How do you know that your factory is even making a

quality product, especially if it's something that you have

designed yourself? Now, there are ways around this. One, you

could actually take a plane flight over to China and go and inspect

the products yourself, ideally before they put it into the package. Or

two, when talking about shipping, one of the other things that you can

consider is taking out insurance, just for that one-off chance and

low chance that your product may be stuck in a shipping container that

maybe ends up at the bottom of the ocean. Shipping is a minefield in

itself. Essentially, you're trying to get your product from the

factory over to a destination. You can use shipping

companies to organise all of the shipping process. What they

will do is they will give you... I'm Matthew Fraser and

this is Amazon Ecom Secrets. I'll

be sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from millions in debt

to an eight-figure entrepreneur. If you're ready to escape the

nine-to-five and live life on your terms, let me show you

the way. In today's episode, we're going to talk about suppliers and

how to find them and who's good and who's not. So let

me take you back to when I first started in this space. This

was going back to 2017 and I had to try and find a

supplier. And I will say it was

actually difficult because you want to put a lot of trust into a

supplier. You're not sure if you send this money over to, and

we're going to talk about China because China's mainly where these products are made. So

you're going to send this money to China. Are they just going to run off with

your money? are they going to deliver a good product? So

let's talk about some of the nuances with that. Now, first of all, how do

I find a supplier? Now, luckily, this day and age,

we've got the internet, so you don't actually need to fly over to China

to find a supplier. You can go onto a website called Alibaba, And

Alibaba is just a website that showcases all these manufacturers, not

just in China, but also other parts of the world, mainly in China. And

it shows all the different products and all the

different pricing on just one platform. And

that's how you can find supplies. So when we're talking about

Alibaba, the platform, some of the protections they also give

to buyers is protection against your

money being stolen via an insurance. So

that's why it's really good to use a platform like Alibaba because they're

there to protect you as a buyer. They're not going

to put, or they certainly don't want to put rogue sellers

or rogue factories and manufacturers on their platform who

are going to shaft people. That's not what they're in the business in. They want you

to keep coming back month after month buying more

product from them through the Alibaba platform. And that's how they

make money. When you have found a company that you're comfortable

with dealing with, you can then ask for a sample of their product.

And they're going to be more than happy to ship you one of their samples directly

to your door so that you can touch it and see it and feel it

and get an idea of how good is this quality. If the quality is

bad, then obviously you don't want to continue dealing with this supply because

really they're going to send you what they consider the best version of

their product because they want to get future business from you. Now, a

lot of questions or a lot of stumbling blocks that come up, particularly in

this space, is communication. And

you will find that a lot of things can be lost in

translation. A lot of things. I see it

all the time. One of the things that I would say to use

is a Chinese translator or a

Chinese product helper or assistant. And

you can find these types of people on Upwork or

even Fiverr and they will help you bridge the

gap on the communication. It can just be as simple as you sending an

email to your

Chinese translator. They will switch it for you and

get some of the nuances as well. I don't think you just want to put it straight into a

translator app. You want to use an actual person and

that will go leaps and bounds in helping break down the barriers

and also so that you know exactly what you're getting and

the company knows exactly what you want. That will really, really help.

So once you've got your communication down pat and you're on the same page, you

can start looking at things like MOQs and pricing. So

what is MOQ? MOQ is minimum order quantity. Now

when you go onto Alibaba, it's going to have a price list

there for you already, giving you how, like for

example, 100 units is going to cost $2 and 200 units is going to cost $1. My

advice to you is don't go in straight away trying to haggle the

price. You certainly don't want to go in trying to

haggle on like 100 units, right? Because these suppliers are

probably dealing in the tens of thousands of units, and

you're coming in ordering like pennies.

and you're going to try and haggle the price on them. What I would do is don't

haggle the price, go in at the MOQ that they're

requesting for 100 for X amount of dollars and just buy that because initially

anyway, you're really testing the product in the marketplace anyway.

Now, this is especially the case if it's just an off-the-shelf product,

meaning that you haven't changed anything about the product, you haven't changed the color,

you haven't added any handles or or buttons or

anything like that, right? It's just something that they just make every single day.

The other thing to think about regarding MOQs is

sometimes the factory will say, you need to order

500 of these units and it's going to be $5, for example. Now,

you may not want to order 500 units. That

might be too many. You might want to start by

ordering something like 50 units or 100 units. Now,

the factory is going to push back at you and say, no, no, our minimum order

is 500 units. So what you want to do is go back to

them and say, well, how much would it cost if

I was to order 50 or 100 units? So

what you'll find is they're not thinking about changing the price. They're

thinking that you want to buy it at $5, so therefore you have to order

500 units. But if you're prepared to pay something like $6 a

unit, only $1 more, then they might do you a

deal and let you buy 50 or 100 units. And that will save you on

getting more stock than perhaps what is necessary, especially

in the beginning when you're testing the market, because you want to have the

problem of having a small order and

selling out. That's your problem. You want to sell out. You don't

want the problem of having way too much stock and

now you're having to pay to get it removed from a warehouse. Now,

let's talk about quality assurance. Now,

how do you know that your factory is even making

a quality product, especially if it's something that

you have designed yourself? Now, there are ways around this.

One, you could actually take a plane flight over to China

and go and inspect the products yourself, ideally before

they put it into the package. Or two, there

are companies that actually specialize in quality assurance. Now

keep in mind when you're using these companies, it costs money. And

generally, they will only check two

in every 100 units or five in every 100 units. You'll have

to specify what it is. They're not going to go in and

check every single unit, especially if it's something where you've

ordered like 10,000 units. They're not going to go through 10,000 units

unless you paid for it. But then, of course, the cost would blow completely out.

So they're going to check a percentage of the products,

maybe in each batch if it comes through as batches. maybe

some inside the package and some outside of the packaging as well.

So that's something that you can overcome when it comes to quality assurance

and they'll also send you a full report so you know exactly what you're

getting and fingers crossed it then arrives in

the order you expect it. Now let me tell you a story about quality assurance

and it relates to a friend that I knew who was

developing a child's product. Now, what

happened was, she had one of the samples, it was something that she actually invented,

designed herself. She had this product sent to Australia, she

had it checked, and it looked fantastic. And what

she did was she started giving out some of the samples to her friends. And

so this child product is now in the hands of adults who are

looking at the product and thinking, yeah, this is fantastic. And most people

who are your friends or family are going to tell you it's awesome anyway, right? But

they were checking it. Oh, yeah, it looks awesome. So she then went ahead and

ordered 5,000 units of this particular product. It

goes through to Amazon. It then starts selling. And next thing she

knows, she's getting negative reviews. She's thinking, what's

going on? Why is it getting negative reviews? Now here's

the fatal mistake. She got it quality checked,

right? So that's a tick. But what she failed to do in that whole

process was she didn't actually have a child play

with the toy. She had her friends who were

adults look at the toy and say, yeah, it looks awesome. And

once the child started playing with it, and they were throwing it around

the room and stamping on it. it just broke, right?

So it wasn't actually battle-tested for a

child. And that is a big, big mistake.

So make sure that if you're going to develop a child's product, that

you go and get a child to actually battle-test the product to make sure it's

sturdy and stands up to the rigors of children's play. Now, let's

talk about shipping. Shipping is a

minefield in itself, but essentially you're trying to

get your product from the factory over to a destination.

Most likely, let's talk about Amazon. Now, you

can use shipping companies to organize all of

the shipping process. Some people think that it's up

to the factory to get the shipment over to

Amazon. But it's actually not the case. The factory is

not in the shipping business. The factory is in the production and

manufacturing business. And so what they will do is they will

give you generally an FOB price, which is freight

on board, which will mean that they'll manufacture the

product in their factory and they will get it to the port, the closest

port. then your shipping company steps in, and they

will handle the shipment from the port onto the boat,

if it's going by boat, and all the way to the United States, for

example. And you know what? It just seems to happen.

You need to use the shipping company too, because they will also look after all the

importation documents, which is like a whole host of

documents which you just don't want to get involved in, because it's quite specialized.

But let me just say this. It all just seems to

happen. The right people step in at the right time, your

shipment ends up from your factory all the way into the United States

and lo and behold, it starts selling on Amazon. So

when thinking about getting samples from your manufacturer, there is a

simple way to do it and that is they will send it to you directly via

FedEx or some courier. It's something that you don't have to organize,

but don't be surprised, you will have to pay.

These companies are not in the business of just selling, sending their products all over

the world for no cost, right? Otherwise, they'd probably go broke. Because imagine how

many people are trying to chase samples, right? And most of the people

that get samples just don't end up going through that

particular manufacturer anyway. So don't be surprised. You'll probably pay

a very, very small fee for the product. Sometimes you

might get it for free, but you'll definitely pay for the courier

to send you the product. So regarding quality assurance, let me tell you another

story that comes to mind. And this was from a good friend

of mine who had manufactured a chopping board. Now,

the chopping board was checked while it was actually in China,

and everything was completely fine. The product got shipped into

a New York port. It just happened that it was winter and

absolutely freezing. They then went on to Amazon.

Now again, same situation. They started selling and started getting these

negative reviews that the product was broken. And what

had happened was, during the freezing of this product, while

it was sitting in a shipping container in a port, it had just cracked.

And this is something that just wasn't foreseen. So what ultimately ended

up happening was he had to completely trash this whole

container full of chopping boards. Let

me share you a story regarding MOQ. And this is from a client right

now. And I want to share it so you don't make the same mistake. What's

happened is my client, before they came to

me for mentoring, put an order in

for $30,000 worth of mugs. And

my advice to her was, maybe we should start a little bit less. Maybe

we'll try the market with $5,000 worth

of mugs. Why go so high? Now, the reason why she

went in at $30,000 was because the supplier, the factory, said,

well, that's the minimum order quantity. But she didn't know

that she could go back and renegotiate with the factory to

have a lower MOQ, even if she paid a little bit more in

each cost. And I said to her, you want the problem of

selling out. You don't want the problem of having $30,000 worth

of mugs sitting in a warehouse that you now have to, one, you

can't get rid of, and you have to pay now to dispose of,

right? And she said to me, look, Matthew, I'm not going

to make this mistake again and I just wish I had had your

advice and joined your mentoring program sooner

because then I wouldn't be in this predicament. But you

live and learn and hopefully this won't destroy her and hopefully she

does sell out of the $30,000 worth of mugs. So

when talking about shipping one of the other things that you can consider is

taking out insurance. Now we've probably all seen those

videos where we see those big shipping containers and it's like they're just

shipping the ships and then the containers like falling off the

ship in like rough weather or if you saw the other day there was another ship

that unfortunately had a bridge collapse on it and the first thing I noticed was there

was just shipping containers just like just spilled everywhere into

the river and you would hope that your

product is not now going to be involved in an incident like that

and now held up for god knows how long. So you

should also really think hard about taking out some sort

of insurance just for that one-off chance and

low chance that your product may be stuck in a shipping container

that maybe ends up at the bottom of the ocean. All right, guys. Thank

you. I hope you enjoyed that episode talking about suppliers, manufacturers,

and factories. Now, if you're interested in taking

your business to 8 figures, I've actually developed a

blueprint of how I was able to take my business

to 8 figures a year through an 8-step guide. So it's

8 steps to 8 figures and guess what, without even

designing your own product. So maybe you don't even have to deal

with Chinese factories after all. So if you want your copy, simply

go down to the show notes, click on the link, and download it. And

I look forward to seeing you at the next episode. Until then, take

care. Thanks for tuning into Amazon Ecom Secrets. If

you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is

to give a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and

make sure to subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss an episode.

You can also find more at I'm Matthew Fraser

on all social media platforms. Thanks so much. Take