Winning the Tariff Battle: Unlock a 9X Multiplier for Your Amazon Success with Steve Selikoff

Steve Selikoff, an expert in product sourcing, has helped countless entrepreneurs achieve 7X or even 8X multipliers through his China sourcing group. Now, with new tariffs on the horizon, he’s raising the bar. Starting at the April 2025 Canton Fair, Steve will teach how to secure a 9X multiplier.

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Thank you Steve for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Episode 452 of Global from Asia Podcast. How to nine x multiple your Amazon e-commerce business with no other than Steve Soff. Let’s tune in today. 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. Thank you so much for [00:00:30] listening to or maybe watching today’s podcast at Global from Asia. It’s a new year, 2025, and many exciting things happening every year. Seems like a fresh start. More announcements than that coming. But today we have a amazing session with no other than Steve Selloff, a mentor of mine.

He’s an expert in the retail game in in Amazon, and e-commerce for many years. [00:01:00] And we are so lucky to have him. This was a live webinar. Some people really joined us for the live webinar with him and we had q and a and connection. So this one is going to be a time for us to get together and listen. He went on for a really in depth discussion about, you know, profitability.

’cause a lot of us talk about how much revenue. Oh, a six figure, seven figure, eight figure. I remember some of my friends says you could be like a 10 figure if you [00:01:30] sold at a loss or break even maybe. But to be profitable should be your goal. And this is what we talk about in depth in this webinar recording, which is totally epic with.

The URL. You can get some of the links@globalinformasia.com slash multiple. But let’s tune into this show. Do you enjoy the podcast, global Inform Asia? Do you enjoy all the community events that we do? The best way to support is coming out to our annual cross border summit.com in Chang [00:02:00] Mai this November 3rd, fourth, and fifth, 20, 25.

I have amazing speakers, amazing people getting together. We’re pushing the limits. We’re making things happen. This is where the movers and shakers and the deal makers come. It’s a limited supply of attendees and tickets, and we have been selling out every year. So I recommend checking out earlier cross border summit.com.

But let’s start off by talking about just what’s going on over here with these tariffs. That’s, that’s the [00:02:30] important thing. So right now with President Trump looking to take office in January, he has been talking about. Tariffs. 60% in some campaign stops a hundred percent. We’ll talk 60% today. Tariffs against China, also 25% tariffs against Mexico, 25% tariffs against Canada and a blanket 20% tariffs [00:03:00] against every other country in the world.

Whether this is going to happen or if it’s just posturing, who knows? I hope that doesn’t happen. But like the old saying, you hope for the best and you prepare for the worst, which is why when we do our, our Canton Fair trips, we have in the past always talked about getting a seven x multiplier, and now we’re just bumping that up to a nine x multiplier.

[00:03:30] It’s not difficult. It’s not impossible, and I hear that. All the time. You can’t get a nine x multiplier, you can’t get a seven x multiplier. You absolutely can. But before we go into just the tariffs, this helps because of other problems that are coming up as well. There was a dock strike that was going to happen in the east coast of the US and they put that on hold until January and while it was [00:04:00] on hold, they came to an agreement of 62% salary increase, which is really nice.

But they held off on decision of automation. The dock walkers want the, want to have a promise. I guarantee that there’s never going to be automation. At the same time, Trump is trying very much to get us into a manufacturing mode. So if you are, if you’ve ever been to Guan Jo, [00:04:30] we’ve gone to the port there now.

Gosh. Since Covid, since it opened after Covid, we go to the port itself, and it’s the sixth largest in the world. Four of the others are also in China. They all depend on automation. You can’t get that big and you can’t be that effective for shipping without automation. So you’ve got the worker saying, we demand that you never do automation.

And Trump’s saying we won’t be able to [00:05:00] do, increase our manufacturing. So they need to do automation. Hopefully, again, that gets figured out just in case if there is a strike over automation, we can expect higher shipping rates and more congestion. So once again, a high multiplier is really important.

There’s a DDP crackdown and the DDP crackdown is we saw during a. Trump’s first administration. He very quickly [00:05:30] changed the penalties for undervaluation under count and the misrepresentation of country of origin from being a fine to being a fine plus prison. Time up to one year for your first infringement, first violation, two years on your second violation, a hundred thousand on your first violation, 250,000 on your second violation.

It’s huge. He knows about DDP, he knows about [00:06:00] the shady freight forwarders who are doing under counts and so on. So if people are are using shady freight forwarders, you’re gonna risk a much higher risk. And then finally, we’ve got. TikTok shop. We’ve got tmo, we’ve got Sheen. Two things are happening there.

Number one, they use something called the Section 3, 2 1, or Dominions Rule. As a loophole, people know, oh yeah, if you [00:06:30] import something to us, it’s under $800. You can get it in without paying tariffs. That’s not going to stare around, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit on one of the slides. But what that means is because they have very low prices on these platforms, and because they have this DI Minis rule, people who are price sensitive are going to start looking at platforms other than Amazon.

So [00:07:00] they’re already, you can already see people going onto Temu, going onto to Shein, and so on. But there’s going to be more than those. And I’ve been at the meetings, and Michael and I have chatted about that. So there are some big players coming on board to sell directly from factories to US consumers.

And all this is going to happen within the next year. So if you’re running on tight margins and your customers are price sensitive, [00:07:30] they will leave Amazon and look on other platforms, excuse me, in order to save money. So you have to have low prices. It’s critical these days. So by the way, if anyone has questions as we go along, just shout ’em out or, or, yeah, I can help relay questions.

That’s the benefit of guys being here. So just please don’t be shy. Good. So if you’re going to edit this and post it at this point, put in the first video. [00:08:00] Okay, but I’ll ask anyone who’s with us right now who has the list of videos. If you click on that first one, you should have someone that says Hello Sadique.

Right? Sadique? Yep. That’s correct. Okay. So if you watch through that video and it’s rather short, you’ll see him talk about a few things that happen. This video takes place at the Canton Fair. My, the people who join us actually shadow [00:08:30] us, we, we do negotiation for real. We randomly choose different suppliers.

We go in there. In this case, they did stuffed animals, flushy, stuffies, whatever you call it, where you are. We took a rather large sized stuffed animal and we were, we quickly figured out that retail price could be $20 on this. Not bad at all with charm pricing, that would be 19.95. And she started off giving us a price of [00:09:00] $4.

$4 is nice. That’s a five x multiplier, 20 divided by four, five x multiplier, which a lot of people would be very happy with. We wanted more. So a few things happen. First of all, right away she recognizes that I’m a boss. And that sounds small, but it is super, super important. Second is when she comes with $4, I just dismiss it and I keep on going.

One of the things that a lot of people [00:09:30] are frightened of is saying, no, when you’re negotiating with a Chinese supplier, never be afraid of that. And then she continued and she almost pretended like that never happened. And she came back with another opening order. It’s like you’re playing a game of chess.

She knocked all the pieces off the board, set them up and say, oops, we didn’t see that. And now she came back with $3 and 30 cents, which is a six x multiplier. And. Started talking quantities. So what I did when she starts talking quantities is I changed the topic, [00:10:00] and we’ll talk about that in a moment. I gave her something else to talk about.

And then after talking about talking with my own team there, knowing that she’s listening in, I come back and I give her a price of $2 and 14 cents a unit and we don’t have a answer. And again, that’s okay. And we’ll talk about this in more detail. Don’t be afraid of walking away. If you don’t have a solid answer, it’s China.

That’s okay. Which we did 20 minutes later, she texted us [00:10:30] back and said, yes, $2 and 14 cents is all right. And that’s a 9.3 x multiplier. So hopefully you guys had a chance to watch that on the screen. And we’re gonna go through this. Bit by bit. The first thing is with no tariffs at all, no tariffs. Imagine zero just getting into the port.

It would’ve been at $4 a unit with tariffs, $6 and 40 cents. But [00:11:00] even with the tariffs and our negotiation, it would’ve come into the port at $3 and 42 cents a unit. So we would bring it in less the with tariffs less than somebody who had no tariffs. So it’s super important, your competition. You want to make more money than your competitors.

What did you see in there? I was there in person. I gave a lot of nonverbal [00:11:30] clues about my experience and my role. I let them know that I am the boss and they need to talk up to the boss. I did not talk about Amazon. I did build their confidence and their awareness of our value by discussing our business plan.

Never, never, never, never. Act like it’s your first time. And for women, and we’ll talk about this a little bit as well, if you have a black blazer, we’re a black blazer, [00:12:00] and we’ll talk about why that works, but that’s, that’s actually really important. So we’re gonna hold off the next two videos for a moment and go right into this.

Alright? Every product costs the same. I. In China, in Thailand, Canada, Germany, Australia. Every product costs the same things. Time, labor, and materials. That’s the base level. On top of that [00:12:30] is operations, keeping the doors open, the lights on, and ga, that’s people’s salaries. And then on top of that is whatever they could add on to make profit, and that’s price times quantity.

This is interesting because in the last year and a half I see a lot of factories adding a new reason why they need to charge more. And they’re saying, oh, we paid so much for, for r and d. And developing this and [00:13:00] so on. No, no, no, no, no, no. Their, their engineers don’t sit around waiting for you to walk into the door and, and then they’ll get paid.

They get paid every week or every two weeks or every month, no matter whether you walked in the door or not. So your product has nothing to do with that. Being paid is part of GA and that’s people’s salaries. There are only two things that you can impact bringing down the price. Only two things. [00:13:30] One is that top layer, the profit that’s based on their impression and the value that you bring to them.

If they think the only value you bring is being an open wallet, then they’re gonna take as much money as they can from you. And the bottom layer, which is time, labor, materials. And I think a lot of people who’ve I. Done this for a while, has experienced this, you make some changes to what those materials are or how it’s engineered.

If you can save time, if you can [00:14:00] save labor, if you can save materials, then you’re bringing the cost down. So if you’re doing a, a backpack or a knapsack and it’s got YKK zippers, if you can use other zippers other than YKK, they’re, they’re famously expensive, you’re going to bring the price down. So all you can impact is the time, labor, materials, and that top layer profit of the profit or the value that you bring to them.

And that’s what we’re going to be [00:14:30] talking about now. What value do you bring to the relationship? Well, in that video, you saw me talking immediately. She knew I was a boss. In China, Kings negotiate with kings. You are a king. If you start off saying, I’m just a purchasing manager or something like that, it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s not going to work for you because you are not at the level to make good, [00:15:00] important business decisions and they wanna invest in your business, not in your job.

So saying, oh, I’m a purchasing manager, or My boss is going to fire me. That’s all about your job. They don’t care. What’s important is your business and what value you bring. So they’re not gonna worry about bringing the price down for you. But that’s also self-respect. If this is your business, own it. Be the king.

They respect that. China is a [00:15:30] Confucian culture. I. And that means social roles are very, very important. If you are in China and you walk down a hallway with the owner of the factory, if they’re being gracious, they’ll let you go first. It’s not like western cultures where you’re holding the door open and letting them go first.

It’s a recognition that you are the boss. If you go into an elevator with the boss of a factory, you’ll notice that everyone else stands to the side and some often look down. The boss is front and [00:16:00] center. He walks through that elevator, first walks through a door first. That’s China, and it’s the same thing for you.

So little things immediately establish that a boss, I’m not sure if anyone’s had a chance to have lunch or dinner in China, but they have those big round tables. There’s a place where the boss sits at those big round tables and they actually sit opposite. The door like, like the old westerns in the movies, but all those things [00:16:30] established that you are a boss.

So right away I did things in that video that let her know I was a boss. And the easiest and the simplest trick to establish that you are a boss and it’s a serious business, is to bring along a friend. Have them pretend to be your staff. And if you actually have staff bring along your real staff, they’re going to be silent.

They’re only gonna talk when you talk to them. Just like children in America, they’re supposed to be seen and not heard. [00:17:00] Your staff is there to be seen and not heard unless you ask them a question. But again, it very quickly establishes you as a boss. In China, the goal of a negotiation is a relationship.

That relationship is super powerful. But there’s more to that because the relationship on its own is not going to guarantee you the best prices. That’s how you want to build gu, she [00:17:30] and gu. She is not just a business relationship, it’s a mutually beneficial business relationship so that each of you brings value to the other.

And if you establish a mutually beneficial business relationship, then you can bring the price down. So again, how do you establish that if you bring benefit? Well, if you, again, if you’re a lowly purchasing manager, you [00:18:00] have no say over the company or what it does or anything else. If you’re the boss, you can control the company, what the company’s doing and so on.

So we talked there with that woman about the. What our plans are. And our plans were in two years time to be shipping three containers a quarter. How did we come up with it? Number one, if you look at MOQ, either in a discussion at the Canton Fair on Alibaba, [00:18:30] maiden China, or anything else, they’re always gonna talk in units.

How many units are you going to order? Get that off the table. Forget about talking about units. As long as your, if your product’s tiny like this thing, it’s gonna be a little more difficult. But as long as your product’s moderately sized, figure out how many containers it fills. And here’s a trick. This is more common when I was growing up, but what a bread box is, it’s usually a, a wooden container that holds a [00:19:00] nicely fresh baked loaf of bread in your kitchen.

Bread box is about this big, and if you can visualize a bread box. You can decide if your product’s bigger or smaller than a bread box. People used to play a game called 20 questions, and one of the questions was traditionally, is it bigger than a bread box? Here’s the wonderful trick. A 40 foot container holds 10,000 bread boxes.

So if your product is [00:19:30] bigger than a bread box, maybe it’s one and a half times the size of a bread box, then your container is going to hold 6,000 units. If it’s half the size of a bread box, a 40 foot container holds 20,000 units. So once you have that idea in mind, you can turn around and say, well, our goal is going to be in two years.

We’re going to be shipping 10,000 units every month. Or you can say three containers every quarter. Now you’re talking [00:20:00] in a different number. That’s salesperson. Even the boss, and you should be talking to the boss. But oftentimes they don’t speak English. They’ll sit there and listen. Now you’re talking containers.

They know that you bring value just because if they can sell a container at a time rather than a unit at a time that’s better. It’s exact same numbers, but you’re making it sound better. And let’s say you don’t think you can get one container a quarter, well then maybe you can get half of that. [00:20:30] So maybe this particular stuffy, which we’ll go into in a moment, we can only sell 5,000 every quarter, 5,000.

Well that’s half of 10,000, but a 20 foot container is half of a 40 foot container. So if we just say container and leave it vague like that, we’re still saying the same thing. All of this comes into the nuance and subtlety of what you’re saying. And if you notice, as I said, we’re gonna talk. We talked about where we’re going to be in two years.[00:21:00]

If I were to ask you, what is your business plan and where will you be in two years, most people will say, my business plan is to start off selling here, and then we’re going to scale it like this, and then we’re gonna go there and there, and maybe we go international and get it bigger. And by the end of the first year, we should be doing this.

End of the second year, we should be going up there. I did the exact reverse. She wanted to get an understanding of how much we’re going to be creating, how much we’re gonna be buying, excuse me, and I said, [00:21:30] in two years time, we expect to be at three containers a quarter. I didn’t talk to her about how we get from here to there.

Everyone knows that you have to crawl, walk, run. I’m letting her know where we’re going to be. Same answer, but I don’t give her all of the non-important stuff. Between now and then, I go right into where we’re going to be in two years. Then we’ll get to. That point of of smaller orders [00:22:00] and that two year number is going to be there when we negotiate price and everything else.

And I’ll talk to you how you about you bring that down in a few minutes. So now she sees that we bring financial value to them. Now we’re getting a big step towards GU sheet because we’re helping them make money. But there’s other ways you can bring value as well. If you don’t have the quantities to do that, you’ve gotta think, [00:22:30] what else can you bring to the table?

It’s not selling on Amazon. It was in 2014 and 2015, Amazon removed the prohibition against Chinese national selling. And with that prohibition removed, now 60 some odd percent of sellers on Amazon are Chinese. Every single factory, every single trading company. Assembly company you go into all have some sort of white background photo [00:23:00] set up.

Even if they’re not seeing, they’re selling on Amazon. They are. I mean, that’s why it’s there. And there’s a lot of Westerners now who have returned to China helping them sell on on Amazon. Carbon six was there in October. Teaching these Chinese sellers all of the tricks that they teach us as well about selling on Amazon.

So if you say to them, Hey, I bring a lot of value because I sell on Amazon, they don’t care. [00:23:30] They’re selling on Amazon as well. What else can you bring that, that brings value? Well, there’s a few things. Let’s say that Michael and I were both doing plastic toys. So I have two different plastic toys here.

One’s a little giraffe and one’s a little sharp. Ah, cool. Nice. Okay. Now this little shark is done with, uh, solar cell. It’s a little bit of electronics in it and so on. That’s one toy. [00:24:00] This little drafts another toy. Hmm. Nice. Now here’s the cool thing. If I’m making the little drafts and I tell them I need whatever it is, 10,000 drafts, the value that I bring is that price per unit times 10,000.

But I say, Hey, I’ve got a friend Michael, and he’s making plastic unit. I know he is not making the same one as me. We are not competition and we’re friends. We know what, what each one of us is doing. I say, I’ve got a friend who’s doing [00:24:30] little sharks. With little solar cells and they dance when the lights on them.

So this plastic making factory says, Hey, we can make those too. I said, great. Let me make an introduction. Michael talks to them, he likes them, and he places his order for 10,000 units. Suddenly, the value that I bring is not my 10,000 units. It is, well, it’s more than 20,000. You would think. I bring to the table my 10,000 [00:25:00] and I’m responsible for Michael’s 10,000.

So now I’m more valuable to them, but it’s more than that. Does Steven have other friends? Are there other people he might bring to the table? So in their mind, my value is me 10,000, Michael, 10,000, and if they do a good job, who else is next? ’cause I’ve proven that I’ll bring other value, other work to them.

I’m suddenly now very valuable. What about Michael? [00:25:30] He’s the same. He gets the benefit the same way. My 10,000, his 10,000, and maybe he has friends that he can bring to the table. So now both of us have increased our value. If they’re gonna mess up with quality on mine, they’re gonna lose him too. If they mess up with quality on his or miss deadlines, they’re gonna lose me.

So now it makes, there’s a more pressure on them to bring that price down because they want to make [00:26:00] us happy. That’s one simple way to bring value. If you are in the United States or Canada, Australia, uk, to a lesser degree. And let’s say that you’ve got a company that makes a little drafts or even better little, what is this thing here?

Yeah, it’s a little character. Yeah. Like a finger anime or something. Yeah. So [00:26:30] let’s say that’s what I have making. I’m having them make that for me and they’re doing great. But if I go to the store and I find other versions, let’s go back to the shark. If I find other versions of the shark what? What’s trending right now in Walmart, in Target, and so on.

Oh, sharks are big, but so are little pandas. They don’t know about that. I don’t make pandas. I don’t care if they make pandas. So what do I [00:27:00] do? I take up my phone, I take photos of all the other little solar toys they have, and then I send them an email and say, Hey. Or it could be on WeChat. I was in the store and I thought you might be interested in this.

’cause it kind of looks like the things you would be making. And I send them the pictures. Whoa. They love that. ’cause they can’t walk in those stores themselves without going to the United States. Now you have just shared with them what their competitors don’t know. You’ve shared with them [00:27:30] what is popular in the United States, and now they can start doing that in their planning.

I don’t care if they copy some product that I’m not doing has nothing to do with me. If their machinery can make it, if their equipment, if their workers can make it and they can make some money, great. I’ve provided something. They don’t have eyes and ears in those stores. In the United States, even if you’re working with the lowest salesperson in the whole company, the moment [00:28:00] you send photos like this, I guarantee they’re going to the owner of the company and now they know your name.

You’re bringing up the value. The more value you bring, the more you build Guci. Which is a business relationship based on the benefits each of you can bring to the other. So I’ve been talking about this for a while. I’ve probably talked over some slides. So let’s go into this. She said 500, I dismissed it right [00:28:30] away.

I wanted to let her know I’m not a small quantity purchaser. Notice I did not say Amazon because selling on Amazon just does not have any value to them anymore. Now, in my case, I also sell to retailers. So I casually mentioned where we’re gonna be in two years. Well, we’re gonna be selling to retailers and we expect to be doing three containers a quarter.

She can sell on Amazon. But she cannot sell to us retailers. One, [00:29:00] they don’t have that access. Two, culturally, they don’t like the way that retailers work because they’ll hold payment 60, 90 days. And a lot of retailers, particularly these days, are very cautious about dealing with anyone. There’s a xenophobic, xenophobic trend in the United States.

Hmm. If you’re speaking with a Chinese accent, they feel awkward about working with you. In fact, Walmart is telling all of their suppliers to start finding [00:29:30] supply chains outside of China. Wow. Just to be sure that if the prices go down or whatever, so I mentioned retailers, they can’t do that, and then there’s trade-offs.

I started talking about different types of fabric they had. A flannel fleece, which is a little bit shorter than a polar fleece on the belly of some of theirs. They had that very soft minky. I know what these fabrics are. I’ve done fabrics before. So I understood and I started talking to her about that.

And [00:30:00] if we change this fabric or that fabric, or the length of the tail, now we’re talking time, labor and materials. So there’s only two things you can impact. Time, labor, materials, and that profit level. That profit level is impacted by the amount of value we bring to them and the time, labor materials.

I’m making trade-offs so it can be less. That’s all it took. She’s took me seriously because I had a serious business plan. I wasn’t [00:30:30] just walking in saying, I want this or walking out. I took the time to talk and I took the time to share information with her. So if you go back and watch that same video again.

And feel free to, at the end of this, you’ll see why am I the boss? Because I’m confident. Look at my posture. I’m sitting there with my hands back and everything else. Right? There is a really interesting aspect to [00:31:00] negotiating with Chinese suppliers. They’re patient. They expect that we are impatient and you’ll see it all the time.

And I have, I have friends who are some of the biggest gurus in the Amazon space and, and sometimes I’ve actually helped them out and I’ve taken over negotiations for them. Other times I’ve been with them as they negotiate, and almost everyone has the same failing as a Westerner, IM patience. [00:31:30] Use that to your advantage.

If they give you a price, pick up your phone, start working on the calculator and figure it out. Look at them. Go back to the calculator. Be serious and just be silent the whole time. Nature of poor is a vacuum. If they’re silent to you, you’ll talk. But if you’re silent to them and it looks like you’re calculating things, you’re not making thoughtful decisions, they will [00:32:00] start bringing down the price on their own.

Hmm. And it happens again and again. So now they say, they say that you have value. They see that you’re successful, they want to work with you, and it’s silence. Wait. They might lose you. What’s happening? They start talking. And this happens consistently. I’m just being silent. And a quick reminder. Kings negotiate with kings.[00:32:30]

So when you start, you need to know your target price. So if you, this case our, we knew that we were going to be at 1999, so a 10 x would’ve been $20 over two, $2 would’ve been 10 x. Is that correct? I think I got that wrong. But anyway, start off with where you want to [00:33:00] end up. I took a trip across the United States.

It was great. I went from the East coast to the west coast and I stopped at Yosemite, which is uh, not Yosemite, Yellowstone, which is an incredible national park and outside the park, these big rest areas and a big map. And someone had written, if you don’t know where you’re going, how do you’ve arrived? If you don’t know your target price, how do you negotiated?

Effectively negotiation’s [00:33:30] not something that comes from the gut, it’s something that does not come from the ego. It comes from financial calculations. So if you feel, oh, how much should I be bringing the price down, 20% the the right amount to be bringing prices down, no 10%, no, 50%, no. You don’t know what that percentage is.

You do know what your target is, and if you get to your target, then you’re successful. And maybe it’s really [00:34:00] easy, like in this case, so what, you’re at your target, you are making money, and with a nine x multiply, you’re making money because most Amazon sellers are at three x or four x. You’re making money.

Great. If they’re making money, even better, and you can say that to them, you can let them know, I wanna make money. I want you to make money. Don’t be frightened about them making money. Tell them you have kids. I want you taking them to Shanghai, Disney [00:34:30] every weekend. It’s okay for them to make money. As long as I’m at my target or less, I’m making money.

There’s no egos involved. Now, once that number, never start with it. Always start below and then slowly come up. Be patient, remember, and then the cardinal rule of any negotiation. Never give without getting, oh, we can’t go below $3 a unit. Well, that’s would’ve been just over [00:35:00] a six x multiplier. Not where I wanted to be, but I said, okay, if we do that, I need 60 days Payment Terms never give without getting.

And if you’re stuck, we just talked about the YKK zippers. We can talk about the little shark here. If you’re shark, if you’re stuck and they’re saying the price is X, then ask them Y. If you have a 4-year-old child in your home, or you’ve ever had a 4-year-old or learn from them, [00:35:30] they’re gonna ask you, why, why, why?

Same thing. Dig down. Why is this? Well, it turns out that this particular solar cell is more expensive than other solar cells. Okay, let’s get a cheaper solar cell. As long as the little shark dances, we don’t care. So you’ve got to get down to the component level off. Find out why, why, why, and now here’s a wonderful little trick.

It’s purely psychological. [00:36:00] If you, they say, oh, the price is $6, $7. And you, you can say, I can’t do that. I need to get any calculator. Yeah, I need to be between $4 and 11 cents and $4 and 53 cents. They’re immediately gonna go to the upper level of your upper, upper end of your range. They’re thinking, okay, if they could get to $4 and 53 cents, they win.

’cause I didn’t get them down to $4 and 11 cents. That’s purely psychological. [00:36:30] Every one of you, every single one of you, if, if you’ve ever done negotiation and I ask you, I’m negotiating with you, I’m saying, what’s the lower end that you can po? What’s the lowest you could possibly go? You’re gonna tell me zero.

Give it to me for free. There is no lower constraint. So why am I saying I have to be above $4 and 11 cents? This doesn’t make sense, but it works. ’cause they’ll immediately glom onto the $4 and 53 cents in this [00:37:00] example and they think they’re happy. You’ve just given without getting anything that you’ve given to them and they haven’t gotten anything.

You, one more time, you get the low price without giving up anything. And it just works all the time. And then don’t be afraid to walk away. And this is really interesting because it’s not the way things are done in western negotiation, Chinese culture. [00:37:30] You don’t have to come to a conclusion for negotiation.

The US is very process driven. It’s almost a, a conflict. It’s confrontational. I’ve gotta get this price, they’ve gotta get that price and it becomes a, a winner and everything else. So that’s not the way it is in China. Negotiation builds the relationship. So in this particular case, she was at a price. She wasn’t sure if [00:38:00] she could do it or not, but now she knows who we are.

We know who she is, and we leave it at that. We say, thank you very much. 20 minutes later we get a text on WeChat saying, yes, we can do that. And by the way, I also asked for terms. When you go back and watch that video, you’ll see where I messed up. I said, I need three x. Oops, I need three x. This is the way you say three in China.

And little things like this let her know [00:38:30] that I understood what I’m doing and sing. If you’ve ever seen the movie in Glorious Bastards with Brad Pitt, there’s a scene where they give themselves away. They’re pretending to be German and they’re not. And the guy gives the himself away by ordering three beers or two beers like this, not the German way, and, and the bad guy immediately realize it.

So little things like that. But do not be afraid of walking away. Walk away if it’s not a good deal. Always. Don’t fall [00:39:00] in love with your concept and lose money if you’re not making money. If you don’t have the right deal, walk away. But also, if it does look good and you haven’t reached a definite conclusion, it’s still okay to walk away.

This is positive. Walk away and follow up another time, or let them follow up, which is what happened in this case. It’s different than Western negotiation. There we go. So what do you never [00:39:30] do Anyone? Who sells on Amazon knows that Amazon’s complex PPC, even just listing your product is complex. If you can figure out Amazon, then you can figure out shipping.

There’s only 11 Inco terms. Those are the different types of, of, of shipping styles. DDP is an inco term. You really only need to know about three of them, maybe four of them, and that [00:40:00] is X works XWFO, BD, DP. So what you’re giving up on. And the last one would be DDU, only to know that it doesn’t exist. It was taken off the list of approved eco terms in 2010.

I was started selling on Amazon in 2005. I don’t know many people out in the world these days who were, who selling on Amazon or importing goods in 2010. But if you remember, [00:40:30] DU was being abused all over the place, just like DDP is now. And, and the, the International Chamber of Commerce took it off the list of approved inco terms.

So those that are out there saying DU, they’re still looking to abuse it. They’re just assuming you’re not smart enough to actually go out there and learn about the Inco terms. But you are smart enough, it’s not complicated. If you can learn Amazon, you can learn inco terms. So why do I say that? I can go into any [00:41:00] conference of Amazon sellers and if I put together a hundred sellers and I had them raise their hands, how long it takes to go through US Customs, say if it anyone who says it takes five days or more.

Anyone who’s had to deal with a week or more, 10 days. How many people have had to deal with two weeks to get through US Customs? And there’s always gonna be people who have horror stories. It took me 30 days to go through US Customs, the reality. It takes to go through US customs. [00:41:30] It’s done online. This is 2024.

This is not Christopher Columbus going across the ocean blue. This is not factory saying Yes. We’ve set it out and you’ll know it arrives when UPS, this is your tracking number and you’ll know it’s there. None of that. They know where every ship is. They track every ship they put in form 7 5 0 1, which is customs on a computer, not even from the boat.

It’s done from a [00:42:00] customs broker’s office. It doesn’t, doesn’t take five days. It takes 60 seconds, seconds, maybe a little longer. If you type slowly like me, that’s as long as it takes and it’s done five days before the container reaches port, it gets into the port, it pulls up those cranes immediately start taking stuff off.

They get put into the yard. China, it’s got more constraints in the [00:42:30] US and the us. They can, at least on the west coast, they can sit in the yard for up to four days, but they’ve gotta keep cargo moving so it gets quickly off the yard. In fact, in China, we mentioned earlier, automation there in Guang Jo non shop, they have four different sections of the port.

One of them is fully automated. They go on robotic trucks like bases that roll the containers around, put them where they need to be. [00:43:00] It’s quick. So why is it taking five days, 10 days, 20 days to go through customs? The reality is your stuff is not on the container that you paid for DDP, unlike every other inco term, you are not the the owner of your products.

You’re not. They fill out all the forms, they fill out customs. The way that they can do that is [00:43:30] legally they own your product. Back when I started, if you ship DDP, you never paid them until it arrived at the final destination, because that’s the way DDP, you didn’t own it until little arrived at the final destination.

After Mike and these other guys who did Ama, not you, Mike or the Mike McClary, the guys who wrote Amazing Selling Machine, the very first course, they didn’t know what they were doing. They asked for DDP, and they tell everyone else, take DDP, because it’s [00:44:00] easy. So now all these shady freight voters are doing DDP, and there the reason that it’s cost.

So little is because they’re putting it on the cheapest, slowest boat that they can. Even if you’re paying for fast boats, they’re not. They’re going on slow boats. There’s some services that give you super Matson service, so you’re paying for super Matson. Guess what? Matson’s a very small line. They only have two boats that go back and forth to China and since it takes each one of them [00:44:30] about 20 to five to 30 days, ’cause they’re slower to go from one country to the other and then back again, you’re only gonna see that boat in port six or seven times a year.

And the other one, so you’re total of 14 times out of the year. You have a chance of being on a Matson boat and it’s slow anyway. And they don’t go to all the ports of China, they go to Shanghai. Why are you paying Super Matson? It’s a nothing, it’s just a made up service. And I used to [00:45:00] complain about this on Facebook all the time.

And finally the managers at what they’re called, forests Lepard, who started this now, a bunch of ’em do it. They got ahold of me. They said, why are you yelling about this all the time? I said, ’cause it’s wrong. And they said, what? Everyone’s mother, no, they didn’t say it like that. They said it through translations, but it’s the same thing.

And I thought about it and I said, you’re right. I’m not responsible for letting, making sure [00:45:30] everyone else is informed about stuff. They didn’t even bother studying or learning or going online and, and finding out, yes, I’ll, I’ll hold back unless there’s something really bad, I’m not gonna say anything.

And we agreed. And that’s how we left it. And that’s nice. And because it’s China, uh, in China, they’ll, they give a gift. So they sent me a gift as a thank you. It was very nice. It was a thermos that has the. Temperature gauge on top so you could keep your tea hot and everything else. And because they suck as a freight forwarder, it took [00:46:00] three and a half months for their gift to get to me.

Geez, that’s a lot insane. But I have been told, funny enough, in April of 2022 when China opened up again and I was there at the Can Talk Fair, a lot of. Folks, the young men and women from Forrest Leopard who are online pretending to be experts, they came up to me at the Canton Fair. Oh, we wanna get pictures with you.

Yeah. And, and supposedly my face is all over the place [00:46:30] at Forest Leopard. And even some of their promotional things, which is pretty funny. Don’t ask for DDP. That’s like saying that going to a motorcycle rally and, and having training wheels on your bicycle, it’s not hard to learn about FOB or X works.

Guess what? It’s the tariffs and everything else we’ve been talking about. They’re based on how much you pay your commercial invoice. DDP don’t even ask you for a commercial invoice. That’s [00:47:00] where DDP is being hit hard. That’s why Trump, in his first term, added to the penalties. They know what’s going on.

And I’m not sure if I showed this to you, Michael, or not. I have a video. I had someone come to my class work with Gustos and Border Protection Chief of the Police, so they’re working on Wow. Customers and Border protection, hand in hand with Homeland Security until he moved on to the special division just for targeting [00:47:30] people who are making infractions.

Mm-hmm. Customs has an incredible database and an algorithm. They know who is messing up, who’s trying to screw things around, who’s putting in things without counting them, undervaluing them, and so on. They know who they are and if Trump wants to be cracked down on them, they will got it. They know who they are, so be very cautious when you ask for DDP.

If you say to your factory, I want to do [00:48:00] DDP. Then they’re not gonna think you’re professional. They’re not gonna think you’re able to bring benefits because you’re still using training wheels on your bicycle and you don’t even know what you’re doing. Another thing you never do is lose, make them lose face.

China is a country of respect. Ah, gosh. I’ve had some really terrible people I’ve dealt with in China, real crooks. And when it gets too much for me, my attorney is excellent at taking over for me and still allowing them [00:48:30] to keep face. But you allow them to keep face. Something hasn’t arrived and you, you ask for it two months ago and they still haven’t sent it.

You don’t say, oh, you idiot, you haven’t sent it yet. What are you doing? You’re just leading me on. No, you say the the Messenger service must have messed up because it hasn’t arrived yet. Can you work that out with them and have it resent? Again, don’t say to them they’re an idiot, even if they are an idiot.

[00:49:00] Remember when I said you’re not bringing any value by saying you sell on Amazon. So if you ask for Fins Q on every one of your products, you’re telling them, all we do is sell on Amazon. When you’re sitting there at the beginning and you’re negotiating a price, or you’ve just gone through their factory, you’re negotiating a price that’s not, when you talk about the fin scale, that’s comes to the end when you start talking about your packaging, that’s the only place it gets printed.

[00:49:30] So it’s not in the conversation yet. Don’t tell them about the fin scale, and I know some people call it an F-N-S-K-U. As I say, I’ve been with this for a long, long time. I worked at Microsoft for 14 years. A lot of my friends, we go back and forth in Seattle, Amazon, Microsoft, Google E, everyone works for everyone.

It’s like. It’s a crazy, strange network. It is Fins U and by the way, it’s also sku, not SKU. [00:50:00] If you deal with a Chinese factory, they’re going to say SKU, but that’s just the way they say it. When you deal with retailers or professionals in the US Western worlds, say the word Sku U. It’s not SKU. And if you want an example, I love the advertisements for, for iPhone when it first came out, there’s an app for that.

Everything that you load onto your phone, you call an app, but guess what they call it in China? An A [00:50:30] PP? Yeah. Yeah. If you tell your friends, oh, look at this great A PP, I found I can, I can shoot up little unicorns or something. What is an A PP? It’s an app. What is an SKU? It’s a skew. Don’t start off talking about small orders.

Talk about where you’re gonna be in two years. Now, this is fantastic. Pay attention to this one. You negotiate for that 2000 unit price. That’s the price you negotiate for [00:51:00] then. Okay, we’re ready for our first order. You want 2000? No, I something Things are going crazy right now. Inflation, tariffs. I, I, I, it’s gonna be crazy to start off at 2000.

Let’s start off with 500. No, no, no, no, no, no. The price is for 2000. Okay. What’s the surcharge? Because I know it’s not 2000. Tell me the surcharge for a small order and we can do that. Now. That changes the conversation. They’re not increasing the price. [00:51:30] ’cause it’s a small order. They’re adding a surcharge.

So now they say instead of being $6 and 22 cents, it’s gotta be $9 and 22 cents. That’s a hell of a surcharge. Well, just for, for this example. So they’re adding $3 on a unit for that first 500. So your response then is, okay, but I want to have that surcharge applied to my next order as a credit. So, and they’re [00:52:00] not losing money if you disappear after this.

They’ve made their $9 a unit. But if you’re doing well and you make that next order, that extra money, you just paid, that $1,500 or whatever that is, gets taken off of, it’s credited. So at the end of the day, you’re at the original price for everything. It works out. And your accountant’s gonna pat you on the head and say, good boy, you figured it out.

Ask for a surcharge. That’s how you get [00:52:30] into small orders. Just like asking for DDP. Don’t pay for samples. You can pay for the shipping. Don’t pay for samples. Why a sample shows you the quality of their work. My dad used to say, never buy a car that’s made on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning because the quality coming off the assembly line’s gonna be bad.

They’re hung over on Monday. They’re rushing to get outta there on Friday. It’s just a saying, [00:53:00] but it’s a good saying to think about because you want to see the cars that come off on a Tuesday afternoon. You want to see your product that comes off on a Tuesday afternoon. So let’s say that you are making these things, it’s made of resin and they make these things.

Can they make these bigger ones? Yes. But the sample is to see what quality of work comes out. So you want a sample of something they already make that’s similar to your product. [00:53:30] You wanna look at it, is the painting done and the painting’s done very, very well. Let’s get this up to the camera here. You can see a note.

The, the colors, the form, it’s flat on the bottom. So I know the quality of the work that’s. Why you want samples. There’s a mis, there’s a misnomer. Golden sample. Golden sample. If you make pancakes, particularly if you make pancakes for your kids, the first few are gonna be terrible. Takes a few pancakes till they start [00:54:00] coming out.

Perfect. It’s the same thing, particularly when you have something that’s made in the mold, like plastic injection or resin or something like that, memory foam, all these things. Let them do a few of them until they get it right, until they get that perfect pancake. That is the one that all of production’s going to follow.

That’s a golden sample. So what about this? Oh, I want them to make this, this Bluetooth speaker for the bookshelf. That, that exactly the way I want it. It makes it look like a, an antique book, [00:54:30] but it’s really a speaker. Okay. Steven’s frozen, I think I. All right. Hopefully we’ll be back in a second if we could collect some questions for him.

We’re also gonna try off networking. I know this is a little bit later than anticipated with a slower start and hopefully he gets back here. I’ll send him a mess. Mike, can you relate to this scenarios? I think you’ve dealt with a lot of the manufacturers there. Yeah, for sure. [00:55:00] Yeah. Okay. I could share some of some of my experiences, but similar to what he says, asking for like 2000 and ordering 500, you can do, it’s kind of like called like a blanket purchase order.

So you can say maybe how much you’re gonna order a year, and then you can do a smaller order is another tactic. Sometimes they just wanna plan for the year, so it is New Year’s now and Chinese New Year. Also, keep in mind, Chinese New Year is coming. If you didn’t place your orders yet, it might almost be too late.

Chinese New [00:55:30] Year’s, the end of January. There. There. Of course, it’s year end for us. It’s year end for China too, and so, but don’t just place one order. Think about how much you’re going to order for a year or, oh, he lost power. Sally said, geez, okay, maybe. But the car dealer one was funny. Ali also says his dealer stopped responding.

We asked him what day the car was made, but maybe we can’t get Steven back. I thought it was just a temporary [00:56:00] one, but the power from a storm in Seattle, hope he’s all right. But I think he was almost wrapping up. It looked like the final points. But the last point I want to talk about, I was on this slide, is never think you are not worthy, right?

A lot of times we think we’re a new seller or we’re a small or young, or not as experienced. One thing we have to realize is they wanna invest in us even if we are a new seller. [00:56:30] We all start somewhere. Right. So the point that one of his last points was, oh, he is back. Okay, great. We’re just sharing that last point about you are worthy, but we should start to wrap up anyway, Steven, but are you able to get back up on stage?

Let me make sure I can, you should be able to show pop up back again, Steven, but we’re talking about the worthy part and some of Mike I have a question. Yeah, please. Uh, while waiting for Steve to Steven to come back, I mean, when [00:57:00] you monitor the news, they’re, they’re showing that some factories are closing left and right.

So like normally what would you do, let’s say, if you, like, when you order, do you, of course you pay partial, and then how do you make sure that the factory that you outsource the work to will not just suddenly close up? I think that’s a, of course, that’s a tricky question. I mean, I don’t think there’s a straight answer, but luckily, uh, I mean I, Steven and I.

[00:57:30] We in a lot of people in our community, we go to go to China and visit the factory and know the factory. Maybe not in the first order, but I’ve, I’ve met all the factories I buy from, and so I build somewhat of a relationship with them. And when I, I try to visit them when I can. I don’t wanna visit ’em every year, but I keep an active relationship with them.

But it does make me somewhat worried. But usually there’s not, there’s only a 30 day gap between the [00:58:00] deposit and usually, usually the production time is about a month, maybe two max, 60 days a max. So you don’t have that much of a risk usually if, if they take your order. Unless they really mean to do bad by you, but also the legal system in China has getting, getting better, although it’s not, it’s, most of us are not ordering enough to make it worth a lawsuit in China or anywhere really.

But I think the point, my answer is hopefully you’ve gotten, know [00:58:30] your factory over time, built a relationship, met them, and the lead time should be 30 days to 60 days max. And that’s a risk you have to take. And then Ali’s got some good points. If they’re a big factory, they’re less likely to close and they get subsidies from the government.

I’m just reading Ali Gray’s answer here. And also you can look at their trade volume on Alibaba. He says, although I have to say Ali, I don’t know about you, but I order from pretty small factories. I, I [00:59:00] went in this past October and I visited one in Donan and there was no production happening and it looked like it was a little bit quiet and it was a little bit concerning.

I, I think she is. I had lunch with her and she’s even telling me she’s losing business to other parts of inner China. She’s in the south, so, but I still trust her and I still wanna order from her. Maybe her price is a little bit higher than inner China, but, but that’s a good point. You can check if they’re big factory, although I think a lot of us are ordering from smaller factories.

Al [00:59:30] maybe, maybe your, your business. Sometimes a big factor is I wanna work with smaller sellers in my experience, and I get more attention from a smaller factory, so it is higher risk. I guess we should all just keep that in mind that it’s a higher risk. Okay. Steven’s back. I am back. I don’t, yeah, I know.

Make myself bigger. Well, Steven. Maybe we start to wrap up. I, and it’s been a bit, it’s been a bit longer, I think, than, than I was expecting. This has gone for a while, so let’s get into [01:00:00] questions. I was going to say a couple of other things. Just I, I mean, you are worthy. I think that’s, I think that was your last point.

I don’t, before you didn’t get to the, the two things that I wanna say. Always, one, always communicate on WeChat. That is the most ubiquitous platform in China. They expect you to do that. If you’re not, they’re gonna question your professionalism and always ask for terms. It’s easiest to ask for terms at the very end, [01:00:30] and people are often frightened of that.

Don’t be ask for terms. Just like it did in that video and, and we got the terms as well. Very easy. Now, I sent you the link to two other videos. Those videos, one of both of them start off ’cause they didn’t think we could get seven x and now I’m looking for nine x. But the second video is a woman named Kim.

And as she says in that video, the owner of the factory said there’s still room for negotiation. [01:01:00] So they went back to the factory. Kim ended up with a 12 x multiplier in 40 day terms, zero down because she felt comfortable enough to ask them. She was confident. She didn’t come from, oh, I’m a sourcing manager and my boss is gonna fire me.

Please, please, please, no, she’s the owner, she and her partner, and she said, this is what we need. She got 12 x. You guys can do it. Just go [01:01:30] in there knowing that the more you bring value. And the more that what you’re talking about, you can bring down the time, labor materials, you can bring down how much they wanna charge you, and that’s how it works.

It’s not impossible. The connection I’m on, by the way, is through my, my phone because Oh, your hotspot or something? Yeah, we’re at, at the hour and a half since I know. So with all of that, let me, let me ask you if there’s questions here. Well, there was a question that, [01:02:00] I mean, I was answering best I could.

Ali also gives some great insights on the chat, but Jeanette asked, there’s, there’s factories closing now I, the economy is, seems like not as strong as some, well, how do you mitigate the risk of your factory, like closing even during or first of all, that’s great. I love that the, I like the question as well, but yeah, the economy is struggling in China and they’re doing a few things, so be aware of that.

What’s happened is their domestic demand has decreased and because their [01:02:30] domestic brand demand has decreased, the manufacturing center sector has been hit hard. And don’t forget their populations much larger than the us. Even though the US is the largest consumer in the world, China still has a large percentage that comes from its own middle class.

So what is China doing to, uh, to address that? They’re doing a couple of things. Number one. I had mentioned earlier these other platforms that are gonna be coming online, [01:03:00] they’re doing those platforms because they see, even though there’s large tariffs and they’re focusing on bricks countries, they’re also under, they also understand that they can sell directly from their factories to US consumers without going through all of this importing and stuff like that.

So there’s a number of platforms that are looking to repeat the success of Temu and Sheen, and I was told by one of the top people in the Chinese government that does [01:03:30] foreign trade, that they’re considering this, one of their pillars of China’s economic reform. So they’re all in on getting factories to sell directly to consumers.

That’s not a good thing. There is a good thing. However, they are subsidizing the factories and I saw a video with some guru talking about how they’re subsidizing factories and this is terrible. No, that means the factories can charge you less because they’re getting a bunch of money. So [01:04:00] if the factories being subsidized, they’re not going out of business.

Small ones that were already risky, those are the ones going out of business no matter how much they try to hide that from you. That was a factory once where they told us, you look around there, there’s hardly any workers. They told us they let all the workers out because they just finished a big order and they’re celebrating.

First of all, that doesn’t happen in China, but I turned to, to the, I had someone with me for our China trip and I just [01:04:30] quietly said, look around. What? Do you not see chairs at any of the stations? I. So they don’t say, Hey everyone, you got the day off, and then they take the chairs away. They were failing.

So if it’s a failing factory, it’s going to fail anyway. And now it’s gonna fail faster. Good gets the weak ones off the table. Work with the strong ones. Look to see how long they’ve been in business, look at their capitalization. That’s gonna help you a lot in figuring out who the strong ones are and [01:05:00] who the weak ones are.

What, how do you manage the import documents, certifications, et cetera, requirements that come from their factory. Is that something you need to check up front? Depends on if you’re doing OEM or ODM. ODM is something that they are selling already. They’ve created already. Even if he makes some small changes.

Let’s say you’re doing the little draft and you’re making him in yellow instead of blue, that’s ODM. They make these things for that. They should have all of the [01:05:30] certifications needed, however you want to make sure that their certifications are for the us. Because there’s lots of things they’ll sell that they can’t sell in the US that of course they’re selling to Brix countries.

They have different requirements. So just because they’re making something does not mean you can import into the us. So ask them, can this be made and, and import into the us? They say yes. S for certifications. If you’re doing something new [01:06:00] that they haven’t made before, that’s O-E-M-O-D-M, they’ve made OEM, you make, then you’re probably gonna need certifications and child safety and stuff like that.

Any serious inspection company has a laboratory they can either go to, like, they can basically sell SGS services as their own, or they own a laboratory. We go to a laboratory, my group goes to a laboratory in China, just so you can see all the tests, understand what’s done, how you can save money, and what needs to be done and so on.

The [01:06:30] one test that I, I say always say, be cautious of, or the one certification. Is ESCE certification in Europe. UL certification in us. That’s the thing for electronics. You plug that into the wall, you want to make sure that it’s safe. You’re not gonna blow up the house, make fires and stuff like that. So you have to pass a certification that certification’s $10,000, $10,000 for the certification.

That’s crazy. And you’ve gotta pay every year in addition, one to [01:07:00] $2,000. That’s why if you have something that’s low voltage, it comes, you could plug it into the wall with the USB port. And most places these, the most products these days that plugs into the wall with a USB port, they don’t sell that little brick that goes into the wall.

They just wrap up a little cord and give it to you. Why? Because if it doesn’t go into the wall, they don’t have to get that certification. So if you’re doing something, ask if it can be low voltage under five volts is the [01:07:30] best that it uses USB. And then do not send the little brick besides if you don’t do the break, you can sell it in Japan, in Thailand, in US and Germany and Australia anywhere, because you don’t have to get separate little plugs for your product.

Okay, just great. Put the little U-P-C-U-P-C-U-S-B cord and you’ll be happy. So hopefully that answered your questions. Thank you so much, Steven. Also, maybe we should talk about your China trip also. We’re [01:08:00] gonna. You’ve been both cross border summit last, last two times in Chiang Mai, I think. Definitely have me back this November.

I love you, you get the best people together and, and the whole vibe, everything you learn, it is, it’s one of the smaller, more intimate and best Amazon events every year. And so anyone who has not gone to that, you’ve got to go. And then if you’re interested, yeah. In my program, it’s your program. We go to the Canton Fair twice a year, and the URL is the Canton.

Is [01:08:30] canton fair trip.com. Very easy to to remember, do over two phases. The Canton Fair is huge. It’s the largest product exposition in the world, and in order to get all of those products in there, they break it up into three phases each about a week long. Phases two and three are the ones that impact most of us, primarily everything from toys to decor to festival products, holiday products, and so on.

Our program spans both of [01:09:00] those phases, actually starts a little bit early. We do our day of classroom training, talking about things. Like this. And then we spend a day at a factory. So you learn what to look if you visit a factory and what to discuss when you’re talking with suppliers so that you could understand right away are they a factory or a trading company, and what are their concerns when they run a factory so that you become more knowledgeable.

Then we hit the fair and just as you saw there, we do negotiations, shadow negotiations. [01:09:30] We teach you what certifications to look for. We teach you the questions to ask how to identify if something as a trading company or factory and so on, and I’m there and other people are there who are experts that you can call in any time for support.

And then we have more. We have meetings at night after the fair is over. The days between phase two and three is jam packed. We go to the port, as I had mentioned, I. We meet with an IP attorney who goes [01:10:00] over all sorts of ways of protecting your business and your IP in China mentioned you go to a certifications to an inspection company.

We go to a packaging factory just so you can see what packaging’s all about. We spend a day teaching you a half a day teaching you about how to sell to retailers in the US Absolutely all sorts of things. And then started last October and we will continue doing it. We do give a break in the middle of all these educational things and we go get a VIP tour and we see the pandas.[01:10:30]

Panda not seen pandas yet, and. Last time there was a 18 week, 1820 week old panda, which was adorable. So all of this gets squeezed in, and you can find all of it@cantonfairtrip.com. And if you have a, a question, there’s links there where you can make appointments with me or just ask Michael, he’ll connect you with me.

Yep. And, and I’d love to see you come. That’d be great. Thank you. What trade [01:11:00] fairs do I plan to attend in 2025? The biggest one for, for suppliers finding products is the Canton Fair. I may be out in Che in Frankfurt this winter. I may, uh, be at the Nuremberg Toy Fair. The US Toy Fair is opening up again in March, and I may be a, a keynote speaker at the International Home and Houseware Show that’s now called the.

Inspire show, but for sourcing, Canton Fair is way beyond [01:11:30] anything. I’ll be selling in Atlanta in four weeks, and that’s a major show for selling to independent and specialty retailers in the us And I may be back in Australia at the Melbourne and Home show. We’ll see if that happens. But if I’m not buying products, working with factories, and I’m selling products oftentimes to retailers, we just onboarded one of our guys to Lowe’s.

So. Okay, Jessica, let’s go. Are we looking at [01:12:00] other locations? Can I answer that one real fast? Sure. Be aware that a lot of locations, they’re bringing in their raw material from China, so you’ve got that cost involved. If they’re doing something in plastic or polyester, whatever, they’re bringing it in from China.

If it’s cotton, if it’s metal, they might be doing it there. If you are selling on Amazon, that’s great because you’re not obligated to O-T-I-F-O-T-I-F means on time in full. If you’re selling to retailers, then [01:12:30] you may be obligated to O-O-T-I-F means delivering on Time in full. And some of these other countries, all of these other countries, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Jakarta, and so on.

Yeah. They have difficulty making deadlines and quantities. You can go to factories in Vietnam and India and as you walk in, you suddenly realize, wait a second, I. There’s no place for a container to be parked here so that they’re doing small quantities. But if you have a product that can be made in those countries, and Michael knows that I’m looking for a factory in [01:13:00] Thailand right now that makes these, yep.

So if you have something that’s made in those countries natively, great. If not, you’re still gonna do much better with Chinese prices. So, okay. Get more questions. Okay, Patrick’s got a couple. Patrick, is it possible to do this? A side hustle working nine to five weekend Enough work for this and do you recommend one product or multiple products?

Alright, so there are people, some famous gurus out there, Tim Sanders, Brandon Young. They have [01:13:30] incredibly large portfolios. I’ve got few of my people that come to China with me and, and had and has since then come every time. I have very large portfolios of products. But for most people, starting off, particularly if you’re doing this as a side gig, focus on one product or a small curated amount of products that you can really focus on, get things done.

Can you do this while you have a nine to five job? If you have children at home, you’re gonna have to do it overnights after they go to sleep. ’cause it takes [01:14:00] a lot of focus. If you’re in the US or in the west, that’s great because now you’re working on China time. But it all depends. I have. People I know who have, who have gone to school remotely, particularly during Covid, but they go to classes at night.

They work during the day. So yes, you could do anything if you’ve got the drive to do it. I, but also sometimes I. You can squeeze it in at other times. I’ve worked at Microsoft for 14 [01:14:30] years. I had one time for a year that I was in a position that the hiring group hired me, but the group I was working with actually had an application developed that did what I was supposed to do.

So I had nothing to do except act as a resource for information. And the rest of the time, I sat at my little cube. So I set up my Microsoft computer and my own computer, and I was working on my own business every day. So if you could squeeze it in, great. But if you’re new, if you’re doing it as a side gig, try to focus [01:15:00] on a smaller amount of products.

Products that have a lot of growth, products that are less expensive to get into it the first time. If you’re doing plastic, you’re paying for molds. If you’re doing wood, you’re not. So if you’re doing resin, there’s very inexpensive molds. If you’re doing something that is fabric, it’s inexpensive to get into paper.

Paper products so inexpensive. So understand how your products are made. You can watch on YouTube a series called How It’s Made, and if [01:15:30] it’s something that requires a high upfront cost and you’re doing this as a side gig, realize it’s gonna cost you more. Okay. When is a failed product and need to switch to a new niche or a new product?

Good question. Yeah, goodness. Adam Smith wrote The Law of Supply and Demand, and the more that there’s a supply and the demand is stagnant, that price is going to go down when your product is being sold by a lot of people. If it gets swamped, it’s going to drop in price. It’s inevitable, it will [01:16:00] happen. Get out before it drops too low.

There goes the lights and the power again. But I’m on my phone, so that’s okay. I think. Yeah, I mean, and more questions. Patrick. Talk to Michael. Get on my email. Reach out to me. We’ll get on Zoom and we’ll answer all your questions. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Ally said you’re the, yeah, you’re definitely the real one, Steven.

We really appreciate. Oh, I love this business. Yeah, that’s great. Alright, well yeah, you, you, you’re on your hotspot in a, in a storm there, [01:16:30] so I’ll let you, I’ll let you go. Anything for you, Michael? Anything? Thanks, thanks. Yeah, so definitely, I mean, I, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been at the Campton Fair where Steven’s done his trip and I’ve seen his students and that they’re really getting full attention and value for the whole time.

Like he says, like morning, afternoon, at night, there’s workshops, there’s on onsite visits at the booth, he can go with you to negotiate some of those videos you’ll see in today that we sent you. But it’s definitely a intense time [01:17:00] and we’ll, we gotta do more together, Steven, and probably bring, bring some people from our community with you next time, so.

Oh, that would be great. Yeah. Fantastic. Thanks so much Steven, and yeah, please let me know if, or you can, on fair trip.com or let me know and we can help connect you with Steven. So I’ll, I’ll pop into the networking session. There’s table modes in the software if people want to chat, chat a little bit. I know it’s been a long session, but if people want to say hi, I’ll be there.

I’ll let [01:17:30] Steven go unless he wants to test that out, but I’ll, I I am set. Yeah, I think you gotta go, you gotta go figure out what’s happening with our electricity here, so. Yeah. Yeah. Take care Steven. Alright and, alright, thanks everybody. The future of e-commerce is waiting. 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 have, Hamza [01:18:00] is our first marketplace in this new ecosystem is 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 marketplace or the overview of this protocol and subscribe for updates@loadpipe.com.

See you there. Thank you Steve selloff for sharing again the URL for this show notes and links and [01:18:30] other stuff@globalfromasia.com slash multiple. And actually, we’re. Blessed with that in Christmas. You know, I think a lot of us make money on Q4 in e-commerce or retail game because that’s when everybody’s buying gifts and last minute shoppers.

So that’s when we also get that, uh, higher multiple. Uh, especially some of our gift category brands like Kellar Brothers, we’re increasing the price steadily. Um, almost trying to purposely slow down sales because [01:19:00] you wanna stay in stock. So, you know, I hope, I hope you all had a good Q4. We were pretty blessed and, uh, fortunate, but of course, it’s not easy.

It’s not just a, it’s not just an automatic. You gotta work hard, you gotta be persistent. But thanks so much for watching. That was a longer one. I hope you enjoy. We’ll also link up to a lot of those things in the show notes. Again, you can check it out@globalfromasia.com slash multiple. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global [01:19:30] from asia.com.

That’s ww.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.