Welcome to Wholesale Help, I’m Andy Lawrence and I’d like to help you make some money online.

I’ve been buying and selling on the internet for the past 8 years and offline for allot longer, I’d like to think that I’ve picked up some useful knowledge along the way and hopefully I can pass it on.

I have written a book on the drop shipping subject called Dropshipping Revealed, and if you you sign-up for my free wholesale newsletter you can get my book worth £25.00 for free! So sign up to the right and enjoy!

As I have said in my first article importing is definitely a great way of getting your hands on stock at great prices, in almost all situations you will be able to beat any prices you can get in your own country for that particular item, but there are a few things to remember when you start your search for your stock:

Firstly if you find a site online the is offering branded goods don’t just take their word for it, there are plenty of large companies in the far east and other areas that only produce counterfeit goods, quite often they are professional looking firms with large manufacturing plants but this doesn’t automatically mean they are producing products legitimately.

Don’t be fooled into thinking “well if I don’t know its fake I can’t be blamed” You can! Anything you have imported into your country is your responsibility so you need to do some research into the company before making your decision. I have covered researching in previous articles so I won’t go into that now.

Import duty and taxes are the next thing to look out for, as I said above if you have ordered the products you are responsible for them so be aware you will need to pay something when it comes in.
Some suppliers will tell you that their consignments don’t often get checked by customs because they label them as samples, this is illegal and is tax evasion don’t let the manufacturer do this, if they come in without getting checked you can always go back to the carrier and tell them you need to declare the shipment.

You may get away with it a few times but it’s just not worth the risk, I can’t say for other countries but in the UK if you are found to be deliberately avoiding paying import duty you can be fined a huge amount of money and it’s not unusual to receive a jail sentence.

The last thing to be aware of is safety certification, again this will vary depending on which country you are from but the principal will be the same.

In the UK each item that is sold must carry the CE safety certification, and depending on what the product is there are other certifications they will need also. This is very important because if you try to sell something that hasn’t been checked and declared safe then you are breaking the law and not only that you could be putting someone’s life in danger by selling them a potentially unsafe product.

I have walked away from many a good deal from good honest suppliers of good well priced stock because they would not spend the money to get their stock certified by the relevant labs. It’s a shame but I will not sell stock that I don’t have 100% confidence in.

So when you start your search online check the goods are not fake, ask to see copies of the relevant safety certificates and check them online, and finally make sure you pay the import taxes.

Keep these things in mind and you should have a smooth trouble free experience.

This is the first article in my importing series, and in this installment I want to go over some of the basic facts and make sure we all know what to expect from importing.
Firstly, I want to stress you don’t have to be a large nationwide wholesale and warehousing business to be able to successfully import goods and make money from them.

With the advent of the internet and email you can now find and contact almost any type of foreign manufacturer available. There are many businesses in China and other parts of the Far East producing good quality products that are keen to find new western trade links and if you find the right company they can be quite happy to help you get started in order to progress the business relationship and get further repeat orders.

Having said that there are a few points you need to bear in mind. Firstly most manufacturers only sell in large bulk quantities so in most cases you will need a reasonable amount of capital to invest in your first order and depending on the size of the products you will need somewhere to store them. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible, for example many manufacturers will allow you to make a sample order to inspect the products and delivery cycle which to them will be very small indeed but to you may be as big as you can manage, but if you have done your homework and there is a good market for your stock then once you have the first batch sold you can reinvest the profits to be able to afford the second larger batch.

If you are looking to buy small items such as electrical accessories then storage will not be a problem at all because at that size you can fit them in your garage or spare room for example, but if you want to buy trampolines then you will need some extra space! Storage doesn’t have to be a problem either if there is a good profit in the bulk order then you should have scope to cost in for storage. If you have a look around quite often there will be a local logistics business that will let you have a few racks worth of space for quite a reasonable price, and you may be able to negotiate a package deal including picking up the stock from the docks and taking it into their store.

What I’m trying to get across is that all issues associated with importation can be overcome with good planning and research and you can do it on a much smaller scale without costing it a fortune, if you pick your products carefully the profit potential can be far higher than you might find from a local trade distributor. You may even be able to offer trade prices to smaller eBay businesses and become a distributer for the stock yourself!

There are other issues to consider before importing for the first time so please look out for my next article regarding your legal responsibilities. All of my articles and further video tutorials are available to read on my site listed below.