Trade lead

Re: [spiers] Trade lead


In a message dated 10/14/02 6:51:45 PM, danglynn2002@yahoo.com writes:

<< Hi John,

I've gotten a lead that a particular US made product
is in short supply in a particular country. How would
you suggest I go about filling this supply?

Thanks,

Dan Glynn >>

Dan,

Chapter eight in the book lays out how I would proceed, but you alarm me.
There are shortages of USA products all over the world very often. My
concerns would be

1. Are you an expert in the product area; if not, how will you out-compete
those who are?

2. News of a shortage implies an emergency and high profits - just the
scenario needed to separate the eager from their money, just today I got
another email asking me to help transfer $26 million from an African nation
into my bank account. Your customer's urgency may mask a scam in progress.

I was thinking about how negative my responses are recently, and to mind came
the image from long ago of a duckherd in China, guiding a huge flock of ducks
along a road (were they geese? now I don't recall)... any way, he tapped
away with a bamboo rod at those that would wander off the path... the ducks
probably thought he was a mean old man because all he did was whack ducks all
day...

Anyway, the trick here is to develop a product based on retailers appraisal
of an idea being good but does not yet exist... and simply seeing if you can
get enough orders to cover the supplier's minimum production run profitably,
in a workable amount of time.
From there you have an accomplishment, and you can then repeat this over and
over changing things for the better each time.

Something none of you have done (or at least no one has admitted it...) is
you have not been scammed in an international trade transaction; you have not
bought a load of items you were sure would sell, only to find after you
imported them, that they would not sell; you have not wasted mass amounts of
time and money chasing impossible ideas; you have conserved your resources so
that when the time is right, you can move ahead.

The time is right when you have customers for your product. When you find
yourself in a store looking for something that is not quite there (I wish
this hammer was non-magnetic) then you are naturally working in the area of
the first milestone in this business. Shop on!

John

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