Small Initial Orders
This may seem obvious but you’d be amazed how many small and sometimes large companies fall into the trap of over stocking. One clever email from a supplier offering a special discount or just a rush of blood to the head and all of a sudden you could have several thousand slow moving units sitting on the shelves taking up valuable space. You’ll also have a big hole in your bank balance where your precious working capital used to be.  So as obvious as it may sound take heed, when making stock purchases try to buy in as small quantities as possible, even if this means the unit cost is a little higher. Ignore the suppliers MOQ’s (Minimum Order Quantities) most suppliers will fall over themselves to make a sale.
We never make an initial order of more than 5–10 units, this allows us to test the market and the quality (of both the product and supplier). Even if the product sells really well, always buy as few units as possible, the money is much better in your deposit account. Many products have a life span where it is either superceded or general interest wanes. By ordering on an ‘as required’ basis you won’t get caught with access stock when sales begin to tail off.
We use several Chinese suppliers who can turnaround an order in as little as seven days. We can make an order in China on Thursday and ship to our customers on Thursday/Friday the following week. It’s good to fulfill your orders quickly, customers love placing orders one day and receiving their goods the next. However, if you do come unstuck and run out of stock, 3-4 days is not considered an unreasonable internet fulfillment timescale.
Also important, most Asian suppliers they will expect payment up-front. When dealing with a new supplier a small initial order will allow you to test the legitimacy of the supplier without committing large sums of money. That said, in the literally thousands of overseas purchases we have made, we have only been caught out by a company not sending the goods on a couple of occasions.
In general you will find the Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese and Hong Kong markets to be very honorable. We purposely do not trade with some countries as certain markets are known to be very corrupt. For legal reasons I will not be specific, but with just a little research you should be able to identify the worst culprits. So be careful, always do your research and keep your initial orders small.
Small initial orders also allow you to test the quality of the merchandise. Although rare, sometimes the quality of the goods may not be up to standard. When this happens it’s often not worth sending the goods back to the supplier. We always include a ‘special offers’ or ‘ex-demonstration’ section on our websites, where, as long as you’re really honest about the capabilities and condition of the goods, you can recoup your investment and often still make a little profit.