Buying stuff from China and selling on Ebay

plarka

I was thinking maybe I can buy things in bulk, I guess you buy it from China, and sell for a profit on Ebay? Anyone tried this? I'd look around and find a gap in the market, I have some ideas of things I know I like to buy, supply type things.

maninthestreet

What about shipping costs, import duties, vat, etc???

googler

Are you absolutely sure that no-one is importing the same stuff already?

Do you really want to deal with the Chinese on a B2B basis? Are you aware of all the cultural differences that could affect your business relationship?

plarka

What does B2B mean?

maninthestreet

Business-to-Business

Cornucopia

The easiest way to start is by buying on eBay (no, seriously).

There are individual lots and job lots of a wide variety of goods, and the advantage is that you'll be aware of eBay/Paypal mechanisms and you'll have an element of protection.

You should be looking for Chinese & HK sellers with 10000+/99.7%+ feedback.

Be aware that consignments can be and are stopped by HMRC, and that anything over the Import Duty limit can be subject to additional charges. However, I've only had this happen once out of 100s of transactions. For many products, there is an £18 lower limit, under which ID is not payable, anyway.

plarka

I've barely looked into it yet, just thought of it and wondering if others have done or are doing it! Is China where people who sell on Ebay get their stuff? And India too maybe?

Cross posted! Thanks Cornucopia!

thepeopleschamp

I used to buy mobiles from China from the website Alibaba.com and flog them on eBay. I would buy 10-20 at a time and I was doing this for about six months but then stopped as I found too many customers complaining of faults with their mobile phones.
At that time eBay wouldn't charge much either but now its 10% final value fee and the selling price has gone down so there isn't much profit to be made.

Cornucopia

I used to do the same with MP3 players - similar story.

One thing to be aware of is that whilst your product may be shipped to you for free by the Chinese seller, the UK postal charges & rules are very different. Therefore you need to be aware of the cost of reselling/re-shipping within the UK.

Hoody

When buying from the Chinese suppliers, one thing to watch out for is that the first order can be of good quality. And then you may find that later larger orders are made up of lower quality components which could lead to you having a lot of returns.

murphy306

Yea I found that the quality was good for first order then orders after that were not very good. Very hard to find a good supplier who will not try and rip you off. Although I have been lucky and been refunded by paypal in any instance where quality has been rubbish.