I live in Panama city, panama. (latin america.. best known as the 3rd world) Here i have access to cheap luxury items, and the distributor chains offer prices much lower than any drop shipper in the US for consumer products... ie toners, ink, ipods and so... Luxury items have a very good suply control, so sell luxury items to the not destinated market is not an option (most of the time.. destinated market is south america) I want to develop a business online since a couple mohtns... and these are the problems i found so far. Shipping... Even if the products i can trade are cheap for me... ship them to US will be very high and the price may not be competitive.. CC process... Pretty much no money brooker conects to local banks... so the only option i have is money orders. What advice you guys will give me ?
Good idea. Get a US partner that will handle the finance and recieve orders. Basically he would be the front end and you would maintain the "warehouse" How cheap can you get say digital camera's, Ipods for compared to the US market? We ship international upon special request. We just shipped 40 lbs of books to Ottawa Canada from Oklahoma USA and it was around $150 to ship it via fedex express. It's cheaper to go with USPS (united states postal service) but with them after it leaves customs there is no more tracking on the item and things tend to get "lost" every now and then.
I have 2 sources for products actually. Panama, based on geographic position have a lot merchandise traffic and some specific areas for comers are tax free. I could say that the prices i handle are a little cheaper than the prices offered by drop shippers for consumer electronics and periferals (ink, ipods and others) Luxury items are way cheaper; but the catch is that suppliers have deals with brandhouses for distribution exclusitivies. Sell them may be good profit but not a good idea because customer support. i.e one of the biggest suppliers for cartier products to south america market lost the line due contraband send to colombia (colombia is forbiden by cartier as market due falsifications) Luxotica sunglases (the owner of rayban brand) was handle here by 3 mayor suppliers... i don't know what happend exactly but now there is only one. Some of the suppliers have offices in Miami... i'll have to do some research.. The funny stuff about this is the following: Sometimes merchandise is send from asia and europe to miami tru the Panama Canal; once they get there, whatever is for the latin american market is sent here for distribution. Some others split the products here and send the containers to colon free zone or miami At the end of the day, i can get things cheap; so i tought to sell them tru internet