Drop Shipping Strategies in 2022 with Simon de Raadt

Today’s guest is a special one. He is one of our GFAVIP members – Simon de Raadt and we will talk about Drop shipping where he shares his ideas and insights.

√ HyperSKU Dropshipping Platform
√ Simon de Raadt’s VIP Page

Thanks a lot for coming on to the show Simon! We appreciate you sharing strategies and perspectives for drop shipping!

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[00:00:00] If you wanna start with that episode number. It’s been a while. Welcome back to another episode of Global From Asia. We’re really sorry for missing out some episode. So yeah. So today we have our special guest, one of our GFAVIP member. Yeah. Simon. And what episode number is this? It’s episode 376. Great.

[00:00:24] Let’s go in today. Welcome to the Global From Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down, into straight up actionable advice. And now your host Michael Michelini. So yeah, Aubrey great to get everything kind of getting back on track. You know, your Internet’s stable, my Internet’s stable.

[00:00:49] you know, it’s rainy season everywhere. It’s raining here. Is it raining there? No, it’s kinda sunny right now. Awesome. Best to go to the beach. nice beach. That’s awesome. And yeah. So we’re finally getting back to show. I know, I know some listeners and people have been saying no email newsletter lately.

[00:01:07] We have our week. Almost whenever we do a podcast, we do a newsletter. Definitely people enjoy our newsletter and our podcast people have been asking, but we’re back, you know, it took a little bit of, you know, May was a rough month. Seriously. I don’t know. I was thinking about making that a show. Maybe we’ll talk about that later, but we’re back.

[00:01:24] We got this episode, we got another one already recorded. So we’re gonna try to get a whole whole system of shows back in the queue. So Aubrey who’s who’s our guest today. Our guest for today is Simon. One of our GFAVIP member. I think we’re going to talk about drop shipping right. And I’m excited to this topic.

[00:01:43] Yeah. I mean, honestly, I thought he was on the show before and we mentioned in the interview, unfortunately, you couldn’t make it at the interview, but you can listen to it too, Aubrey, like other. But in the interview, we talk about how we met. I thought I invite, you know, meaning to have ’em on the show for, for years now.

[00:01:59] So it’s finally getting ’em on the show and, you know, dropshipping’s not our main, our main focus here at Global From Asia lately, cuz we feel like branding and FBA, but honestly he gave me some good ideas and there is a lot of ways you could, uh, compliment that with, with FBA, with eCommerce and, and use it in a lot of different strategies.

[00:02:20] Also, there’s been some updates in the Excalibur Brothers, right. With our BLIMP method. We can talk about that after the show. Yeah about that after the show, maybe our listeners are excited to drop, dive in on the podcast already. Yeah. So let’s, let’s go in. All right. Thank you everybody for checking out our Global From Asia podcast.

[00:02:41] AC, is it really your first time Simon? Are you sure? I feel like you on, on the GFA. Yeah. But we, we kind of did the China business class. Yeah, that’s right. So it feels like we know each other from podcasting for longer, but it’s the first time on GFA. Okay. Well, we’re making it happen. You know, we’ve been talking about it for a while for quite a while.

[00:03:02] So it’s, you know, we were going. We were talking a little bit before the recording. I figured, Hey, just, just hit that record button cuz you’re gonna see some cool stuff, but you know, you’re in Netherlands now. We’ve, you know, we’ve known each other for quite a few years. We met. And you also, like you said, we’re a host at China business class, which is cool.

[00:03:20] And then, uh, you came down to Cross Border Summit 2019 and we met in person, which is really cool. And now you’re back into, to the Western world in Netherlands, in Europe. So how’s that man? How’s everything. Oh, I’ve been in now for a year. It’s like maybe one week, one year and a week. It’s been on a roller coaster cuz I’ve spent 10 years in China.

[00:03:45] Yep. Yeah. And then as you know, in China, the balance is also a little bit different in family life and work life. And especially when you have a Chinese spouse like yourself, a lot of things in the house around the house are taken care of so your, your main focus is work. And then of course, when you have time off, you spend time with your family and your kids.

[00:04:03] And then moving from 10 years to the Netherlands where you are the one speaking the local language and you are the one needs to take the initiative and take the lead. Suddenly the role shifts and my wife is definitely trying to, to help as much as she can. And she does amazing in, in what she does. Uh, but still a lot of the letters or the communication with institutions, with immigration, with schools, where everything is in is in the local language.

[00:04:28] Wow. So that was a big shift that I, I knew it was coming, but I wasnt. Didn’t know it was that, that tough . And, uh, so now, now then the first few months were really a roller coaster and that’s just even considering everything around even with, or without Corona, would’ve been the same. So it’s just the whole moving with a family, with a wife, two boys, and to, to move here and then.

[00:04:53] I think around the end of the year, we bought a house, which we are now currently renovating decorating, which also brings a lot of stuff that come with it. And at the same time, you want to keep pushing the work to move forward, to be able to grow the business and to expand and travel. So did trips to Dubai, to Malta, to Germany, to, um, London and in this way.

[00:05:15] Yeah. It’s a lot. So sometimes it comes a little bit messy. Uh because it’s just a lot of balls in the air. Uh, but I think that’s, uh, everyone is trying to, to juggle what I see here around me. Uh, the balance of life is very different. Most of my friends’ family, they are working part time or they have, they have time for their kids cuz they have to cuz no one is helping out.

[00:05:36] And China obviously have the luxury that someone helps out. So we got ourselves as well, an pair from the Philippines to move in, to help us to bring in a little bit more balance. Interesting. Uh, so we can still do what we get energy from, which is also work and, and spending time with kids and not the cleaning part and the cooking part.

[00:05:54] Yeah. Wow. You’re you know, the course I’m, I’m  still here in China. I was in Thailand. Try and get back to Thailand, to be honest, but US is even, even on the, on the list. Uh, and you’re making me think of the overwhelming amount of stuff that would be on my side now. That’s interesting. Well, you moved twice already, right?

[00:06:13] From Thailand and then to north China and then from north Chine to Shenzhen. Yeah. You have it also it’s it’s not gonna be that much different for you, I would say, but then you haven’t already have done it already twice. True. It’s exhausting. Yeah. Like. Family to be, you know, to be a father or a parent.

[00:06:29] Yeah, I know it’s a whole new, a whole new game. Could be a whole show. This, this is like a whole show in itself, but I think today’s talk, we decided to talk about a little bit more on the business side and cross border eCommerce, specifically drop shipping. So yeah, you’ve been, you’ve been you’re you’re the BD at a HyperSKU, which is a drop shipping solution.

[00:06:50] And, uh, you’re, you’re always making a lot of connections and a networker. And I also appreciate your membership at GFA VIP. That’s also appreciated. Thanks for that. And so for HyperSKU, you want to give us a little overview of what, what it is or what you do. Yeah, so the company is about three and a half years old and it’s owned by two, two Chinese.

[00:07:09] And there are also Chinese investors in it. And actually, cuz whenever you think of drop shipping, a lot of people think of buying stuff on Aliexpress and letting them ship it out. There are really three major downsides to Aliexpress that, that, that are the reason why we created why HyperSKU was created.

[00:07:25] So the first one is then shipping time can be very slow and the second is the quality of the products. And the third is the communication. These three are the main reasons why people fail and cannot scale, uh, using Aliexpress for doing dropshipping for us. That’s why we, we are using shipping methods that that can deliver in seven to 10 days.

[00:07:46] Some even faster, some kind is a little slower, but. In general, it’s 7 to 10 days, which is still very decent. And when, because the orders still go through our warehouse in China, we have multiple warehouses there. We actually touch the products. So it’s not an Aliexpress seller. That’s pushing order to someone else.

[00:08:02] Who’s actually doing the shipping. Yeah, it’s actually a good go through our own warehouse. So we still have some check to see it’s not a quality check because our warehouse cannot check. Millions of different SKUs. They don’t have the knowledge. Nobody has that knowledge, but it’s more like a visual check.

[00:08:17] Is it broken? Is it the right color? Is the size correct? Is there anything damaged in the, in, in the, of the packaging that kind of check and then before that, and then it’s shipped out and within our team, we have built several people. Well, we haven’t built them, but we hired several people that speak multiple languages.

[00:08:33] So the basic language is Chinese. Uh, all the sales account managers, they have studied abroad or studied English, or have a good level of English. And then most of them also have studied abroad and learned Spanish or Dutch or, or French or German or other languages so that we can actually help the seller in their preferred language.

[00:08:54] And especially when it comes to onboarding, once you’re have an understanding of how we work, it’s fine to do that in English. So then it goes to an account manager who supports in, in English, but when it comes to the onboarding, building a relationship, the connection, it’s very nice to talk to someone in your own language.

[00:09:11] Yeah. And get an understanding, how does it work? And I have an issue you can call someone that can explain to you what’s going on. And, and that’s not is a very big differentiator. And that’s what we see with a lot of our competitors. They’re either very Chinese. With limited English and vocabulary, they will not pick up the phone easily to call the seller.

[00:09:30] It’s more like typing, typing over and over and over again. And a lot of miscommunication while picking up the phone can solve a lot of the issues quite quickly. And we also see the local dropshipping agents that are local, like in Europe or in US, there are less strong in China with. With their presence with their supply chain, with their connection, with the suppliers and warehouses.

[00:09:51] So for us, we positioned ourselves a little bit in the middle where we have an international team, but the backbone is in China, which brings all the benefits that dropshipping basically has China has access to supply. Has good. Uh, logistics has a lot of knowledge, uh, on it. There’s capital available. So it’s actually all the tools you need to, to scale or dropshipping business.

[00:10:15] That’s nice. Uh, yeah, you, you got me a couple of points. There’s I don’t know if you’ve seen it before. I saw it maybe on a Facebook group, but there was a picture it’s like, you know, the standard yellow bubble. Bubble wrap, uh, dropship. I mean, everywhere, you know, the, the, the yellow bubble wrap envelope, but on the ship too, it says name or ship to, you know, dropship order, no receipt, no packing list.

[00:10:42] You know how, like, in a lot of the drop classes online, I, I honestly even done, I’ve done some workshops, uh, back in the day where I, I gave you interview. Usually you say in the notes field on Aliexpress, you put the note. You usually say drop ship order, don’t put the packing list or price or, you know, inserts.

[00:11:03] Yeah. There’s some, you put that. So they put that as the name to the customer and, and the shipment. It was a funny one. I remember. Um, and then do you also, does it also repackage the product, like to your own packaging design or is. Yeah. Yeah. So the, so the, the, the problem you mentioned with the address, it cannot happen with us because whenever there’s something with the address, that’s incomplete, like a house, address number post to code city or something with the name, it will not be able to ship.

[00:11:36] So it will have it not be able to pay the order. It needs to be fixed first. So that increases the delivery rate just to be able to do that. And because everything goes to our own warehouse. So we buy them sometimes in bulk because somebody may, maybe has 20 orders a day or a hundred orders a day. And then we buy from one supplier.

[00:11:53] They bring it to our warehouse. We have to pack the orders. So either way, no matter how it arrives, we have to open it up, check it, put it in a new, most of the time, it’s a white envelope with no Chinese characters, nothing on it. And just the shipping label. And then the return address is also quite often a local warehouse in Europe or US.

[00:12:12] Wow. Just to be able to show that it’s not really coming from China. It should be okay to, to, to, to handle it like that, because that’s the main thing that people don’t want it to show in the tracking or on the packaging that it’s coming from China. Although we, we both know most of the things in the world come from China, so understand.

[00:12:31] That’s interesting. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we could dive in a little bit more. You’re kind of giving me some, some answer in this points, but so what are some ways. People use using this or dropshipping in general now, like a lot of people think, they say like drop shipping is dead or, you know, like there’s no margin, too much competition.

[00:12:50] Can you give us some ways? Yeah. Some of your, your people are customers are using it to maybe differentiate or to, to succeed today’s market. So for us, we see that a lot of the, well, the drop shipper, they have a store most of the time, a Shopify store in our case where they connect that with our platform.

[00:13:08] And once it’s connected, the orders come in with us. Then we will prepare the orders to make ’em ready to pay. They click pay. Once it’s paid, we will purchase the goods, ship it to our warehouse and then ship it out. So we don’t have stock of all the items that are being sold. We have to purchase based on whatever the consumer pays.

[00:13:27] Um, the, that model is, is still very much alive. It has a curve where sometimes it’s is more popular than others and has been a lot of bad experiences by consumers buying from drop shipping stores and. In general payment providers don’t like drop shippers because they consider them a, a risky profile. So that gives you a lot of issues when it comes to either on Facebook ads or PayPal or Klarna or whatever payment method you you use.

[00:13:56] But in general, dropshipping itself is, is there and is always going to be there cuz it’s not individuals only doing drop shipping global multi nationals do drop shipping too. Yeah. They don’t have everything. They. On their, on, on stock. They also use suppliers that are sending the orders out for them.

[00:14:15] Whenever you buy. I bought something online on Zolando, which is more, mostly like shoe fashion brand from platform from Germany. I don’t receive the orders at once. All altogether, I receive different ones. Because they come from different locations and they’re being dropshipped to my home. And this is an established top three platform in Germany.

[00:14:35] Uh, so it’s not that it’s, the drop shipping model is, is dying or is gonna gonna disappear. I think the, the, how people have played the game is to make quick box. That is more and more difficult to just put something online and then magically orders come in and you got you, you start to become rich. I think that’s, I haven’t seen many that succeed within three months with getting to a six figure store or something like that.

[00:15:00] And then the question is six figure. What is bottom line left of that six figure? That’s true is still also a question, right? So I think that what, a lot of the time, there’s a dream. That’s being told a financial dream. And for me, it’s more like a journey because I see that dropshipping and I really recommend anyone to do any entrepreneurial activity.

[00:15:22] It’s a way to become an entrepreneur. To understand what, what comes with everything like marketing, what finances with logistics, all the facets of, of trading comes back into drop shipping. It makes you a better individual. It makes you a more valuable employee. If you don’t think entrepreneurship is something for you, and it will open up so many opportunities, because if you think I get excited by entrepreneurship and drop shipping is really my thing.

[00:15:49] You’re going to the next thing. And you’re gonna be leading the economy in one level form, hiring people, hiring local staff, global staff, and it’s gonna be a driver for any, any country’s  economy. So for me, it’s a stepping stone. Yeah. And drop shipping is a great way for stepping stone to find out if entrepreneurship is something for you and secondary.

[00:16:08] A lot of dropshippers after two, three years, they go into another niche. They go into advertising or they go into marketing or they go into creatives. They, they go into something because they found out that they get most energy out of that kind of activity. And therefore they start an agency or they start become a, a service provider.

[00:16:27] So for me, it’s that stepping stone will always stay because it’s a very low. Way to do this. And the drop shipping model itself will, will also not go away because it’s, it’s so easy to use, not only for individuals, but also for, uh, multinationals. Yeah. Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. Yeah. You said a lot of great stuff there.

[00:16:47] I’ll I’ll take a couple of, couple of, couple of points. Yeah. Like I honestly, I, I had some stores that were definitely not were the old fashioned ones, you know? I think dropshipping used to be, or a lot of [00:17:00] people would do drop ship where it would kind of just make a store for everything like a general store.

[00:17:05] And they’d import hunt, you know, they’d use those plugins. I’ve I’ve used those plugins. Right. And then they, they import all the products from ally express. Yeah. Maybe, maybe you spin it or change some of it, but it pulls the images, it pulls the title, you know, you can change some of it. And then honestly it gets sales, but then like, Like you said the credit card, the PayPal, the chargebacks, the delay, the out of stock products, the discontinued products, you know, the, the Aliexpress vendor will say, oh, we don’t sell this anymore.

[00:17:36] And you’re like, man, I just, I did marketing on it. Right. I’ve created a listing or, you know, I did Facebook ads and then I spring in sales and now you say you don’t even have this product anymore. Right. So, but I think, like you said, like having, having more focused on a smaller quantity, like a better relationship with a supplier, working with a value add provider, like you to inspect the goods to make sure it’s shipped on time.

[00:18:01] Because yeah, honestly, there was times I did that and I’m like, I’m buying basically. You just buy it on Aliexpress and just hope. Hope it arrives. You’re just like, yeah, please arrive to the customer. You know, like seriously, it was scary, but yeah. So, so I, I like what you said, like another story I have is.

[00:18:24] I learned about a drop shipping from buying a router in the US. When I was in New York city, I, I learned that the router didn’t come from the ISP, a service internet service provider. It came from like a event from their fact from a factory that’s drop shipping, right? Like, like you said, They’re not like some small, like entrepreneur, that’s just doing Facebook ads.

[00:18:46] They’re drop shipping as multinational companies, like you said. So it’s just like, that’s why people have to upgrade their game. They have to get good at supply chain, find value added providers like you to make sure that the goods are actually delivered because that’s gonna be the way to sustain and thrive.

[00:19:03] Which is really cool. Yeah. That’s for us, I think the supply chain is how we want to differentiate ourselves because that’s the key differentiator itself. We see that, for example, tiny from Alibaba, they wanna have global delivery in 72 hours that’s which is basically three days. It’s not there yet at that level, but they’re going to push that forward.

[00:19:23] And other players are following that as well. It is possible. We, we deliver to the UK now four to six days. So sometimes even in four days from a warehouse, it arrives in the UK. It’s become, if you are able to reach the delivery within five days and your total shipping costs compared to keeping stock and doing local fulfillment in a, in a warehouse.

[00:19:46] That’s if that’s lower and it’s maybe two or three days slower. Then there’s no benefit in keeping stock anymore. And if you can even customize it by having some already stock, you buy stock, but you keep it in our warehouse free of charge for, for one month and you try to sell that and you can deliver it with that kind of speed.

[00:20:07] Then the advantage of having local warehouse is, is almost gone. Yeah. Uh, of course you people want next day delivery. I understand that. Next day delivery will never be possible from China, but three days is something that is doable in the coming five years. Amazing. And the, the quality issues of China becoming also less and less simply because the game is being changing.

[00:20:29] It’s no longer a factory of the world, this designer of the world. Yeah. So China is actually coming up with brands, which all. We’ll create a whole new dynamic of the whole supply chain. And in my opinion, it’s changing to a demand chain. So it’s no longer, uh, who is going to supply my product. It’s more or less who has the product I want and has that available.

[00:20:51] And, and then the, the, I, the power. It is always at the buyer. So you are the buyer I’m gonna buy 1000 pieces, give me [00:21:00] your best price. Otherwise it go to someone else. Mm. Then it’s changing. So, okay. I, I, you have you. I have stock. I have 1000 in stock. Can you help me to sell? Sure I can help you to sell because there’s no risk in that.

[00:21:13] So I, I see, I predict that the coming years, probably three to five years, the power of the suppliers become much more. And then whatever’s happening now with TikTok and all these kind of. Live streaming. The influencing game will be, they will be used by Chinese suppliers saying I’m now selling to a middleman.

[00:21:34] Who’s selling to a middleman. Who’s selling it to an offline retail store. Can you help me to build my own brands and promote it? And I have the stock. I can put it even in local warehouse, anywhere in the world at my cost, but I need you to promote it and to sell it. And then you get exactly what’s happening in China.

[00:21:51] Now with the live streaming, the number of sales that’s being generated by live streaming and the speed of the production and involving the factories with the whole sales channel, while you you’re gonna say, okay, I’m gonna do live stream and I’m gonna promote this product, but you don’t have to stock yet.

[00:22:10] So you need to have a supplier that’s ready to produce something for you. In time, or maybe you have the raw materials already ready or the goods even ready. So you can, without any issue, you can scale and try to sell that product. And I think that’s, that’s a game that’s, that’s a little bit that’s gonna be changing.

[00:22:28] And the best examples that happen with the demand chain is basically the face masks and everything Corona related, cuz you’re no longer searching for who can produce my product. It’s like, who has stock. Who has stock to the product that I want. True. And that kind of shortage is, is happening now more and more due to a lot of reasons, mainly Corona, but yeah.

[00:22:49] Yeah, no, I like, I took the demand chain is a cool concept. Haven’t heard it’s see. Yeah. Cause we always think supply chain, but demand chain. It makes sense. So it make. Give me some thoughts. Cause yeah, I mean, it’s, the planning will be different. So your planning process, so somebody has an already, then you start to think about other production itself, but now if you start to think from a demand, then you start to say, okay, I need someone who can create the demand.

[00:23:18] What do I need to do? Facilitate them? I need to have goods available already. So they’re already preproduced and the whole, everything is changing. It’s shifting to, into another kind of, uh, direction, which is very, very interesting. Yeah. So in your, in, in your opinion, actually, we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about print on demand in a future epi, next episode, actually already recorded, but this, this won’t be first, just a little bit weird.

[00:23:42] Okay. But they also talk about where they. They consolidate the shipment, all the, the B2C orders in China, and then they send, send it to the, the US. Then they break it. Is that what this is doing at HyperSKU or? Uh, no, we, we now more order based. So we, we buy the order. Per order. And from the supplier locally, we don’t use Aliexpress.

[00:24:04] We buy from local manufacturers, shipped to our warehouse, and then normally we hand it over to players, like UNexpress for the delivery. So most of our items are going with UN express. Okay. And they ship out, uh, uh, globally with their, so they consolidate all the parcels, got it. Hours and others into flights.

[00:24:24] Great. And then they, they arrange the custom clearance and they have contracts with their last mile. In general. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Got it. All right. I mean, I have some questions. I think we kind of answered some of ’em, but so mostly still from China, right. Just to be, or is there other, other supply locations or is it mostly China out?

[00:24:44] Probably mostly for us. It’s now from China and we are, we will launch, uh, that we also will have some supply from, from Europe. Okay. Um, but the diversity of products is very, is, is limited. There you cannot keep that’s the whole thing also. And you know that too, with Amazon there’s you have to keep stock in a warehouse.

[00:25:03] So you have to predict what’s going to sell, but you cannot easily change. We cannot add new products or a wider variety of catalogs unless making the investment of stock. And I think that’s, so what we see is that most of the products that are being sold in Europe or for, or us are high ticket drop shipping.

[00:25:23] So it’s more high value products, which is probably sold over a hundred US. Uh, so, so that they, that for that kind of items, you expect fast delivery, but most of the time they’re also heavier and bulkier. So for example, furniture, it’s not possible to drop ship from China by air, with a decent margin.

[00:25:43] You’ll spend too much on the shipping cost. Yeah. So you have to have the local supplier where someone has already bought that and put it by sea or train into a warehouse. Uh, and then you can sell that for them. We see that that’s kind of, uh, so that is, uh, it’s not per se that we are selling the same items.

[00:26:01] If we use a local warehouse, it’s probably additional items that we’re currently not able to supply with decent margins. Yeah. Got it. Really cool. Really cool. So for using HyperSKU, like what are some ways, how do people get started and, and normally use it is what’s what’s the workflow or system. It’s it’s kind of straightforward.

[00:26:23] So hyper you go to HyperSKU.com. You create an account that’s all free. We only make money once you have orders paying with us. So there’s no, no hidden cost or anything like that. And whenever you, you connect, uh, you create an account. You connect the store when you have orders. You will also reach out to our team or we reach out to you and there will be daily communication on WhatsApp or Skype or whatever channel you prefer.

[00:26:47] So there’s actually someone yeah. With you, uh, on demand, more or less to give you answers for questions. Whenever the order is, is paid and or goods arrive in a warehouse, the tracking number is pushed back to, to Shopify or WooCommerce or Becommerce or whatever channel you’re using. Uh, so that, um, that kind of thing is automatic.

[00:27:07] We try to automize as much as possible of the flow to be able to have the seller, to focus on marketing, finding new products and do the advertising so that we can focus on getting in touch with the supply and negotiate with them, coordinate all the shipments, all the deliveries and make sure the customization happening.

[00:27:27] And the customization is definitely something that’s more and more popular. Now people want branded packaging, branded products. Uh, all that kind of stuff. Exactly. Which is very difficult to do. If it’s a hundred pieces or 200 pieces, or like, like a few hundred pieces, which is very hard to make it cost efficient for us, because you easily spend a lot of time on this and, and fine tuning that.

[00:27:53] Um, so the margins are very thin. It only works if the seller is able to scale it. Yeah. And so our job is to make it as easy as possible so that they have the time and energy to scale and build something that will benefit us and them obviously, cuz our ours is purely margin-based. We have a markup on our product cost and markup on the shipping cost.

[00:28:17] That’s it. Okay. There’s no, no other cost, uh, involved. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So then. So I, to be clear if I have my own, like if I have my own supplier already, would I be. Who will work with you or it’s could, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the end, in the end, you, you decide whether you can even do you have 50, 50 products and only one product you wanna do with us.

[00:28:41] That’s fine. You do one product with us. The rest of the other supplier. I recommend people to have at least two suppliers, because then you can compare prices and sometimes one is better than the other, or has different shipping methods or is able to, to get a better supplier itself. Uh, so I, I always recommend people to.

[00:28:58] Two suppliers. Of course, we’re happy to serve someone. Only them, a lot of our customers, like I try with others. I like you guys, sometimes you guys are maybe a little bit more expensive, but it saves me time saves me energy. Uh, so that’s also a time saver. So we see that cost of products are sometimes compare purely like, okay, 1 cents higher or lower makes a difference.

[00:29:22] But the time spent is normally not calculated. So a lot of young entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs forget to calculate their own time into their cost structure. Cuz you only look at like fixed cost and not so much the hidden cost. Yeah. Uh, yeah, for us, we see that delivery rate is higher. There’s less quality issues.

[00:29:41] The speed is, is, is, is quite very, quite good. So we, we see that these kind of things will help you not to get banned, not to get blocked, not to get any issues along the way, um, which is in the end, the, the whole game is not a short term game. It’s to be a few months or a year where you can actually, uh, make some money.

[00:30:03] Awesome. Yeah. Just to reiterate that. I mean, a lot of, I, I, I think you’re right. A lot of, especially new entrepreneurs focus too much on the cost side versus the sales side, you know, especially ones like that come to China are looking for sourcing. They’re trying to get like, the lowest price, but then you’re gonna burn yourself onto sales side if you’re selling bad quality or bad service.

[00:30:26] Right. So like, yeah, I think people should take that into account and when they’re doing their whole analysis, but for sure it’s worth it, man. I mean, it’s a core part of the business and you gotta be confident in it. My, my, one of my last kind of like big picture. I even kind of saying it, I like the whole like demands chain, but the forecasts for drop shipping, or, you know, maybe even eCommerce or in the next five, 10 years, you, you know, what’s in your crystal ball.

[00:30:52] Yes. So in the next five years, I think the role of the suppliers will definitely be more, much more. So the you’ve more become marketing agencies as a, or influencer as a dropshipper. Where you either have a pool of influencers that you manage, or you do that yourself, or most of the time drop chips wanna stay hidden and they use other individuals to promote products.

[00:31:13] So I do, I do think that’s, uh, a big, a big one. I do see that Chinese brands will also pick up because there’s a lot of retail stores that are being empty now on the street. And it’s quite easy to buy a  spot in a, in a busy street and put your logo on the outside and create eyeballs for your brands that doesn’t have any awareness net yet.

[00:31:33] Yeah. So I do think that there’s gonna be a lot of changes. The last two years, Europe has especially last year, a lot of changes in Europe. So they had the new VAT rules. That for drop shipping. So everything below 22 Euro before was tax free to import. Now everything is tax. So that definitely had an impact where dropshippers in general said, okay, I need to reassess how I can make money because now suddenly I have to pay 20% VT that I didn’t pay before.

[00:32:00] Yeah. That, that, that, that’s almost my margin. So how do I, how solve this? So that was a big impact. Now we have the war with Russian Ukraine has a big impact. Corona is still happening um, in the pandemic. So then a supply chain, uh, there is still not enough containers going up and down from China to, to here.

[00:32:21] So inflation has been double digit in the last few months in Europe, uh, which is insane. So that is the spending power of individuals will drop because a lot of the things honestly said on drop shipping are not items you need. It’s it’s more like it appeals by, you see an ad, you click on it, you purchase it.

[00:32:39] So when you have money to spend you take a look at that, but if you have no money to spend and you, your, most of your money is spent on food or other things on your kids, it’s harder to, to have that kind of spending power. So I think the coming two years will be a little tougher. Um, and it’ll have to take some time to reshape the supply chain to reshape the model of, of, to up itself.

[00:33:00] For Europe. For us, it just keeps going because there’s not. Changes in that sense. So we see stable growth outside of Europe. Within Europe. It’s picking up again from April where there’s, again, some growth because there’s mainly new people, new young entrepreneurs. Trying to do drop shipping because they try crypto and it hasn’t, hasn’t been a good year.

[00:33:23] hard for and they tried all these other things. NFTs is still not, not stable enough. So they, you try a lot of things as it’s trying to find your financial freedom and drop shipping is one of them. And it turns out to be the most stable, one of all with limited investment and, and still limited risk. Yeah.

[00:33:43] That’s that is still an interesting venue. Yeah. that makes sense. That makes sense. This is great. I got some new inspiration and ideas to Simon and I think that’s all I have unless you wanna add anything, but of course, how, how can people find, of course HyperSKU.com is if you wanna drop any other links or, or connections here, I can do that.

[00:34:03] Yeah, so HyperSKU, we are on YouTube on TikTok itself, Facebook. So we have a good, uh, decent, uh, content there. And you wanna follow me Simon I’m on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, or, uh, any way you wanna reach out to me, try to respond as soon as possible. And, uh, see if I can help you further.

[00:34:21] If you wanna buy a product, if you wanna buy. Also fine. We don’t, we, we tend not to work too much with Amazon sellers simply because cuz I want to prevent people reaching out and getting disappointed. Cuz I know you are following a lot of Amazon sellers. Yeah. It’s hard for us to compete because Alibaba has better product prices than we offer.

[00:34:40] Normally just the shipping cost of Alibaba is, is much higher than what if we would offer it. But we’re not freight forwarding agency. So we are not a freight forward itself. And Chinese players are dominating Amazon and Shopify much less. There’s still much more European and Western sellers active on that.

[00:34:59] So the competition is a little bit different. So we, you tend to focus if you’re selling on newcomer, Shopify, or any other job shipping channel, let us know. You’re currently working with a supplier and you want to try something else. What’s the risk of trying someone else. Sure. Reach out. We happy to fulfill one order for you for GFA community.

[00:35:19] We can do an order for free. Wow. We can just try us out and see if you like it. And there’s no risk to that. I would say. Yeah, that’s amazing. Awesome. Well, I think that’s. That’s all like I have, and it was a really fun shot to have you here, Simon and glad we finally got it. It’s been on my list to get you outta here.

[00:35:36] We made it happen. So thanks. Thank you, Mike. Thanks. And also Aubrey. Yeah, your team is amazing. So thanks to you guys. Oh yeah. She was supposed to be here, internet, internet problems in the Philippines. but yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. All right. Thank you, Simon. There’s honestly lots of drop ship opportunities still.

[00:35:57] And as we talked about, um, you know, every drop ship is not dead. I know there’s certain parts of drop shipping is dead. Like, you know, making a website with thousands of products to drop ship from Aliexpress. But I think like Simon says, if you have a good supply chain and a focused niche, uh, that will, that will still be always successful.

[00:36:16] Right? Aubrey. And, uh, you know, I, I actually met many drop shippers in the Philippines. I, I, I was there. I spoke in, uh, you know, I spoke in Quezon city there, I spoke in Cebu, uh, Baguio. I met a drop shipper and he had a lot of problems cuz it was right when COVID hit. And after I spoke, he came to talk to me after the speech.

[00:36:40] And he had, I don’t know, hundreds or thousands of products that were not shipped because of cor coronavirus, and he had, he accepted PayPal. So he was asking me what to do. And as we said in the interview, If you have, you know, the biggest risk is getting your bank account or your merchant account shut down, like losing your PayPal, losing your Stripe, losing your bank account really could destroy your business.

[00:37:08] So I told him, you know, be careful you don’t get chargebacks, cuz that’s really what kills drop ship business is, is when you get customers refunding or calling their credit card to cancel their order. So anyway, but of course, if you don’t do it, like, like get to that situation, you should be okay. What do you think Aubrey, if you ever studied dropshipping.

[00:37:30] I’m not really familiar with that, but I’ve heard on some other news too, but, uh, based on that explanation, I think it’s kind of, you know, frustrating to deal with it. But if we have strategies on how to deal with things, uh, I, I know we can overcome anything. Yeah. Like, I don’t know if that’s how it works in Philippines, but in the US, when I ordered a router from Verizon, like my ISP.

[00:37:56] They send me a router as part of the package, actually that is drop shipping. That is drop shipping, usually like, you know, Globe or these other horrible internet companies. They actually, they don’t, they don’t, they’re just, uh, drop shipping. Usually they just have it sent from the factory. Um, not them directly and they’re not taking the stock.

[00:38:16] That’s very common. So again, people think dropshipping is dead is not dead. It’s just, you gotta be good in your supply chain and you’ve gotta. You know, deliver what you say on time and so solutions like Simon’s he also gave us a little discount or bonus for GFA listeners. And just mentioned GFA. When you mentioned to him or anybody at HyperSKU also, you know, they’ll know they came from the show, so it’s worth it.

[00:38:40] And so Aubrey, you’ve been working really hard. Let’s talk a little bit about Excalibur Brothers. Can you start the conversation of where we’re at with that? With the products? Yeah, actually, we’re pretty excited to finally launch these products, but I guess first one would going to be initially launch first before the other product.

[00:38:58] And I think it’s on the way to us, right? Yeah. It’s on the boat we decided, or actually the franchisee, it’s really their decision to save money on the shipping by ocean rather than by air. And yeah, so we saw the containers, LCL shipment, uh, these polishing cloth. If you’re on. If you’re watching my, our video version, you can see it, but if you’re on audio, maybe you can check it out excaliburbrothers.com.

[00:39:24] But yeah, basically it should arrive June 20th at port and as anybody that has experienced a, it’s gonna take some time to get checked in and imported and shipped and checked into Amazon. So we think early July, maybe latest mid July, but more likely early July launch. Uh, actually going back to dropshipping topic, I think we’re receiving emails who are interested to have our products, right?

[00:39:52] You’re right. You’re right. Uh, brother we get so many emails. We have the New York bar store. I mean, might as well to share it publicly. You know, we do everything public, but New York bar store was our, one of our, actually not the very first, but one of our first, one of our first e-commerce websites. And it was a drop shipping, but we were actually to drop shipper.

[00:40:12] So we let others sellers sell our products and we ship from our warehouse. And as you probably can tell Aubrey, I don’t like to turn off websites or delete pages. So we still have this drop ship application form. Uh, and, but it’s, it’s, you know, like I have this long term dream, you know, it’s been tens and tens of years, not even years, but like decades of building this seriously, but the idea is we could let people drop ship this polishing cloth.

[00:40:43] Actually, so we, I don’t wanna overwhelm you Aubrey or our amazing team, but if, when you’re ready, we could reply to those drop ship applications and let them drop ship our Excalibur Brothers products, or even other brand products. Like, I don’t know if we’re ready to expose all of our brands, but publicly, but the other brands that we have, we could let other sellers sell.

[00:41:06] So that is true. that is a, a good point, uh, to bring up and we need to develop the drop ship. Actually, we have the whole system , we’ve been through so many years about e-commerce unbelievable, but I’m not sure if you saw the video with Marie. Marie was even on this podcast, Marie Balan, but, well, Marie, she’s married now to a German friend of mine, Daniel, and they live in Germany, but she’s a Filipinq that worked for us at Shadstone from 2000.

[00:41:34] And. Until 2000, I don’t know, 13, 12, 12. And she was great, you know, and she really helped us to, you know, maintain cause we started it in 2004, but she helped maintain it from 2009 to 2012. Actually she bought it from us, with her husband when she went to Germany. And she didn’t have time over time. So we bought it back.

[00:41:58] I don’t know if you kind of gimme a little of insights. She’s also on our podcast on a video blog. I met in Manila again, I’ve, I’ve known her really long time. We’re still good friends and we bought it back. But yeah, we have to kind of get the, get the shopping cart set up and the drop ship program set up.

[00:42:12] And, uh, yeah, I hope our team can help us do that. But the idea is once we, but then again, the thing is I’ll bring, I don’t know if they’re just gonna wanna sell one product drop shippers, like sell lots of products. Right. But we could maybe let them sell this product, but they might say, oh, don’t you have more products.

[00:42:30] Usually they say, They want to add like a whole catalog of products to your website. So we had that before. We had almost 250 SKUs before for New York bar store. But the idea, the dream is you’re right. You I’m happy you bring it up is we could reestablish the drop ship program on New York bar store for letting them sell our branded products.

[00:42:51] Like Excalibur Brothers. That’s the dream like it’ll happen. Maybe it’ll take another six months or a year, but maybe sooner, but will make it happen. We’re gonna do it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:05] All right. And so those are the updates and I, I keep people asking, you know, what’s the products that we sell on Excalibur Brothers. You can see the first four, uh, we do a podcast with Luciano https://www.globalfromasia.com/ebproducts/ for Excalibur Brothers products. And we have the episode and we show the products we linked to the links.

[00:43:23] They’re already ranking in Google. I don’t know if you knew Aubrey, like the leather flask case is already ranking in Google. Well, page two, but it was from, we just built a listing page on our website. But I think, you know, me and our skill, of course, we’re Amazon sellers and we’ve been doing this since 2006, but we are more about internet marketing off, off Amazon traffic.

[00:43:43] So we’re already building up off offsite traffic. And so I can’t wait to launch and yeah, I mean, and I don’t know if you’ve seen Luciano’s latest website design. Have you seen that yet? Aubrey? Yeah. No, I’ve seen that and it’s so beautiful. it really is. Yeah. And then the video is, yeah. I mean, we’re gonna start to really.

[00:44:03] Crank it out now. So I, if you’re listening, I think we’re also talking Aubrey about opening up the next batch of blimp method participants for new products. I don’t know if it kind of hit, maybe we shouldn’t say too much yet, but there is a wait list blimpmethod.com. I think there’s like almost a hundred people on the list.

[00:44:23] So I don’t know. We’re we’re not gonna still gonna be selective and application only. So I think they could, and then I think you’ll be helping talk to the applicants to see if they’re the right fit for the program. So I think they can set up on that wait list for now, but hopefully soon we’ll be opening it up again.

[00:44:39] Right? Yeah. So you should watch out for that. And it’s pretty soon to. Send some emails to them. Yep. And I would be sure to inform them. Awesome. All right. I think that’s a wrap today. I think episode 376, getting closer to 400. I can’t believe it. So thanks for being here with us, Aubrey. Thanks for everyone for listening.

[00:45:02] Thanks everyone. Bye. To get more info about running an international business. Please visit our website www.globalfromasia.com. That’s www.globalfromasia.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.