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The Tariff Survival Guide for eCommerce Businesses · eCommerce Podcast

• 0:00
  Well, hello, I'm Matt Edmundson and you are listening to
• 0:04
  the E commerce podcast. You know what? Since 2002, really long
• 0:09
  time, I've been building, selling and yes, occasionally failing
• 0:13
  at online business. I love creating unique equity partnerships
• 0:17
  with e commerce brands and helping them grow from where they
• 0:20
  are to where they want to be. That's what I do now on a day to
• 0:22
  day basis. So I want to learn about e commerce as much as you and
• 0:26
  to do that every week I get to chat with great guests just like
• 0:30
  Omer. I'm a to have you on the show, man. Tell us a little bit about
• 0:34
  yourself, where you're from, what you do and all that good stuff.
• 0:38
  Thank you for having me. My name is Omer, originally from Israel,
• 0:42
  and for the past decade I'm in Asia. I cannot believe I'm saying
• 0:46
  a decade. I sound so old.
• 0:51
  You sound old. I've been doing e Commerce since 2002. That makes
• 0:56
  me feel really old.
• 0:56
  Yeah, it's older, I have to say.
• 1:02
  Brilliant. So yeah, for the past decade you've been living in
• 1:04
  Asia.
• 1:05
  So it started by traveling and long story short, I help brands to
• 1:12
  source profitable products from Asia, China, Vietnam, India,
• 1:16
  Japan and many other countries. We help in all the process
• 1:21
  of supplier finding, sourcing, quality control. Yeah.
• 1:27
  Wow, that sounds like fun. I mean, how, if I can ask, how old
• 1:32
  were you when you started traveling to Asia? Did you sort of
• 1:35
  have the travel bug, sort of fresh out of uni and then you just
• 1:38
  kind of got caught in it?
• 1:40
  So I've never been in university beside learning Chinese
• 1:45
  in the university in China, but I was, I think I was 23 years
• 1:50
  old, I'm not sure. And I've been backpacking in Asia and actually
• 1:57
  when I came back to Israel to prepare for university, I decided
• 2:01
  I want to go to China to learn Chinese. And after a year in China,
• 2:08
  before I, before I was supposed to come back to Israel to
• 2:11
  university, I've. I've been thinking, wait, if I'm already in
• 2:15
  China and I know to speak Chinese, do I really need to go back
• 2:19
  to university? Or maybe I can just start, you know, grinding and.
• 2:24
  Yeah.
• 2:26
  Wow, fantastic. I don't come across many people who deliberately
• 2:31
  and intentionally learn to speak Chinese. That's quite a unique
• 2:36
  form of grit. I have a very good friend of mine, she's like my
• 2:41
  adopted sister. She's lovely, she's British, but she's also Chinese
• 2:46
  and she tries to teach me Chinese and I fail miserably. So
• 2:50
  the fact that you have done that, I think is remarkable. Good
• 2:53
  on you for doing that.
• 2:55
  Yeah, well, the reason I studied Chinese, so I was thinking,
• 2:59
  should I go to learn Chinese or Japanese? And Japan sounds very
• 3:03
  expensive. So eventually I decided to go with China. Yeah. And
• 3:10
  by the way, I was one of the worst student in the class back then.
• 3:14
  Right.
• 3:15
  But I think I'm the only one in from my class back then that's
• 3:19
  still actually doing business in China. I guess it's all about
• 3:23
  practicing.
• 3:25
  Yeah, I guess it is. I guess it is, because I. And this is where
• 3:28
  I think, you know, when it comes to sourcing products from China
• 3:34
  Freecom businesses, I know a few people that seem to have cracked
• 3:38
  it in whatever business they're in. But I know that it still
• 3:42
  scares a whole bunch of people because it's not just the language,
• 3:45
  it's the culture barrier that exist between obviously the west
• 3:50
  and the east, between Asia and between, you know, the sort of America's,
• 3:57
  Britain's, Australia's type. I mean, Australia and New Zealand are
• 4:00
  a little bit unique, aren't they? Because I suppose they're quite
• 4:04
  close to Asia. So I think they've understood the culture of
• 4:06
  dealing with Asia a lot more. What are some of the things that
• 4:11
  you find are quite consistently bad from Western companies
• 4:16
  when it comes to understanding Asian culture and get in our heads
• 4:22
  around a few key principles before we start trying to source
• 4:25
  products from there.
• 4:27
  So I guess the worst thing that Western people do is thinking
• 4:32
  like Western, you know, so they approach to a Chinese person
• 4:37
  or Japanese or whatever. And, and they think that whatever they
• 4:43
  will say, the Chinese person will understand it as they would
• 4:49
  understand it not not only in like the language, I mean, the meaning,
• 4:54
  the subtext. And so this is, I guess the biggest mistake. And, and
• 5:04
  because I don't think I can teach someone in one hour or even
• 5:09
  one year how to think like a Chinese or Japanese or whatever.
• 5:14
  Probably the biggest tip I can give is assume they don't understand
• 5:19
  you and you don't understand them. And if this will be your assumption,
• 5:25
  you will probably avoid most of the misunderstanding.
• 5:30
  Okay, yeah, it sounds remarkably straightforward, Omer,
• 5:36
  but I get why you would say that, because I think certainly in
• 5:40
  Britain, you know, if we, a general response is if you don't
• 5:44
  understand, we'll say the same thing slower and louder because surely
• 5:50
  then you'll understand. If I say the same thing slower and louder,
• 5:53
  you will understand, which is obviously not the true. And I think
• 5:56
  there's, there's a lot to be said for this cross cultural understanding,
• 6:00
  which I think you, you miss a lot of the subtleties of how is,
• 6:08
  how is it at the moment in terms of trading with Asia? I'm kind
• 6:12
  of curious about this because at the time of recording we've had,
• 6:16
  you know, the announcement from the Trump administration about
• 6:19
  tariffs and we can, you know, political politics aside, I, you
• 6:26
  know, there's obviously some issue with international trading
• 6:29
  in the States. What's the sort of thinking there, you know, in Asia
• 6:37
  with the, with the tariffs And I guess more importantly, if I can
• 6:40
  ask you, what are the opportunities there for us as e commerce
• 6:45
  entrepreneurs to be thinking about?
• 6:47
  Right. So like you said, politics aside, it's going to affect
• 6:50
  a lot of businesses and you say Asia but like to be honest, it's
• 6:56
  mostly going to impact people that source from China. Not in Asia,
• 7:01
  not from Asia in general. And I've been lucky because during COVID
• 7:08
  few years back when China, you know, like in one day everything
• 7:13
  got locked, locked down like the factories and everything. And
• 7:18
  back then I, I remember I got a little bit scared because my old
• 7:22
  business was based on China. And back then I decided I'm going
• 7:27
  to start learning how to do sourcing from outside of China. Though
• 7:32
  it's little bit complex because before this I was living
• 7:35
  in China for a few years. I was speaking Chinese and new countries
• 7:37
  is totally new things. But back then I decided I'm going to
• 7:41
  do this. And now when this whole tariff thing came up for me,
• 7:50
  it's actually a big opportunity because I'm, for the
• 7:53
  past few years I'm traveling around Japan, Vietnam and other countries
• 7:58
  and I know how to source from all of these kind of countries. So
• 8:01
  for me it's a big opportunity because all of the customers that
• 8:05
  source from China and suddenly got scared and they're looking for
• 8:09
  suppliers outside. I can provide it. So for me it's a good
• 8:14
  opportunity and I guess that anyone that, that is ready to explore
• 8:21
  new country might find some good opportunities in there. But
• 8:26
  it's also important not to, you know how to say it, not to do
• 8:33
  your next step out of panic because during COVID many, many companies
• 8:40
  try to find quickly suppliers outside of China. And then when Vietnam
• 8:45
  got locked down China, the Chinese factories were opening. So
• 8:52
  we also need to remember that in many cases China are still going
• 8:57
  to be the best option. Okay. So like don't force yourself to find
• 9:01
  suppliers outside of China, but you do need to explore maybe
• 9:06
  the product I'm making in China, I can make it outside of China
• 9:10
  better or cheaper or more unique. And if so, you definitely
• 9:15
  have to go and look for this opportunity because you can Save
• 9:19
  money and you can be the competition. It's really interesting
• 9:25
  just to understand like if now menu making the same product in China
• 9:31
  and selling it in the USA and I was quick enough to find a supplier
• 9:36
  in India that can make the same product in a, in a cheaper price
• 9:43
  and we both sent to the USA and I don't have the tariff, I'm
• 9:48
  going to earn and make more money than you on the same product.
• 9:52
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's interesting you say that because
• 9:55
  years ago, I'm going back 2000, 2006, we had a business that
• 10:04
  sold from a place called Jersey. Now, Jersey to the Brits
• 10:09
  is a small island off the north coast of France. Okay. It's
• 10:12
  kind of, it's independently British is the best way. Now, how
• 10:16
  to describe Jersey? So Jersey wasn't necessarily subject to the
• 10:19
  tax rules that the UK was. And at the time, it's different now,
• 10:24
  but at the time there was a VATS advantage. So VAT is sales tax.
• 10:30
  So when you shipped products from Jersey with a value, I think
• 10:33
  it was less than £20 from memory. If you shipped goods less
• 10:36
  than £20 from Jersey to the UK, you didn't have to charge the
• 10:40
  customer VAT. Okay. Now, bearing in mind our sales tax is
• 10:44
  20%. So still more than the tariffs. Well, maybe about the same
• 10:48
  as the tariffs Trump will put on Chinese products. But we had this
• 10:52
  tax that we didn't have to pay shipping from Jersey that somebody
• 10:56
  from the UK did have, if that makes sense. So we could be 20% cheaper
• 11:02
  than our competitors and still make the same profit. And so for,
• 11:10
  I think it was probably for about three or four years, maybe
• 11:15
  not that long. Maybe, maybe about three or four years, we took
• 11:18
  a, we were able to take advantage of this tax differential
• 11:23
  and it helped us become much more profitable than our competitors
• 11:28
  because we either sold at the same price, made more profit, or
• 11:32
  we sold at a cheaper price, still probably made more profit,
• 11:34
  but was still cheaper than our competitors. I mean, ethics aside
• 11:39
  about, you know, is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's just
• 11:41
  a thing in the free market economy. And I kind of feel now with
• 11:44
  the tariff situation that Trump is introducing, there is what
• 11:49
  I would call a Jersey moment, whereby if, like you say, if you
• 11:53
  can source products, the same product, the same quality, etcetera,
• 11:57
  but somehow ship that in effect tariff free, you can take
• 12:03
  advantage of that. And we created a business of rapid growth
• 12:07
  during those years that I don't think we would have been able
• 12:10
  to do had we have not had that advantage.
• 12:12
  Right. So it's definitely an opportunity. But like I said before
• 12:21
  and they want to say again, I don't tell people don't buy from
• 12:25
  China now because of the tariff. There are many products.
• 12:28
  I think most of the products China probably is still going to
• 12:32
  be the most attractive in term of variety and pricing and how quickly
• 12:37
  they can make the product. So just to understand, right now I'm
• 12:41
  making products in Japan. I'm in Japan at the moment. The lead
• 12:46
  time to make product is six months. In China, it would be probably
• 12:51
  45 days. So it's not like go away from China. No, it's nothing
• 12:59
  like this. And I think if, if you still need to look at the numbers.
• 13:03
  Okay. And again, in many cases you will find out China is more attractive
• 13:07
  even with the tariff. Even if the, if Trump will increase the tariff
• 13:11
  again, China will still be attractive. But I do think it's a
• 13:16
  good opportunity for brands to explore countries beside China. Again,
• 13:22
  not just because of the tariffs. The tariff should be the
• 13:24
  opportunity. There are different qualities, more unique
• 13:28
  products, maybe customization you can do. So I do think everyone
• 13:33
  should explore it, assuming you see yourself in the game for
• 13:38
  long term, you know, just for a few months. Because it's a process
• 13:41
  that take time.
• 13:43
  Yeah, that's true. That's. It's very sage advice, isn't it?
• 13:47
  Because, and I love what you said here about learning from COVID
• 13:51
  You know, everybody panicked during COVID and you know, so they
• 13:57
  went to Vietnam. Vietnam then shut down. And I can see a similar
• 13:59
  sort of thing going on here whereby everyone leaves China to
• 14:03
  go to Vietnam and then Trump interposes par tariffs on from Vietnam.
• 14:08
  You know, he'll just sort of goes from one place. You just don't
• 14:10
  know what's going to happen, do you? And so I like that. I mean,
• 14:15
  we, the fact that we have that whole thing in quite recent living
• 14:20
  memory with COVID means that we should definitely, you know, remember
• 14:23
  that and learn from that. Which, which, which makes a lot of
• 14:26
  sense. Makes a lot of sense. Omerr. Before we carry on, let me
• 14:30
  just take a brief second, everybody listening to the show to
• 14:34
  talk to you about something that is happening in both Australia
• 14:37
  and New Zealand right now. We have, we have something called Cohort.
• 14:42
  You may have heard me talk about this on the show before. Cohort
• 14:45
  used to be a paid membership program. It's now, we don't charge
• 14:48
  for it. It's just a, it's not even a membership. It's just like
• 14:51
  a community, a group. And we are launching Cohort in Australia.
• 14:56
  So if you're in the Australia, New Zealand part of the world and
• 15:01
  would like to come and meet fellow e commerce entrepreneurs.
• 15:03
  We just connect once a month online via Zoom and just chat. How
• 15:07
  is it going? How's E commerce, what we all learned and share some
• 15:10
  insights and stories. We would love to welcome you to that. Just
• 15:13
  reach out to me@ecommercepodcast.net or just reach
• 15:17
  out to me on LinkedIn. Go find me on LinkedIn @edmondson and I will
• 15:20
  share with you the details. We would love to see you in that. So
• 15:24
  yeah, do come and join us in that. Do you get to Australia much
• 15:27
  Omerr? New Zealand or is it just you stay Japan, China, that
• 15:30
  sort of belt.
• 15:32
  So yeah, I've been in the past because I have some customers in
• 15:37
  there. Actually I'm going to the UK once in a while. I have customers
• 15:42
  in there also but for the past I think it's almost 15 months, 16
• 15:49
  months, I'm not sure. I've been only in Asia, like I didn't
• 15:53
  have time to go anywhere else.
• 15:55
  Oh wow. Wow. Beautiful, beautiful people, beautiful food
• 16:00
  in a beautiful part of the world.
• 16:01
  Beautiful food, yeah, good food. This is the important part.
• 16:06
  This is why I do this business, you know. Well, one long
• 16:11
  time ago I had a friend that told me the reason you do business
• 16:16
  in China is to finance your trips to Japan. And it's true. So
• 16:22
  now, now I, I've been upgraded and now I also do business in Japan.
• 16:26
  So I can food in Japan.
• 16:29
  Fantastic. On that topic, you know, of the multiple different countries
• 16:33
  in Asia and Japan is still on my bucket list. I'm not going to
• 16:36
  lie. I've not managed to make it yet. But I, I've been to Malaysia,
• 16:40
  I've been to Singapore, I've done a whole bunch of them. I've
• 16:43
  not actually made it as far as Japan, but I will be there at some
• 16:46
  point. The default thinking is still, I think for a lot of e commerce
• 16:52
  entrepreneurs I need a product, I need it cheaper. So therefore
• 16:55
  I need to source it from China. And like you said, most of
• 16:58
  the time that makes a lot of sense. What are some of the countries
• 17:03
  that people aren't thinking about that maybe we should, you know,
• 17:06
  should we be thinking about say Thailand or Vietnam? If it's
• 17:10
  clothing, should. Where are some of the other sort of the good
• 17:14
  places to go to in Asia that we're perhaps not thinking about?
• 17:18
  So I'll give a quick brief for some of the main countries. Okay,
• 17:23
  so I will start with Japan and Japan is not going to be cheap at
• 17:27
  any Rate. But in Japan, you might be able to make unique products
• 17:31
  that no other country can make. And to me, with my experience,
• 17:36
  I think that making a unique and good product can be sometimes
• 17:39
  much more valuable than making cheaper product. So this is for Japan.
• 17:45
  Korea is a cosmetics empire. So if you want to make a good cosmetic
• 17:51
  brand, it's the right place. Yeah. Vietnam textile, plastic, some
• 17:59
  metals and wood and bamboo. But Vietnam is a place for mass production.
• 18:05
  So many products in China you need MOQ of 1,000 pieces minimum.
• 18:09
  Other quantity in Vietnam, you're gonna need 5,000 pieces.
• 18:14
  Okay.
• 18:17
  Thailand, I have to say, and I've been in many factories in Thailand,
• 18:20
  they can do some textile and stuff. But I still couldn't find
• 18:25
  any, like, actual advantage in making products in Thailand because
• 18:29
  every time when I compared it in China, China was better.
• 18:32
  Right.
• 18:33
  And India, it's definitely something people should look at a
• 18:39
  wood product, electronics and other products. But again, each country
• 18:46
  like this come with a whole lot of business culture and things
• 18:56
  that are different from China. So just for example, production time
• 18:59
  in India, it's kind of like they are giving you the time and
• 19:04
  you hope it's going to be anywhere around this time. This is
• 19:09
  just for example. So each country have some advantages and
• 19:16
  opportunities and unique products. But I know I'm repeating
• 19:20
  because I think it's the most important part. Eventually people
• 19:23
  need to look for the best supplier that can provide the best
• 19:27
  product in the best price. I don't think you should be looking
• 19:31
  into a country, you should be looking into a supplier. And if you
• 19:34
  find a supplier in China or Vietnam or India, go for it.
• 19:39
  Yeah, yeah. No, again, sage advice. It's. It makes a lot of sense,
• 19:45
  doesn't it? But. And I can see why businesses like yours, I might
• 19:49
  do well, because I would look at that and I would go, I have no
• 19:53
  idea. I have no idea about the culture. I have no idea about the
• 19:56
  language. I don't know if I'm going to get ripped off. Like, am
• 20:00
  I just pouring money into a black hole? Will the quality of the
• 20:03
  product be good? I suppose one thing that I would, a big question
• 20:08
  I would have in my head about dealing with China and we do deal
• 20:11
  with Asia. I have to be honest with you. One of the big questions
• 20:15
  always in the back of my head is to do rightly or wrongly is the
• 20:19
  connection with child slave labor. Like, is there openness? Is
• 20:24
  there transparent? How do I know what's going on in that factory?
• 20:27
  How do I know they're not going to take my idea and copy it?
• 20:30
  So there's a lot of, there's a lot of hurdles I have to overcome
• 20:33
  before I think about getting manufacturing in China. Am I weird
• 20:40
  or is that true for a lot of people? Are they sort of similar
• 20:42
  barriers?
• 20:44
  I think everybody think about these things now. I guess for child
• 20:52
  abuse and slavery and stuff, it's very easy to check this stuff.
• 20:57
  Like you can do factory audit and very quickly you can know who
• 21:00
  is working in the factory, how many hours. And so there is a very
• 21:04
  quick and easy solution for this, for copying your ideas. I have
• 21:10
  to tell you that I think I stopped thinking about this long
• 21:16
  ago because I do sourcing. But many times I also develop the products
• 21:21
  and then suggest to my customers, which are companies and
• 21:24
  brands. And I have to tell you that this is something I learned
• 21:29
  actually from some big companies in the uk, very big ones,
• 21:34
  I cannot say their name, but they don't spend a moment about thinking
• 21:39
  if the Chinese supplier will copy them. They just keep innovating
• 21:44
  and thinking about the next product. And yes, sometimes the Chinese
• 21:48
  copy them. Yeah, it's happened. But you know, also your
• 21:51
  competitor can copy you. Right. So I don't think it's the
• 21:58
  right thing to spend time on will he copy me? And if it's really
• 22:03
  important for you, do the patent or trademark or whatever.
• 22:08
  But I believe that it's much better to, if you have an idea, find
• 22:13
  the best supplier, push the product to the market as fast as
• 22:16
  possible and hope that you will do good enough job, that even
• 22:20
  if somebody will copy you, everyone will feel he is the copy
• 22:24
  and you are the original.
• 22:26
  Yeah, well, again, wise advice. I think that's true for I
• 22:31
  think whether you order from China or whether you don't. Right.
• 22:33
  Your competitors in fact are going to be copying you and you've
• 22:36
  always got to think, push and innovate and so on and so forth.
• 22:40
  It makes a lot of sense to do that. And if you're not doing that,
• 22:43
  I think you've got some fundamental problems. Anyway, what
• 22:48
  products do you see working well at the moment? What products
• 22:50
  are coming out of Asia that actually starting to sell well online?
• 22:55
  Because I know fidget spinners don't have the kudos that they, they
• 22:59
  once had, for example. But what are some of the things that
• 23:02
  are working.
• 23:05
  Well? To me, I feel that because there are much more competition
• 23:13
  now compared to before. Like every year you have more and more
• 23:16
  E commerce sellers. Right. It doesn't matter on Amazon, Shopify,
• 23:19
  whatever platform it is, I feel you have to be. It's not about
• 23:25
  like what specific Products, you just have to be much more unique
• 23:29
  these days to succeed. Like unless you have a lot of money, you
• 23:32
  know, and you can really spend a lot on ads and then you don't have
• 23:36
  to be unique because you have eyeballs on your product, but you
• 23:40
  have, but if not, you need much better quality products or much
• 23:45
  cheaper or much cheaper price on the product. And both things are
• 23:50
  hard to get. Like if you, if every, if everybody got this, a certain
• 23:55
  price and you want to be able to sell it in much cheaper price
• 23:58
  and still to make money, it's going to be really hard to find the
• 24:01
  right supplier. And if you want to be able to make much more
• 24:06
  unique or special quality compared to other, it's also going
• 24:10
  to be very hard. So I feel the time you need to spend today on finding
• 24:18
  the right supplier and making the product in the right way, because
• 24:22
  it's not only finding the supplier. Like you can find many
• 24:25
  good supplier and they're going to make shitty quality. You
• 24:30
  need to know how to do the quality control and stuff. I think
• 24:34
  this is the way, I know it's not exactly what you asked, but this
• 24:38
  is the way to be different and succeed. Because I don't think I
• 24:42
  can point on a specific product and tell you, oh, now there
• 24:46
  is this kind of textile or this kind of watch that. Because
• 24:51
  every product that come out now with tick tock and everything,
• 24:54
  after three months you're gonna see it everywhere.
• 24:58
  Yep. Yeah, yeah. I love, I love this comment about, you know,
• 25:02
  make it unique. That really resonates in the sense that I, for
• 25:10
  a while, I don't see as much now, but for a while you came across
• 25:13
  people who would try and sell the same product everybody else was
• 25:17
  trying to sell out of China. Usually you go to some site like
• 25:20
  Temu or Aliexpress or something like that and you would
• 25:24
  buy a product, pick any random product, I don't know the plastic
• 25:29
  widgets, and you would go, well, they cost 10 cents to make
• 25:33
  and I can sell them for three bucks. Well, why would I not try
• 25:36
  and sell those? But there was nothing unique about the, either
• 25:40
  the product or the way that they were trying to sell it. And
• 25:44
  everything was bland. It was like they just gone and got the same
• 25:47
  template from Shopify and copied it like 10,000 other people
• 25:51
  did and just use the same text that 10,000 other people did. And
• 25:55
  there was nothing about them, there was nothing about their brand,
• 25:58
  their voice, you know, their uniqueness, like that type of thing.
• 26:03
  And it's interesting you say that because I think and it's not
• 26:06
  just with products from, from Asia. I think it's just with e commerce
• 26:10
  sites, full stop. There has to be something really unique about
• 26:15
  that that differentiates you from Amazon, that differentiates
• 26:18
  you from all the other commodities out there in, in the
• 26:21
  world. And that enables you to really stand out in the consumer's
• 26:25
  mind. And so it's interesting that you've, you've noticed that
• 26:29
  as well, you know, with products coming over from China.
• 26:32
  So it's not a definitive. Well, the fidget spinner has now
• 26:35
  been replaced by the spinning fidget. I don't know. But it's, it's
• 26:38
  more a case of actually whatever you do do something unique
• 26:43
  and I, I really like that. How can you make and I'm assuming on,
• 26:50
  on that then Omer that actually the factories in China,
• 26:53
  in Vietnam or wherever, they are quite keen to work with you to
• 26:57
  help you put your unique flavor and taste on it.
• 27:01
  So it depends because the Chinese, the Chinese, they just want
• 27:05
  to sell, they just want the cash and many times they will just
• 27:08
  put you oh, these products sell very good buy this. They just
• 27:14
  want the cash. Many times they don't think long term. This is specifically
• 27:18
  for the Chinese. So I think it's actually, I really think you
• 27:24
  need to understand it's your responsibility as a buyer to try
• 27:27
  to come up with the unique thing. Don't ask the supplier how
• 27:32
  can I make this more unique? And there are many people who ask
• 27:34
  this. I will even say more. If you go to one of the trade shows
• 27:40
  in China for example, and you will go to, you will ask the Chinese
• 27:45
  supplier, why should I buy from you? Most of them will give
• 27:49
  you the same answer because of our quality and price. Now most of
• 27:54
  them going to say the same thing. So you just understand all
• 27:58
  the pricing are the same, all the quality are the same. There is
• 28:00
  nothing unique about this. Like for me, for the brands I'm working
• 28:05
  with, our way to make it unique is really to take a product
• 28:10
  and existing product and develop a much better, better product.
• 28:16
  And when this is what you do and it takes a lot of time, it takes
• 28:20
  a lot of time. It takes time to find the right supplier. You need
• 28:24
  to make sample and again and again. But when you do it, you are
• 28:29
  really unique. And by the way, you don't need to be worried about
• 28:33
  somebody copy you because when you actually develop a product it's
• 28:37
  really hard to copy you. And even if somebody succeed to copy
• 28:40
  you, it's gonna take him about six months or one year just to get
• 28:45
  to the same quality or the same design. So for me, I think trying
• 28:53
  to invest more in product development is the right way to be
• 28:59
  unique these days. Of course there are more ways. Sometimes you
• 29:02
  can be unique just by giving a great customer service. But I think
• 29:07
  I assume that most of the listener here are not huge companies,
• 29:11
  huge corporation that have the money to invest in great customer
• 29:15
  service or a lot of paid ads and stuff. So sometime if you're
• 29:20
  going to take the extra two or three months to develop the product,
• 29:24
  little bit more to make it to be more unique, once you launch it,
• 29:28
  you're going to have much more heaven time. I think there is a phrase
• 29:33
  like this in Amazon that they promote you. So it's the same like
• 29:39
  you're going to develop a product and you're going to have
• 29:41
  longer time that nobody can compete with you and you're probably
• 29:45
  going to be able to sell your price in your product in higher price
• 29:49
  because it's the only product in the market. Is it have this specific
• 29:54
  design or feature or whatever?
• 29:57
  Yeah, no, I love it. Love that. I love that phrase, heaven
• 30:00
  time. I think that's a great phrase. So it's your responsibility
• 30:05
  then as the founder, the owner of the business to make sure that
• 30:10
  the product development is done right and done well. A quick
• 30:15
  shout out to the episode I did with Norm Farrar. He talks about
• 30:19
  how he does this for his process, how he improves a product,
• 30:21
  actually he takes a standard product and how he makes it better.
• 30:25
  If you want to go check that out, just go onto the website ecommercepodcast.net
• 30:28
  search for the episode with Norm, who is a great guy. And you'll
• 30:32
  enjoy that episode. I have no doubt whatsoever. I'm curious, right?
• 30:38
  There's people going to be listening to the show that is getting
• 30:41
  started in E. Com. There are people like me that have been around
• 30:43
  a little while. You know, you've got a wide range of listeners.
• 30:50
  One of the questions I can hear, you know, the people asking,
• 30:54
  I try and think about the questions that maybe listeners would
• 30:56
  ask if they were sat here. What are the advantages maybe of
• 31:04
  giving you a call and using you to help me with this problem
• 31:09
  versus trying to do it myself versus the costs. I mean, everyone's
• 31:14
  always, you know, concerned about money and costs and things
• 31:17
  like that. So there's going to be a. What we like to call in economic
• 31:21
  terms, a cost benefit analysis is the official term. I think so
• 31:26
  I'm curious, how would you answer that question?
• 31:30
  Right. So I would say that my average customer makes at least 1
• 31:37
  million annually and at least this is really the minimum. And I
• 31:41
  say this because maybe in some cases it's not the best decision
• 31:48
  to work with somebody like this. Like if you're a beginner and
• 31:53
  you know you have a very small budget, do it yourself. I try to
• 31:58
  post some content on YouTube and Instagram and LinkedIn. You can
• 32:02
  watch, you can learn. Do it yourself. I think you should work
• 32:06
  with company like me and with a person like me when, number one,
• 32:12
  you have time constraint, like you're a big company and time is
• 32:18
  more important than money and I can save you a lot of time. Or
• 32:22
  when you're trying to make something unique that you probably
• 32:25
  don't have the skill to make by yourself, I think you should work
• 32:30
  with me if you need the results. And it's not just about
• 32:33
  the budget. I do think, and I really say this, that if you're in
• 32:38
  the phase where, in the phase in your business, that budget is
• 32:42
  the most important thing. There are many things you can do
• 32:45
  by yourself. You don't have to pay for everything. Right. Most of
• 32:49
  the business owners in the, in the beginning, they probably going
• 32:53
  to do the marketing by themselves. It's all good. Later
• 32:56
  when they will grow, they will probably pay to a company to do it.
• 33:00
  So I think it's kind of the same here.
• 33:02
  Yeah, yeah, very, very, very sensible, sensible approach. So really
• 33:10
  the cutoff then is about a million turnover. So if you're doing
• 33:13
  a million a year as a bare minimum, then you can think like
• 33:17
  you say, if time is important to you, then, you know, give Omerr
• 33:20
  a ring. I think it's a big. You say you've put out content to
• 33:25
  help someone who's just starting out to do it themselves
• 33:29
  on your YouTube channel and so on and so forth. We will of course
• 33:33
  have the links to that, hopefully. Omerr in the show notes,
• 33:36
  if we've done our job correctly and you can obviously go
• 33:39
  and watch those to your heart's content, which, which would
• 33:43
  be great. So let me sort of bring this, bring this background
• 33:52
  a little bit. We're talking to you. We've got a unique product.
• 33:59
  We're sourcing it from somewhere in Asia to sell in our
• 34:04
  country, obviously keeping an eye on things like tariffs and so
• 34:07
  on stuff. I mean, to be fair, you know, the tariffs effect that
• 34:09
  the U.S. they don't. We. It doesn't really affect me in the uk,
• 34:13
  you know, we, we have our trade agreements with China. I don't
• 34:16
  see Keir Starman changing those at any point in the near future.
• 34:21
  So it's. I think I, I appreciate that. It's more a US issue.
• 34:27
  Where do you think it's all going Omerr, over the next five years,
• 34:31
  what's your sort of prediction for the west dealing with the east
• 34:35
  in terms of supply of these types of products? Are we still going
• 34:40
  to be doing it because it's cheaper or better or higher quality?
• 34:43
  Do you, do you see the roadmap of development in Asia and think
• 34:47
  actually it's still a pretty safe bet? I'm kind of curious where
• 34:51
  you see it all going.
• 34:52
  Well, I need to be honest because I'm not. I am like keeping
• 34:57
  an eye on the future but I try not to make assumptions that based
• 35:06
  on nothing basically because so I do try to look at processes
• 35:12
  that already happening and I can only assume probably going to
• 35:16
  keep happen. So for example, the distance between the end user
• 35:21
  to the factory going to get shorter and this is a process that
• 35:25
  already happening. Like in the past six years ago, a customer in
• 35:31
  the USA end user in the USA would be buying from the shop, that
• 35:36
  would be buy from the distributor, that will be buying
• 35:39
  from the importer, buy from a trading company in China that would
• 35:43
  buy from a factory and this distance already got shortened shorter.
• 35:49
  Okay. So I guess this process is going to keep going and I see
• 35:57
  more and more factories starting to sell to the end user,
• 36:00
  which is a bad news for probably most of the businesses because
• 36:05
  if you are an Amazon seller or an E Commerce seller and right now
• 36:09
  you buy from a factory and you sell to the end user and the factory
• 36:14
  going to start sell directly to the end user, you might have a
• 36:17
  problem. So this is something that's already happening and I can
• 36:22
  only assume it's going to keep happening. And so I think this is
• 36:29
  one thing people really should focus on and just I'm getting back
• 36:35
  to what I said before. Make a unique product, develop a product.
• 36:39
  Because if you are, if you make your own product, it doesn't
• 36:42
  matter if a factory going to sell directly to the end user, it's
• 36:46
  your product. But if you just buy and sell, you know, like regular
• 36:52
  stock, the normal items that everybody can buy, you're going to
• 36:59
  have a problem. I think.
• 37:01
  Yeah, that's fascinating and I get it and I why would factories
• 37:09
  not sell direct to consumer? Right. We see it all the time over
• 37:14
  here in this country, so why would they not? I think there's still
• 37:18
  going to be an opportunity for people like me to bridge the culture
• 37:22
  gap, if you see what I mean in the sense that going back to what
• 37:25
  we said at the start of the show, I think a few Companies like
• 37:30
  banggood and TEMU have managed to make it so that I actually feel
• 37:35
  kind of confident buying a product off their website. But I
• 37:39
  think there's always going to be that uncertainty where if I could
• 37:41
  get the same product from a local website, would I be more likely
• 37:45
  to buy. It's an interesting question, isn't it, about sort of
• 37:49
  world economics and where it's all going. But I'm intrigued by that.
• 37:53
  I'm a listen. This is the part of the show, good sir, where I ask
• 37:57
  you for a question for me. So this is where I've been doing this
• 38:02
  for a little while. If you're new to the show, welcome, by the
• 38:04
  way, it's great to have you. But for a while I've been saying
• 38:06
  to my guests, can you please give me a question which I will then
• 38:10
  go and answer on LinkedIn? I will put the answer to this question
• 38:13
  on LinkedIn. But Omer, what's your question for me?
• 38:17
  So you've been probably dealing with suppliers in Asia and
• 38:20
  China specifically for a while, because you do it for many
• 38:24
  years. Tell me, what was your biggest disaster, if there was any.
• 38:30
  Working with a Chinese supplier.
• 38:32
  Biggest disaster working with a Chinese supplier. Very good, very
• 38:37
  good. Well, I will answer that question on LinkedIn and if I remember,
• 38:39
  I'll also tell you my biggest disaster working with an American
• 38:41
  supplier. That was much more. That was much bigger, actually, which
• 38:47
  is ironic. But yeah, I will. I will be posting the answer to that
• 38:51
  question on LinkedIn, if you don't follow me already. Come follow
• 38:54
  me. LinkedIn Madmanson. But I'm a listen. Really appreciate you
• 38:59
  man. Appreciate you coming on and sharing the insights and thoughts
• 39:03
  that you have and your expertise about the whole thing.
• 39:07
  If people do want to reach out to you, if they've got maybe more
• 39:11
  questions, looking for a little bit more advice. Maybe I've
• 39:13
  not asked the question that they wanted answering, but they're
• 39:16
  burning to ask it anyway. Or maybe they want to work with you.
• 39:19
  What's the best way to reach out? What's the best way to connect?
• 39:22
  Can DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn and we can schedule a quick
• 39:27
  call.
• 39:28
  Fantastic. And of course, we will put those links to your Instagram
• 39:32
  and to your LinkedIn in the show notes, which you can get along
• 39:36
  for free. Get along for free, along with the transcripts, the show
• 39:41
  notes and all that sort of stuff for free on the website ecommercepodcast.net
• 39:44
  of course, you can just scroll down in your podcast player and the
• 39:47
  links will be in there. We'll put the links in the YouTube description
• 39:49
  if you're watching this on YouTube as well. But do reach out
• 39:52
  to Omerr. I'm sure sure he would love to hear from you. I'm
• 39:57
  a listen man, really, like I say, really appreciate it. It genuinely
• 40:00
  great. Loved every minute on it of it. Thank you for coming on
• 40:04
  and share. I've learned a lot actually. I've got some notes here.
• 40:06
  I've got some questions for our team as well, which is always
• 40:08
  good. But thanks for coming on man. Genuinely really appreciate
• 40:11
  it.
• 40:12
  Thank you for having me. Thank you for your time.