Yiwu Catastrophe! Quality Issues on Our Product Order, Rejected and Next Steps on Product Sourcing

The blood and sweat – and yes – tears – of a physical product business is already coming out – episode 13 and the first order we have – has been rejected. Well, some of it – our core product – just could not be accepted. We bring our sourcing and operations partners at Para Living Inc- Lorenzo and Roland – on the show to share about the rejection, the story, and the fuming Yiwu shop owner. A few lessons and talks about what is next.

√ Our product brand
√ QC company
√ Andy Church from Insight Quality – Overview of China Quality Control with Insight Founder

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There it is, letting it all hang out. To be honest, this is the pain point for me in ecommerce, dealing with these suppliers.

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Welcome to the Global from Asia Ecommerce Gladiator Series where you can follow along the progress of setting up a Cross Border Ecommerce business from start to finish. Hear insights of real product research, Amazon FBA, China manufacturing, branding, marketing, and all the blood, sweat, and tears of building a global business from Asia. Now let’s tune in.

Mike: Blood, sweat, and tears. I remember I made up that intro script and we are already at episode 13. The Ecommerce Gladiator Series here at Global From Asia and there is already blood, sweat and tears. this is part of doing the live case study. We have a situation and Lorenzo is giving us an update. We had a situation with the product already. But luckily we have good people on the team and good partners and service providers. So we’re able to fix it but there’s still some ongoing disputes. Also, I mean I know I’ve been repeating this a lot but Lorenzo is gonna be done until our Cross Border Matchmaker, Kadrian’s gonna be there, I’ll be of course there and others. So, if you guys can make it, it’ll be awesome and let’s tune in to this show episode 13 Ecommerce Gladiator some blood coming out already.

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Mike: So, yeah. I mean this is insane. We used Skype for the podcast recordings. The Skype basically doesn’t really work in China. So for Lorenzo is trying his best, I’m actually in Thailand right now so my internet works.

Lorenzo: Lucky you.

Mike: Lucky me. This is just exact, I guess it’s really part of this. Rolands gotta go so we got to do this. So let’s just do. I guess anybody in China knows the internet sucks and it doesn’t work. Got to do WeChat.

Roland: So what do you guys last a run down?

Mike: Basically.

Lorenzo: Just start over.

Mike: Yeah, exactly just start over.

Lorenzo: Okay. So, first of all, as soon as you received the box, we received the 12 cartons, each carton containing.

Roland: No, let’s start from their very, very beginning.

Mike Yeah, like you went Monday. Technically Monday October 6.

Lorenzo: Okay. Yeah, I thought this is just about the defect. So, I got there at 9 am. Ino was there, as usual, to pick me up at the train station, very awesome guy and we went. So, I told them the game plan. I call them that the espresso makers will be delivered by noon, so 2 and half hours to going look at some boxes. Because no problem when straight to, I think it was in the section district 3 on the first floor. That’s where all the box suppliers are located. We went to a few stores. Most of them have a very high MLQ 3 to 5,000 units or they would be selling them in sets of 3 or 4. Different sizes and they were not very interested in working with us. I walked into 1 unassuming store. As soon as I walked in, the shop owner greet us with the warmest most genuine welcome you could imagined. And they were friendly, they were awesome. We told them that we are looking for test of 450 units. He said no problem we can work out. There were quite a lot of different designs and sizes, so we got them. I took pictures into group and I remember Roland, you were telling me that hey this looks like a shoe box, we don’t need a shoe box. After that I told them we want a plain box just like a carton and she gave us all the information but as time was approaching it was about 11 o’ clock that what we have to leave because we have to go back to the warehouse. So on the way we stopped at the couple of other stores, again same stories. High MLQ or selling in such. We did count, the store was very nice, we said we’ll be coming back in the afternoon with samples of all the products so we can test them and the boxes and gets the live dimensions on the spot. So no problem. So we’re about to arrive at the warehouse, the driver called us and we told them we will be there at about 5 minutes which we did. As soon as we arrive there the guy was already started to unload the boxes from his truck. So me and Ino we gave him a hand because I was extremely excited, Ino was excited I felt like a kid on Christmas day with all the boxes and all the gift and all that. Seriously, I took a lot of pictures even at the one of the guys working there, I took a picture of me and Ino. Switching the carts and all that. Pose with the group. It was awesome, opening the boxes and the packages are very nice and all that. Im very excited when opening each of them. We work in team, Ino worked on half of the load and I worked on the other half. We opened all the cartons and we took about 5 or 6 packages from each carton of sample and as soon as we opened them i noticed something wrong. I noticed that the actual espresso maker, they look quite cheap. Quite like almost plastic. I knew there were aluminum because on every single one that I opened, there was a bunch of holes defect and I will name them. There were stains, pretty much all of them and now just more stains. I’ll show you the picture guys like very bad. And the welding defect that welding jobs, and I know welding because I worked as a welding inspector for a year back in 2014 so I know how a good work should look like. And after that quite a few of them, the lid on top of them they would either not closed fully or they would not open fully. One or two also when you disassembled the bottom part which is where the water chambers located it would make a very loud noise. Like very disturbing noise. So I showed that to Ino, and Ino also wasn’t happy on the package. He was looking at it, he was shaking his head like what’s going on? He said it’s not looking good. So I told is it passing or failing? He said right now, he told me for a package to fail, 20% would have to be defective, right now looking like over 80% are defective. So I said what, so now I’m serious over 80%. I didn’t want to believe them. It’s not that I didn’t trust them but because you know, I’m always optimistic positive guy. So maybe we opened the wrong box. So I keep on opening more and more boxes. Same problems kept on recurring. Staying some of all of them and quite few of them. And side when you open when you disassembled the bottom they were a bunch of little stones and a black stone that even quite a couple to add very strong, burning smell side of them. I said is this new, have they been used before or what? Because the smell seems someone have used it before and even inside quite a few as I said, bad molding jobs. So long story short, Ino told me, don’t bother about it buddy, it’s over 80% fail. I’m gonna tell you straight up, don’t even bother, will gonna go back to the shop owner and talk to her. So that’s what he did, we put them back on the boxes. We went back to the shop. We took 4 samples with, I mean the 4 worst ones. We took them with us to show it to the shop owner. So once we arrived there, as usual the shop owner she claimed and Ino had warned me or she’d gonna try, they’re perfect they’re nice, it’s you guys foreigners that are too picky or too demanding. And exactly.

Roland: Of course, the customer is always that, right?

Lorenzo: Of course, the Chinese always right and the foreigners always wrong. So, when we arrive there, oh no they’re perfect, they’re fine. This is the quality and the funny thing is, this is the quality that you should expect from the market in Yiwu. So I said excuse me lady if you have told me that before I would have ask you one question, how can we get the higher level of quality. Because we’re not looking for a cheapest product. Were looking for high quality products and we would, I have no problem whatsoever to pay extra for higher qualities which you didn’t notify us oh this is the Yiwu market everything is this quality. I mean I don’t speak Chinese but Ino speaks Chinese he was talking with them, we were there for at least an hour. And at one time Ino told me that and I asked how come all of them are pretty much unusable? And she said basically it’s because all the shops, from what I understood, Ino told me that the shops in Yiwu if they received all the leftover in the factory. So, the factories make a produce like 5 to 10,000 MLQ’s for big customers and all the leftovers all the bad ones that those customers don’t want to ship over to shops in Yiwu, that’s what actually Ino told me and from what the shop owner told him exactly. And I was completely stunned when I heard that I said wow that’s insane. And I said so how can we and then another thing she said that, this is what you should expect this is the market and I said, no lady you should have told us.

Roland: This is you.

Lorenzo: I mean, I understand but this is something that you should have informed us ahead of time that hey just like I’m on a great conversation. Mike, you mentioned that on the first factory product that you did the manufacturer ask if you want something cheaper and you said yes and you got the product.

Mike: Yeah, they can go really cheap.

Lorenzo: And I said, well we’re not looking for cheap product, we’re not selling to developing country. We’re selling to the US and Canada and this is some of the most demanding and pickiest customers in the world especially in Amazon. If you were to send any of these, Amazon will get murdered by the customer. They will all ask for refund, would lose all our money and with all the negative reviews, Amazon will shut down our account and business will be dead. I said, there’s no we can accept this order. And after the funny thing is that ok no problem we will take back the product. We will pick up them up. We will give back your deposit which is 1,000 RMB that I paid and thank God because she want 2,000 downpayment but I’m smart enough to only give 1,000, so we reduced that to 1,000. And then she said okay, we’re going to charge 200 for the delivery guy. So I said excuse me, why, because the guy has to go and pick it up so I say, well excuse me and I told Ino, I’m pretty sure the delivery guy is a salary guy working for her is not gonna cost any extra or the truck is her truck, she’s just trying to pocket the money and just trying to get a free lunch from us. And I told Ino there’s no way my boss will never agree to that. So we were both very stubborn and I was chatting with the group and all that rolling at the genius line and she’s wanted to keep 200 and we also want to keep 200 RMB worth of products which is 15 units I told them. Ino at first wasn’t , Ino felt embarrassed, I felt bad for him because he was in the middle. It’s not his fault, I told him buddy it’s not your fault, you just have to tell them what needs to be done. So he did an amazing job he explained that to her and as soon as Ino told her that she laugh, and she said in English, no, no. So I said that’s the way either we do it this way, I’m not gonna leave 200 for free. And I told her, you have to get back the goods because it’s defective and the defective is not our fault. If it’s our fault we would have no problem whatsoever to cover any cost s a result of our mistake. But in this case is not our mistake. Its because you’re, the product that you have provided us is unacceptable. We cannot accept it. Therefore it is not our problem, it’s not our mistake and we don’t have any responsible in that. So this went on for another half an hour, for good an hour and half, and finally she reluctantly agreed to it and said okay, she’s gonna send someone to driver to pick it up. Pick the goods from Ino’s warehouse today, tomorrow which is today. And then have the factory recount them to have the 432 units and then she said that she would send me back the money the 1,000 RMB on WeChat. Now, let see if she keeps her word I have a strong feeling that she’s just probably gonna try do some funny thing at the last minute.

Roland: I would not still send out the entire amount back.

Lorenzo : Well, I have no control over that. The goods right now at the warehouse and Ino is not at the warehouse right now, he’s with his wife in another factory, doing another inspection for another company. It’s a huge warehouse a lot of companies load and unload the goods and there’s a lot of different companies that are working and honestly there’s nothing more that I can do. I cannot be there today. So I told Ino to wait, once the driver comes, you can open the box in front of them , the cartons. You can do visual count, in the 12 cartons each containing 36 units and that’s a total of 432 units and once that is done and the driver confirms it then we would have the shop owner to send the money to me and then you can allow the driver to drive off. I would love to do that but I have an inspection due tomorrow to another location and I didn’t want to you know put the responsibility on him. So I understand the guy. So now let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow. But just the other day that with guys that dodge, because if we have taken that, that load our business would have been dead, done then upon arrival. Because there’s no way, the customer would just have kill us with bad reviews. Every single one of them.

Roland: Yeah, this is your, this is the decision that we have to take even no brainer, even though in the beginning, we were debating whether, it’s only small stains and ah…

Lorenzo: No, it’s not.

Roland: We could clean it but it was clear after you sent some pictures that it’s no brainer.

Lorenzo: It wasn’t just a stain because I even thought for a moment that I even told Ino that I would be coming back on Friday and I will spend all day from 8 o’ clock to 5 o’ clock whatever time off.

Roland: Taking the best ones.

Lorenzo: Just clean them myself.

Roland: This is nice but what you’re doing here is we’re building processes. And you cannot do that every single time they’re ordering. So this is the right, so basically for the listeners while were decided to do is cancel the order Lorenzo fun a little bit with the shop owner to get his money back, gather our money back and he decided to visit our nearby city with this factory located that are making the same product or similar product and they decided to go there on Friday and basically take a look what’s there and take a look what we can negotiate. What we can bring from there and I believed even though these are factory Lorenzo you should not be afraid of them for the MOQ because…

Lorenzo: No, we’re not, of course we’re not.

Roland: I’m pretty sure they would want you, us to buy 10,000 pieces but we can tell them that okay we will buy 10,000 pieces but right now, we’re buying 500.

Lorenzo: Yeah, exactly, that’s a test run. As you said, the game plan is go through actually to the source on Friday. Whereas for Ino we can have much more negotiation, much more leverage and better quality. We can expect a higher quality because it was straight from the factory. And big, huge that I can give you anyone Amazoner or any type of ecommerce, any types of manufacturing China, you not and I beg you do not order blindly without having them check by a professional or QC guy. That QC guy that we hire has saved the scam, without them would have been, would have lost the money and our business would have been dead upon arrival. And again I keep hearing and reading on podcast that guys just rolled the dice, placed an order for 5,000 units or 1,000 units send them, wire transfer to the supplier on Alibaba or I don’t know how many thousand dollars and they often pray for the best. That’s not, that’s worst than gambling. Instead hire, spend couple of hundred dollars to, I mean a little money a 500 dollars and get a quality professionals to do the inspection for you. They would be a life saver, different between success and failure in your business. That’s the best, biggest step that I can give to anyone. Hire quality a professional team. I have no problem I mean we’re lucky to have Andy’s team and Ino. What’s the company’s name? Inspection Quality?

Mike: Insights Quality. We’ll link it up on the show notes. He’s been in our podcast, well we have them on our series. He’s also been in our episode 99 in our interview series. Yeah, Andy is great, I mean.

Lorenzo: He’s absolutely amazing. And Ino has been absolutely nothing sort of phenomenal. I would never get tired of saying that. The guy is super patient and without him I would be lost. Seriously and I mean it. I’m in a big hole right now.

Mike: Yeah, I agree.

Roland: Okay.

Mike: We have a big problem though I mean like luckily, hopefully get the thousand RMB. But honestly I don’t want it, but the worst is 150 bucks US. I mean it’s not gonna like kill us if we lose a bit deposit so I don’t want us to lose so much focus on fighting this shop owner. Just a couple of points that I interviewed Jerry Gan, he’s a CEO of AMZ Tracker and also Value Link here in Shenzhen. I told him, he’s Chinese he’s like the best and worst place to buy there are really bad quality and even the shop owner saying, kind of questioning my thinking about you at all to be honest. I mean this is what I heard as well.

Lorenzo: Yeah, for some products, there can be good like the first 2 products that we ordered from Ino’s inspection. They said that, the spice pans they can perfect from what he said. And the other item the 16 decorative art on top of the espresso, they were supposed to be 16 on each set, but they were like 15 or 14 and 1 or 2 duplicates so that’s no biggie we can always change that. For small items, they can be good with anything more substantial, more sophisticated. I would highly recommend going directly to the source factory. And from now on my approach my tactic would also be able to go straight to the factory. Especially if you’re building a brand based on quality on high end product. So that’s gonna be a way to go from now on.

Mike: There’s some, I guess obviously I have experienced, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think you guys know I did bar sending supplies for 8 years. We sold stainless steel cocktail shakers and bottler openers all from Yiwu not actually Yiwu but Zhejiang province. I still have those relationships I’m thinking we should tap into some of those guys. I think Lorenzo there you even mentioned some in the cities that I’ve been to. Of course I’ve been to Yiwu market but also I’ve been to this Yongkang is where I always into at man. You can look back on my blog from 2008. I was like in this, it’s a real local place man, just like really local.

Lorenzo: Yeah, that’s exactly where I’ve been going on Friday.

Mike: That’s where I got a lot of my bar supplies so I know those suppliers I can look them up.

Lorenzo: Yes please and Ino.

Mike: I don’t want to get complicated here but I get to thrown out there. I bought a lot of stainless steel from India. I have a supplier in India, I was buying my stainless steel bar products from.

Roland: India is a new China, yeah.

MIke: This is where it’s gonna be complicated you know. I was buying from Thailand, India and China for my bars.

Lorenzo: You are doing the real cross border transactions, man.

Mike: It gets real complex coz you cant consolidate. It’s so expensive to consolidate the shipping. I was trying to find free trade zones like where you want to, but then you still gonna ship them to this different countries. You got to, someone’s got to be a separate shipments. But I know for a fact India’s gonna be much cheaper for stainless steel, metal than China. China is known for injection mold plastic.

Lorenzo: Especially now with this new ecology or whatever you tax them on increasing the cost materials.

Mike: I can look up my supplier in India. He was like the best, I heard he engineered a lot of my suppliers from my competitors.

Lorenzo: My approach and my vision for this brand for the future would be first we could start up on this for the first, second order from China but then eventually I would like to upgrade to say I’m looking at the suppliers in Italy coz they were it sell a real Italian steel makers. I asked Antonio my buddy is in a coffee business. I asked them to find me some suppliers. Because if you can’t find a supplier, a reliable supplier in Italy then makes it a high quality. Even if we can get lets say for 5 or 6 even up to 10 year each, we could turn them around and sell them for 50, if you put a nice package. Because my vision is to build like a, I would say a premium brand not a cheap brand. I want a build a premium brand. That was my plan and my vision from the beginning. Like an affordable premium if that makes sense, if you know what I mean.

Roland: Yeah, on the other hand, we don’t know if the Italian really custom made in China.

Lorenzo: Some are made in Italy. Like for example, the main competitor, they all made in Italy.

Mike: But the question about is that is the competitor might be the factory. Do they, probably manufacture themselves?

Lorenzo: Yeah, that’s something we would have to study further and I will do my own research. I’m planning maybe I’m going back to Canada early November and sit down with Antonio and talk with them really seriously and get, pick up this brand on that. Even eventually for Chinese new years even fly to Italy with Antonio and go on a scouting mission there.

Mike: Well, this is creating a lot of things to consider to be honest. Originally, the idea was to buy from China and sell globally for this business.

Roland: Yeah, for now I would stick to our first order.

Lorenzo: Yeah, for now, yes exactly.

Roland: On Friday and you can take a look at the factory where the village whether do they electric, gas, or boat or neither. Since you have to drop in 5 minutes I still wanna go over some stuff who’ve one of them is the back, the packaging that we revised a little bit yesterday. Mike, I’m not sure if you were hearing.

Mike: Yeah, I follow that.

Roland: So, it’s pretty good because the first box price was received was 7.3 RMB and right now we have a little less than 2 RMB for the box which is probably not as nice box as the 7.3. But for extra we have a carton bag printed with our logo on it just under 3 dollars that will be able to put our espresso maker and make it very, very neat and nice. Its 100% cotton, I made sure that the factory is doing the most environment friendly materials. I talk to them about it and they said what they can do is the 100% cotton with the logo on it, and they got it just under 3 RMB. So this means that receiving 2.5 RMB with the packaging and its better. So this are the improvements these are the kind of improvements that we want to look at for because this is like thousand and thousand RMB saved better quality product, better looking product and were leaving a legacy behind the cotton bags. The cotton bags will include our sticker on which includes the logo, slogan and the website so, anything that they will used the box for they’ll have us on it pretty much.

Lorenzo: I agree. Better approach.

Mike: Yeah, I think. Like what I’ve talked to a lot of people about our differentiation I think well this is a struggle right now. Our differentiations will be able to have this little accessories and bags and packaging. From this Mayers talks, like again back to my previous business, my best selling products in my bars place business was a bartending kit 13 piece kit. It actually combined China and India products. I didn’t assemble in China coz it was, I had to do it in the US with the fulfill my house not the FBA but different one. So I think our differentiation would be able to nimble with our packages, our nice packaging our accessories, our kits, our bundles. I really believe that’s a good way differentiate.

Lorenzo: Yeah. So, I will throw another idea just out and hear and I would like you guys to know what you think. You should also not disregard say, if we can find a quality supplier that can produce those item with the reasonable price, in the US. I will be doing some research on suppliers in the US, if you can find I mean at least we should be opened to the idea not just looking to only one area. We should be open to many options and go for the best one, I think. What do you guys think?

Roland: I miss the beginning.

Mike: Yeah I didn’t get the beginning either.

Lorenzo: I said, I would also be open to looking for suppliers to produce those espresso makers, why not in the US?

Roland: Well, these are the original idea that we got to stick to. I believe because we’re showing the road how to create a successful Amazon FBA business having source from China. First to do it globally ecommerce later on obviously we have so many options but right now we are sticking to the ground and doing what should ask for. Meanwhile, Mike you remember Simon, we had some conversation with him in gmail on our sourcing gmail account? He was demanding an answer from us or asking an answer from us and I answer yesterday to his product and basically I asked back if he has anything related to the coffee industry. Now he sent us 2 products, one of them is a coffee machine, a big, big machine. And the other one is a coffee grinder which I just asked if it’s OEM so they could customize it at all or put our logo on it. So that could be something complimentary since our coffee maker needs a grinder if they want to use the coffee beans.

Mike: Agreed. Yeah, I have so many Simon friends so just to recap people, I don’t think we have talked about this Simon. So Simon is in Hong Kong, hes a manufacturer or a trading company supplier. He follows us then he’s trying of course making opportunity sell to us. So he’s been, I guess it’s a good or bad thing, we get a lot of people listen to our show trying to. Of course I mean we welcome trying to invest their product. Sorry I missed that email. But yeah I mean if he has some coffee related products, I think we open to do some terms I think he said even.

Lorenzo: Hey Mike, sorry to catch you up, your upcoming Matchmaker event? Why not reach out to factories in our niche, coffee factories, I’m sure quite a few in Shenzhen and Guangdong reach out to them would be awesome to me. If we can find a factory in Shenzhen and Guangdong that is reliable that would probably the best option for short term.

Mike: I’m gonna be honest. I mean, I’ve done sourcing for bar supplies which is stainless steel coz I did a cocktail shakers and bottle openers and the Guangzhou suppliers were basically just buying from Zhejiang province. There were trading companies. They were not manufacturers. They were middlemen they told me straight up. I mean this is, I know the stainless steel market really well in China. Its expensive first of all and second of all, all in Zhejiang province. I mean maybe there’s some steel manufacturing in Guangzhou but Guangzhou is mostly from my understanding clothing, textiles. And then Shenzhen is electronics so when you told me found this in the market in Yiwu, you had a good quality supplier. I knew the price wouldnt be higher. I knew they could go to India for cheaper. But I just said let’s roll with this and see how it goes. And now it’s a bunch of garbage. I think that they can give us a higher quality one if we got to do an order of a thousand pieces. Seems like Yiwu is what people told me is a bunch of garbage reject that they sell to people for the.

Lorenzo: Pretty much.

Mike: It’s selling a bunch of rejected products form the mass production that got rejected by third party quality control company like Insight Quality. So, they just roll them in the box and they say this goes to the Yiwu trading companies and then we buy it. It’s going to Africa and Middle East that is what I have always understood with Yiwu. I have never bought from Yiwu. I always, I don’t know. I was hoping to be, this wouldn’t happen but..

Lorenzo: Yiwu can be good for some sample product like sample plastic, basic product can be good. The commodities can be good buy anything that is more sophisticated then its better to go directly to a factory.

Mike: So, we, I need to buy a thousand pieces of espresso makers. I think we got to do that. It seems like that’s our.

Lorenzo: But the problem and the main concern with this is the factory, delivery date of 30 to 45 days. Are you people willing to wait that long?

Mike: Lorenzo, I don’t know if we have a choice, unless you want a bunch of rejected Yiwu products.

Lorenzo: That’s true.

Roland: Alright guys. The time is up right now.

Mike : This is interesting call, but I guess Roland, I guess we just keep rolling but will keep.

Lorenzo: I guess we have a better picture on Friday.

Mike: Thanks, Roland.

Roland: Okay, bye bye.

Lorenzo: As I was saying, I guess will have a much better idea and a better picture after Friday. I will actually go and talk with the actual factories and see what’s the, deal with them directly.

Mike: Yeah, I’ll start tapping into mine, too. And yeah, I mean we have to basically back, we have some accessories but I guess my question with these other products we have. Are they good? We got some other stuff they’re okay.

Lorenzo: The ones that the I ordered and get inspected by Ino, they are fine. In the meantime, maybe we can, if for example if the espresso maker will gonna take let’s say 45 days why not. What we have now as a bundle maybe add another 1 or 2 other small items to go with it and start selling something right away. What do you think about that Mike?

Mike : Yeah I think, my thinking is we do some anything that’s, if we come into this coffee niche we do something we do something simple. Honestly, I think we gonna go back to plastics. I think we got to go back to injection mold plastics. I’m really afraid the stainless steel in China I mean this is expensive and we got to run thousand pieces but, I have not had good quality with stainless steel in China.

Lorenzo : But these are not stainless steel. These are aluminum.

Mike: Any kind of metal I believe China is known for plastics. If you look at most majority factories in China is a mass production of injection mold plastics which is taking hot plastic injecting into a mold and taking in deep burning it. I didn’t, I worked in a factory in America. Basically it’s just 2 big pieces of metals stamping together. Squaring in some hot liquid of plastic and then opening it up dropping amount and then they cleaned it up. That is what China is known for mass production of injection mold plastic.

Lorenzo: And also I will keep an eye open for other styles of coffee makers, espresso makers when I go on those factories on Friday.

Mike: When I talked to some of my friends about this, they were thinking we’re doing electronic espresso makers. I think China is probably getting stronger in the electronics of espresso makers than the non electronics. I think the non electronics is better in Italy or India that I might be honest. Because of the raw materials are there. The metals in China are being imported. Basically as far as the update for this podcast and this call, we have some accessories we can decide to maybe sell those but of course our core product is espresso maker non electric. And we got to decide if we switch to electric like Roland was saying we had a supplier that, has found me and contacting me, us. He has an electronic coffee maker or espresso maker. I have to confirm what that is. But I do believe that’s the strength of China is the electronics, electrical. So do we go into that or not? Or do we stick to this metal traditional product?

Lorenzo: Also, we have to look at our target market now. Nowadays, especially if we do go ahead with the student age population For most people I talked to all, nobody has a gas stove in any campuses. They all use the all oven electric plug that probably easy for them to use it or even one, was just to plug. Use plug it in and off they go. We also have to keep that in mind unless we’re targeting, lets say a type of people that use gas stove which would be backpackers or campus. We also keep that mind as well.

Mike: Yeah understand. So I think that’s maybe enough for today’s update. You’re gonna go on Friday, the show is going live the same time you were in the factory. I’ll be getting you some suppliers, I’ll be talking with my some old relationships. And we have to make some hard decisions coz you know we’re now into getting towards the end of October and were trying to make sure quality is the most important, right. So we’re lucky we have Insights Quality – Andy Church and Ino helping us about this. And we didn’t lose money or maybe our biggest losses was the 1,000 RMB deposit which we.

Lorenzo: Hopefully, not.

Mike: But now we gonna go back to kind square 1 with our core product and see what we can do. So, alright thanks Lorenzo. Keep up the hassles.

Lorenzo: Alright. Will do, you too. Good luck with everything you have a conference, too. Will you be speaker in Bangkok?

Mike: Yeah, I’m doing the meet up with podcasting and stuff. So I’m here in this conference has always inspire me though to inspire me to get Global From Asia podcast. And also we got, the coffee journey podcast going. It will be online, will link it up on Global From Asia, you’re doing a great interview. I had a meet up last night on Monday with GFA listeners here in Bangkok and they have asked me how to use the product. We still are going into this coffee niche. We still gonna do this podcast. We’re still gonna building up this audience. We still got to do the survey. We still got to learn about market just because we don’t have a product yet doesn’t mean we don’t keep developing the market. It’s gonna take a long time. So let’s just stay positive and we will solve this. Alright, Lorenzo.

Lorenzo: Alright man, have a great, talk to you later.

Mike: Roland’s pretty funny earlier complaining about Skype issues. It’s like literally roll, let it roll. That’s what we’re doing. It’s a little bit shy but were putting all out there. And I’m already getting people messaging me like Madden, our insurance guru. We got to get them on the show, thanks for listening Mad. We gonna get more guys sharing. He likes the series and it’s bloody, it’s sweaty and its teary. I don’t know, a little bit teary eyed. It’s a little bit frustrating for me, I’ve been through this nightmare before and were putting this nightmare out there. But I do know the experience and we’ll gonna be working with the team. By the time the show is online will probably have some better solutions and we’re gonna be putting out there for you guys too. I’m here in Bangkok at the DCBKK Conference when the show is online. I’ll be the Mastermind there, its pretty amazing. This part of this very show and just talked to, share his story at the Cross Border Matchmaker. We all have blood, sweat, and tears. Be in the business owners, be in the business, if you can’t take it then you could get out of it but if you can ride through the rough patches it makes the sunny days even better was that Dolly Parton? You would appreciate the sunny days than it wasnt the rainy days something like that but. A little bit of rainy days here with the Sisitano brand and some people are commenting about our very basic website. But that’s what it takes. Putting it out there, making things happen. Not having excuses and doing it. So I hope you’re doing it too. My phone is blowing up right now, but let’s talk. Bye bye.

Welcome to the Global from Asia Ecommerce Gladiator Series where you can follow along the progress of setting up a Cross Border Ecommerce business from start to finish. Hear insights of real product research, Amazon FBA, China manufacturing, branding, marketing, and all the blood, sweat, and tears of building a global business from Asia.