Business Advice Required. Buying and Selling Goods

Hank_Marvin

Hank_Marvin

Hank_Marvin

Soldato
Joined
12 Sep 2005
Posts
3,703
Location
Norwich, England
Hi,

Must be some business people around the forum that buy and sell for a living.

Is the general rule that you should always at least double your money? Buy for £2 and sell for £4+. It makes sense to me and in a previous business I had (drop shipping) I was doubling and more, all be it a different product to this time.

And anyone have any chinese buying advice to cut out the UK middle man?


Look forward to some replies.

Danke
 
Learn to speak Cantonese so that you can cut out the UK middle man. Also, sell your products for more than their cost to you.
 
Different industries have different industry standard mark ups. I guess you start off at a point where you think you will meet demand.

For instance I believe the markup on supermarket food is pretty low but it's high volume sales so the figures still stack up.

If you can sell for triple then you might as well! I mean look at trainers, they must cost next to nothing for some 3 year old to make. Obviously I'm not promoting the exploitation of slave labour though.
 
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I know a guy who can get you a pallet of jeans...

Oh, and sigma please stop stealing my sign. I crashed my car, it's upsetting.
 
[sensible, long-term thinking and less selfish thoughts] Actually, you should be using British manufacturers and promoting the growth of our economy. [/sensible, long-term thinking and less selfish thoughts]
 
Ha I'm sure I'll get by without learning that.

Thing is its like a £20rrp, UK sup wants to sell to me for £15, so only +£5, for me it seems to high of a risk for the return.
 
Hank_Marvin said:
Hi,

Must be some business people around the forum that buy and sell for a living.

Is the general rule that you should always at least double your money? Buy for £2 and sell for £4+. It makes sense to me and in a previous business I had (drop shipping) I was doubling and more, all be it a different product to this time.

And anyone have any chinese buying advice to cut out the UK middle man?


Look forward to some replies.

Danke
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That is my general rule but it is not A general rule.

Pricing is a balancing act, maybe you can make less per unit but make more sales and therefore more profit overall. You need to consider labour costs in this as well though.

The best way to buy from China is to visit the manufacturer but you don't have to if you are willing to take more of a risk. What do you want to know? Basic advice would be to ensure you get samples. It can be tricky to get them to make changes to products but if you have something you are happy with they can usually duplicate it exactly.

I don't fancy that 25% margin you are being offered.
 
Jambo said:
That is my general rule but it is not A general rule.

Pricing is a balancing act, maybe you can make less per unit but make more sales and therefore more profit overall. You need to consider labour costs in this as well though.

The best way to buy from China is to visit the manufacturer but you don't have to if you are willing to take more of a risk. What do you want to know? Basic advice would be to ensure you get samples. It can be tricky to get them to make changes to products but if you have something you are happy with they can usually duplicate it exactly.

I don't fancy that 25% margin you are being offered.
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I know the manufacturer and they sell to the UK sup, not 100% if they have an agreement that the UK sup can be the only UK Sup but when I contacted the manufacturers they pointed me to the UK sup. Have found a chinese seller who must have got stock from manufacturers and the price is like £6+shipping and duty which should work out much better then £15 from UK sup although would have to do some research on this Chinese seller and also ideally buy direct from manufac......

But hopefully for the short term future I will get a better price from UK sup, as you say 25% isn't great when I add my other costs etc etc so hopefully I will get good news from them.
 
Hank_Marvin said:
Is the general rule that you should always at least double your money?
Click to expand...

Russinating said:
The high street shops I deal with have a 2.6x markup since the VAT increase, and 2.5x before that.
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There is no general rule - the margin will differ wildly depending on what you are selling, what your market is, whether you are simply box shifting or adding value etc etc. Many high street shops operate on a very slim margin indeed - often below 10% - and counter this with volume. Some operate on an incredibly high margin but sell far lower volumes.

If you are selling Playstations your margin will be circa 10%, if you are selling clothing your margin could be considerably higher.

There is no blanket answer and anyone expecting one is, like most people who think they can make a go at business, probably doomed to be one of reasons why the majority of new business startups fail in the first year.
 
Well I wouldn't be selling 1mil units, more like up to 10k a year so not very high amounts so the profits would be slim for me after taking into account other costs after purchasing.

Why i started this is because I guess the product costs a couple of pounds max, then some shipping and duty. The middle man is making probly £10 and I would make £5 at rrp.
 
there is no such thing as a fixed mark up

each industry is different, each product it different,

and depending who your selling too (wholesale, retail etc) the mark up would be different again

for cutting out the middle man, you have to find better suppliers
 
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