Hey everyone . . . I've been living in Asia for about the last 8 years. Currently in South Korea, but I am seriously thinking that I'll move to China in about 3 months. This presents me with a kind of interesting opportunity. Being there, and being able to do quality control, etc. and with the prices being what they are, it would be more than reasonable for me to start up a business selling some kind of hard product. My main area of interest is martial arts, and I'm building up some new sites for my network, and already have a few that turn a very good profit just from adsense and affiliate stuff. But, I could really produce my own brand of anything from shoes to tractors, if I decided it would be interesting and worthwhile. I'll be leaving Korea with about 20k US$ saved, so I have enough money to invest, for sure I think. I could even hire a local designer or something if I wanted, and I'll take some job in China where I work maybe 4 hours a day and get a free apartment, etc. so I'll have lots of free time and some more expendable income being generated through a job, my sites, and so on. The most likely scenario would be that I'll do something somehow related to martial arts, because I already have a developed network of about 20 sites that get plenty of traffic, established user bases and mailing lists, etc. and I could just point all of that at my products. But, I know that with a bit of money to throw around, I could duplicate a similar network in a different type of niche in 6 months or so. So, I'm curious about what YOU would sell if you had some money to invest, could produce just about anything, and were sure that you could get qualified traffic. If people are interested, I'm also interested in having a conversation about building a brand for tangible products, (I sell some info products, but never anything physical other than affiliate promotion), developing wholesale relationships, and everything related to something like this. The main thing I'm interested in are the things that you would produce, if you had a reasonable (given the expense) budget, and would be onsite in China. Thanks
Drop shipping is the best rout to go down, you don't have to carry any stock and your overheads are practicly zero
Right. I would set up some kind of drop shipping arrangement, but, the thing is that I want to specifically brand something for myself, so that if I loose the supplier, or things get problematic - at least I still have the brand and I can just source out new suppliers. Also, the problem with finding dropshippers through alibaba or something is that you have no idea about the quality - with alot of the items there, I can't even tell if they're miniatures or full sized products. Also, when doing info products, adsense, affiliate, etc. - the money is good and it's easy and all, but you're not building up any real residual income possibilities. At least with creating your own branded merchandise or product, you have all of your labor and time and money being put into something that at least has the potential to generate revenue for you in the future that can stand the finicky tides of google, et al.
You sound like my dad. He was telling me once about the brilliance of the Germans with the VW bugs, and how they manufactured the same basic model, year after year. He thought this was a good idea, because you could make alot of money on aftermarket parts, etc. without investing alot of money in research and design, marketing, and so on. Apparently, some company in South America bought all of the old factory material for the bugs and is manufacturing them down there. The same thing basically happened in India a few years ago with Stella motorscooters. As I understand, they basically just bought all of the templates and machinerey for the old Vespa P-models from maybe the late 60's or early 70's and started re-manufacturing them under a new brand. Kind of interesting stuff. Unfortunately, 20k isn't nearly enough capital to start an auto company, even in China or I would think about it!
I know nothing about the martial arts industry and I'm not sure if you would consider this a "hard" product but what about training videos from some of the local martial arts experts? If aimed at the English speaking market I would think there would be some interesting marketing opportunities. Tom
I would LOVE to sell computer parts and hardware as well as software. there is a never ending market there. but its SO hard to get into that