting the podcast here, third year in a row at Global from Asia.

And we’re proud to say, ’cause we use ’em ourselves for many of our own Amazon brands, e-commerce brands and joint ventures with our US structures. And they’re super easy to do online application, no fees, and they have great customer support. Have helped us with trouble with Amazon Seller Central over the years about some receipts and.

Statements and everything like that, so we’re so happy to say thank you, mercury, for supporting our show, being a great [00:03:30] service and supporting other e-commerce sellers. We’re really proud to say they’re a sponsor here, and we also have a video tutorial as well as an overview and a special link with a little bonus for you as well for us under certain conditions.

Check it out@globalfromasia.com slash mercury for that information. Thank you for listening and thank you Mercury. Alright, well thanks for, thanks for making it today. And Shenzhen. I, I’m Mike Micheli hosted global from Asia. I just got here a couple of days ago [00:04:00] and we wanted to put this meet up together to bring friends and new people together in the industry and cross border and e-commerce and logistics.

I also wanna bring two other people with me to the discussion. Brian Miller, you wanna say that? Okay. Yeah, I’m Brian. Just talk. I’m from, yeah, I’m from the us. I’ve lived in China for the last 13 years and I’ve sold on Amazon for about eight years. And I also have a three PL and freight forwarding company [00:04:30] that was just merged with Mike’s business.

So yeah, I’m here to just kind of talk about, , logistics and, and shipping from China and hopefully people can. Learn something new. Justin. Hi everyone. I’m Justin and I’m the Chinese always. Yeah, I’m, we are partner and me and mine and I’m running. I’m the CEO for the easy W easy. [00:05:00] So.

Able and FDA all these major and warehouse scoring and yeah. So we are coming here to, to talk about this, Chris. All right, welcome. So, so then so some Amazon sellers here some you just got back in the game, right? You took a couple years off. Yeah. I hope I could find some other business I did that was maybe [00:05:30] less stressful but came back.

Well, I still think it’s a good business model. I mean, Chris, remember we, it was one of your meetups. He does a great meetup at the Can Talk Fair. For FBA for you, and you’re like, it’s too late to sell. Is it still, it’s not still too late. Is it still too late? Still not too late coming now. There’s still people coming in, right.

Making more money than me. Ah, so there’s still opportunities. I think it, I don’t know. [00:06:00] It’s Brian, or do you wanna say, is it, there’s still opportunity to come into Amazon. He’s, he’s coming back. Do you have an opinion on that? Or just to record? Record? Yeah, I’ll just record it. Okay. Yeah, I mean obviously Amazon’s much harder now, so I think the people that are able to win have yeah, they’re much more skilled sell sellers.

Back in the day, you could just throw up anything on Amazon and it would sell. So I think now like. People are kind of more like professional sellers that are winning, that have teams [00:06:30] and software to run the business. And it’s like, yeah, it’s not for the faint apart. If you wanna get back into it, you should really have some pretty good knowledge and capital because it’s also a lot more expensive to launch products.

And win. Yeah, sure. Can I add something? Yeah. That I noticed. So when I sold my brand two years ago, there was a party behind it with a lot of money, a lot of skills but the brand down the drain [00:07:00] completely. So I think there’s always opportunity for. Super focused on one product and if you keep your focus, I think, and you have the right niche, then there’s always opportunity.

We the same thing, like we had our brown selling it, then they want over, they it they get on drink exactly. Just throw one yet against the right tools. Doesn’t really matter. The problem is mostly,

but this one was like they started up as a lot of our, [00:07:30] a lot of ourselves, they started up as product designers and they sold their own products, but they just grew enormous. But they still have this product mindset, not the aggregated mindset. That was the reason why I sold it, but still. So Brian started Easy China Warehouse in what, 2018, right?

Actually he’s on the Global Asia podcast. I have a podcast. And we talked about the story. Do you wanna share a little bit about your, your experience doing, doing the logistics business and, and what you’ve learned [00:08:00] and, yeah. Flowers. Flowers. Yeah. Hey, everybody here? Watch up the stairs. Yeah, I, I mean, we started in 2008.

We mainly did a lot of the drop shipping because that was more popular at the time. And that’s how our business started. And then as COVID came, and dropshipping became harder, we shifted the business to do more freight forwarding. So to kind of meet the demand of the market. And now I think the business adjusted to focusing on [00:08:30] helping Amazon sellers to split their inventory so they don’t have to pay the transfer fees on Amazon.

And yeah, I think that’s the biggest thing that Amazon sellers can do now to stay competitive. I really believe if people don’t split their inventory from China, they’re gonna have very. Tough time competing with all the Chinese sellers that. Are doing this and are running their operations very efficiently.

So what you mean by split your inventory? Yeah. Yeah. So like Amazon [00:09:00] now requires everyone to split their shipments like one, three or five different warehouses. And if you can split it in China and put it to the. Put it in a less than container shipment that goes to the closest port of the FBA warehouse.

You’re going to save a lot more money than trucking, let’s say a full container to LA and then having to split the shipments by ground domestically in the US rather than putting [00:09:30] part of it in an LA container, part of it in a New York container, part of it in a Texas container or Chicago. That’s closest to the warehouse.

So we’re like really pushing this. I know all the other shippers are, but I think if you don’t do this as a seller it’s gonna be you’re dead. Yeah. It’s gonna be really hard to compete on Amazon moving forward. So if I could just maybe summarize or, so, I mean, it is counterintuitive, right? I mean, most buyers, most, most people [00:10:00] think I wanna send one full container to one port to get my prices low, right?

So it. So everybody thinks even I’m working on a brand now, and the, the partner wants to just do a 40 foot container FCL, right? That full container load is FCL. So a lot of people think like sending a full container is better ’cause it’s cheaper. But now with Amazon, especially the last month or so, I think few months, two months, two months now, they’ve been increasing the cost to tick.

Teagan spread all [00:10:30] over the us They can do that, but they’ll charge you a lot. So I think one of the main topics we wanna share is, it sounds like it doesn’t make sense, but like what Brian’s doing a lot and logistics successful sellers have been doing is they do LCL from China. Two. la Chicago, Atlanta.

Yeah. What are some common New York? Yeah, New York. It’s the closest port, and then you have the, you have the lowest, [00:11:00] the, the least shipping time from the port to the FBA warehouse. And it’s gonna be way cheaper than you shipping a full container and then having to split it in the US on your own. So yeah, that’s what we’re doing.

That’s what like a lot of the Chinese sellers are doing. And a lot of people in the industry are doing this, but I think. Four foreign sellers. It’s less known. This type of shipment for Chinese have been doing this forever. So I think it’s a good thing to bring up for people to kind of understand that that’s [00:11:30] available and to inquire about it.

Yeah. So are you consolidate. Yeah, consolidate. It’s almost the opposite, just like you’re splitting, right? I mean, I guess you could say consolidate. Oh, less than container load. So FCL, if people don’t know FCL is full container load, like those big container trucks, 40 foot usually is a FCL. But what a lot of sellers do is they do LCL less than container load, and they share the container with other sellers or other product [00:12:00] owners.

And then it’s, it’s then. Take it off the truck and then send to their destination. How many designated warehouses does have? How many? I don’t know. Does anyone know that? I know one or 200 in the US I have idea.

But they give you a dedicated hundred. Yeah. Amazon they, they basically tell you which one you have to ship it to. So you’re [00:12:30] under their mercy. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s, it doesn’t somewhat make natural sense. ’cause usually people sell, save money by filling a container. So a lot of sellers still don’t understand that that can actually save you money at the end, eh?

So so that’s, that’s, that’s the that’s one of our main strategies we wanna share with you today. That people still feel like they gotta full con fill one container in send like the west [00:13:00] coast ’cause it’s the cheapest send of a container to a west coast. But what especially Chinese sellers or, or are, are successful sellers are doing is that they split it from China in LCL less than container loads and send, it’s in New York or California or other places.

It near the various Amazon ports. Because if you don’t do that and you send it to LA or send it to one of Amazon, they, they can send it for you, but they charge you a lot more than it would cost you to do that way. [00:13:30] Does anybody understand Jean’s here? Hi Jean. You have something to add? No. Oh, you want stand closer.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. I guess we’ll keep this shorter than maybe expected because of the more networking. But but Justin, do you wanna share some how you, how we met and how we’re working together now? Yeah, a little bit. Oh, you got that loud? A little bit louder. Yeah. Me and my, yeah. Actually I never met [00:14:00] my before I.

Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. But we know each other from like 2000 covid. We met during covid. Yeah. 2000, 21, 21. And then like I, yesterday, they yesterday ask to ask my like, why you so trust me, we never met. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s mine. This, this mine is very easy to trust and make friends. Yeah. This are mine.[00:14:30]

Yeah. And then like, actually from the 2020, oh, and then we, we, we saw work with a couple project and then yesterday I worked with my, and asked my wife, trust me, we never met. And he said, because the way I walk, I’m very responsible. Yeah. Right. And I’m, I’m tired, I’m nice. Not like, just like, yeah, thinking the way I’m saying, the way I’m, I’m do for the world.

And [00:15:00] that’s how I end his trust. So that’s how we, how we become a partner now. Really. Yeah. And yeah. And then it’s our, at the beginning is a writer. Don Wilder. Yeah. Maybe no time. Yeah. Yeah. I New Japan and introduced us. Yeah. And then that’s how we met. And then we start working KA project and then know each other and then until Tuesday and we become, we met together.

We met in person. [00:15:30] Yeah. That’s how but I mean, I think Covid changed. I think the summary is a lot of us worked together during Covid. I met a lot of people during Coronavirus that. I worked online with that I didn’t meet for many, many years ’cause of Coronavirus and I did a lot of business with people I’d never met, pretty big transactions.

Another deal I did was is in multiple hundred thousand dollars and I never met, I met, met the person in person until after Covid after the deal we met. But it’s been a pleasure to work with [00:16:00] Justin. We’ve done a lot of projects together during coronavirus. And when Brian and I talked about investing emerging with at Easy China Warehouse, I called Justin and I wasn’t sure what to say, right?

I contacted him like, Justin, what are you up to? Do you, are you interested in getting this partnership deal? And this, this project? I was unsure. But he’s also, he says that he’s changing. He’s gonna have a baby. He is married, he’s gonna have a kid in July. I’m gonna be a dad.[00:16:30]

So that, that’s a life changer. Mark said that earlier, having a kid is a big life changer, so he’s gonna be a dad. So I think he wants to get more serious and, and settled and, and, and long term. So we’re really excited about this. And the main point is , I invested in Easy China warehouse.

Justin’s my partner. Brian’s gonna be advising. He’s going, he got married. We got a couple of you at his wedding. He’s moved back to the US and Justin’s gonna be the CEO [00:17:00] general manager here in JI and we’d love to work with you. Talk to Justin, of course, me. The other strategy is LCL, not FCL. So a lot of you think FCL makes sense, but actually now today’s world, LCL to, to various ports in the US is more effective for Amazon selling.

That’s a wrap on the, the meetup where we did the live. Discussion about the autism logistics as well as the story of easy China warehouse. But, mm-hmm, we did do a little quieter [00:17:30] one in the warehouse. So, Justin, Brian, and I, so yasha, you wanna begin, get some more kind of quieter, intimate information here.

Yeah, well actually seeing that very short, but very informative interview with Brian and Justin and you, it, it was just really nice because somehow we are actually seeing an overview of how this warehouse that you’re going to have, I. On how will it become in your future plans and things like that.

That’s a very nice short interview. Like a fast talk. [00:18:00] Yeah. So let’s add that in right now and then we’ll come back for a conclusion. So everybody tune into the next segment. Alright, tune in guys. Welcome Easy China Warehouse, where we make shipping from China. Easy, more than just. Warehouse. We do global logistics we’ll talk about in a minute.

I’m Mike Magini. I’m an investor and partner and I guess business development advisor for the Easy China Warehouse, and it’s great to be here with us and sharing. Brian is the founder. Go ahead. I’m Brian. I’m the [00:18:30] founder and an advisor moving forward to support the business as it grows. Hey, I’m Jess t, I’m a CEO and Power of the China warehouse.

Have the local team to make sure the team and business operations smoothly. Yeah. So many people think that Easy China warehouse is just a warehouse, but that’s a warehouse and more, I want to, we’re gonna talk about some of the services it offers. One service that I like is Amazon, FBA, [00:19:00] splitting shipments.

As we see in the FBA space, you’re gonna have to get better and better at splitting and using LCL to multiple ports in the US or other destination. Ports as fees change and this restructuring about optimizing your costs for Amazon. Easy. China Warehouse is your great partner for optimizing costs and streamlining your logistics.

Yeah, and to just build on kind of what Mike is saying, easy China Warehouse also serves as kind of a global distribution warehouse for your e-commerce [00:19:30] business. So. As a lot of small businesses start to grow and they wanna access new markets, whether it be in Europe, Canada, Australia, Asia. They can send businesses can send their products here, and we can store them and also help to fulfill B2C orders, but also wholesale.

And shipments to FBA to any of the marketplaces around the world. So as you grow, ECW is kind of a perfect solution to, to help your brand [00:20:00] become global. And we, we have customer who d D two C basis from like Shopify. We can cut, use our software. To your Shopify store and yeah, I think basically all the platform you, you in, we can use our software, connect to your software, your platform directly, and then just shoot from our warehouse to your customer directly.

Great, great. So that’s, there’s even more services. We’re adding a little bit more value add services that [00:20:30] people need here. We’re, we’re trying to be like your partner in China. Easy way we can help you with many things. So talk to your account rep for, for more clear, clear ideas of all the services offered.

Okay, so question for Justin Lee Now. I know you’re really excited about the future. What, what are some plans you are thinking about for Easy Chatter? Warehouse? Yeah. In the future, we want to invest more in our customer. Customers Succeed means we c succeed, right? So we, we are working on the software, more software operation and [00:21:00] then pressure to make sure the business more smoothly.

We are also looking for more service and add to and value to add to out to our customer and. How then and the night on also business is more, even more easier and in China. Great, great. Exciting. And Brian, how do you feel? I mean, you, you’re, you founded a business and your things are growing and going along here.

Yeah, the business has gone a long way from the [00:21:30] beginning when we just started doing small D two C kind of drop shipping business to help support some of my friends. So over the years we’ve kind of. Developed a robust set of services that really helped an e-commerce seller to manage their shipments globally.

So I think over the years we’ve really gained a lot of experience and we’re kind of, we’ve become experts in working with e-commerce companies, so. It’s gone a long way and I’m excited for you guys to bring it to the next level. Awesome. [00:22:00] Thanks Brian. Alright, that’s a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this a little about us video we have on the website and it’s, we’re all super excited.

We’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in shipping from China for your e-commerce business and, and more services we mentioned. Of course the best place to go is the website www.easychinawarehouse.com. And as we all say here, easy, easy China warehouse, we make shipping from China easy. The future of e-commerce is waiting.

[00:22:30] Load pipe is back. It’s a protocol. We are making the new way to do e-commerce with blockchain technology. This is very early stage and we have Hamza. Is our first marketplace in this new ecosystem. It’s very epic if you wanna participate, we are on alpha stage in Q1 2024, where you can be a buyer or a a vendor application only.

Check it out@hamza.biz for the [00:23:00] marketplace or the overview of this protocol and subscribe for updates@loadpipe.com. See you there. This was a nice episode of our podcast, Mike. And. Can we talk about like like some, some, some ways on how we’re, how are we gonna be able to like, make this new business deal easy China warehouse, like work in the future?

Sure. So it’s been going pretty very smoothly. Brian did a really good job, started in 2018. Their [00:23:30] regular customers, actually, I know quite a few of them from the podcast and from the community that are using and enjoying the service. We’re working on kind of improving. The technology systems, right?

So we’re gonna make more tech solutions to make it easier and faster for, for users of these channel warehouse to make it even easier. Mm-Hmm. We’re also working on, , I mentioned the load pipe, Hamza project load pipe. Yes. We will hopefully utilize some excess warehousing that there for this this new marketplace [00:24:00] for people to use that.

Mm-Hmm. And of course we’re gonna, , work on bundling it and, and giving more incentives for the customers of Easy China Warehouse to leverage the Cross-Border Summit tickets, as well as, , memberships and, and masterminds as well as other perks in our community. Right, right.

That’s right. Well, actually we want to continue. Doing a, a basically a good job when it, when it, when it comes to improving China warehouse. [00:24:30] And we wanna be able to make a legacy of, , E-C-W-E-C China Warehouse as a foreign business in China. And of course helping like global sellers. I’m pretty sure you’re, you’re, you’re gonna make it big out there.

Yeah. I mean, Justin, our CEO there is really excited and stepping it up and just talking right before this recording. I spent a week and a half with them there. And there’s so much opportunity. So I hope people can also take advantage@easychannelwarehouse.com. Yes. Yes, guys did hear [00:25:00] that. Oh, is that, is that website on Easy Channel?

Yeah, I can check it out. Yeah, actually we did some upgrades. Our team upgraded a website a lot, put some new graphics and, and pages so you can check it out. Easy channel warehouse.com. Where to go guys, if you need some sort of warehouse or something. or.com. Perfect. Perfect. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global from asia.com.

That’s ww.global from [00:25:30] asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.