Any non-US based success stories?

[BrownSugar]

New to this forum but been in the Industry for a couple of years working in the Digital Marketing side of a number of technology businesses. Ended up here after stalking @CCarter around the web and am amazed at the quality of content available in the forum.

I just wanted to know if there are any successful members that are running their businesses from outside of the US. Whats your story and how did you tackle some of the specific issues related to doing business online from a non-western country?

Thanks!

 

[urban zen]

Hello BS, not really successful yet but i'd like to give some input to your thread.

I run an e-commerce business dealing in fung-shui items for 11 years, and our company have always been based off in south east asia, then moved over to china a couple years ago. And we're not only focused on the US and Canada, we sell internationally.

The most important issues we've always faced are shipping time, and returns policy. It'll be tough to, let's say, run a dropshipping catalog company from there, or any modern, mainstream products (like an IPHONE6 case, or an HDMI cable for example) because your customers would want it NOW (2-3 business days) instead of the normal 10 to 14 internal business days shipping we're involved in. Due to the nature of our niche (pretty nice to have, and you can't find it normally in the states or europe), we have or niche clientelle that doesn't mind the wait, although we have written it clearly in the product page, as well as the email confirmation part as well. You will have lower conversion as well (have done a.b test where we have 3 days delivery and normal)

The issue of return as well as credit card fraud results in a lost of revenue for us, because we marked some of the shipping cost into the product price itself, in order to reduce the displayed shipping cost during checkout, which scares some people away (exa. when they order a 1.2KG brass chinese dragon carving), and you will have more than usual negative ratings towards your company or brand due to the delayed shipping time, and more chances of damage (because of more package handling point).

Lastly, proficient english speaking customer service staff in china, no matter how good or high paying, will never be as good as your average folks in the US, UK or Aus. However my staff are great and I wouldn't trade them with outsourcing VA. It's also because having handson staff that you can communicate with for each order or customer enquiry, and weekly meetings, are much better overall.

We have to use proxies and vpn because google banned china (yep we don't have google search), and china banned twitter, facebooks and such. So it's just a slight hassle if and when you want to market to those channels.

Now for the good stuff: Since everything is manufactured here, you'll ofcourse get the best price for whatever you're sourcing, and chance of being burned(gypped) like all the horror stories of importing from china, is minimal.

That's my 2 cents..

 

[BrownSugar]

Hello BS, not really successful yet but i'd like to give some input to your thread.

I run an e-commerce business dealing in fung-shui items for 11 years, and our company have always been based off in south east asia, then moved over to china a couple years ago. And we're not only focused on the US and Canada, we sell internationally.

The most important issues we've always faced are shipping time, and returns policy. It'll be tough to, let's say, run a dropshipping catalog company from there, or any modern, mainstream products (like an IPHONE6 case, or an HDMI cable for example) because your customers would want it NOW (2-3 business days) instead of the normal 10 to 14 internal business days shipping we're involved in. Due to the nature of our niche (pretty nice to have, and you can't find it normally in the states or europe), we have or niche clientelle that doesn't mind the wait, although we have written it clearly in the product page, as well as the email confirmation part as well. You will have lower conversion as well (have done a.b test where we have 3 days delivery and normal)

The issue of return as well as credit card fraud results in a lost of revenue for us, because we marked some of the shipping cost into the product price itself, in order to reduce the displayed shipping cost during checkout, which scares some people away (exa. when they order a 1.2KG brass chinese dragon carving), and you will have more than usual negative ratings towards your company or brand due to the delayed shipping time, and more chances of damage (because of more package handling point).

Lastly, proficient english speaking customer service staff in china, no matter how good or high paying, will never be as good as your average folks in the US, UK or Aus. However my staff are great and I wouldn't trade them with outsourcing VA. It's also because having handson staff that you can communicate with for each order or customer enquiry, and weekly meetings, are much better overall.

We have to use proxies and vpn because google banned china (yep we don't have google search), and china banned twitter, facebooks and such. So it's just a slight hassle if and when you want to market to those channels.

Now for the good stuff: Since everything is manufactured here, you'll ofcourse get the best price for whatever you're sourcing, and chance of being burned(gypped) like all the horror stories of importing from china, is minimal.

That's my 2 cents..

@urban zen Thanks for that detailed response! It was interesting to hear the issues faced with shipping and handling products from China to the US. Do you have any problem with payment processing or receiving payments? I cant get PayPal and most other alternative are either too expensive or have limitations.

I am thinking about avoiding the whole physical product shipping problem by focusing on a digital product or becoming an affiliate.

 

[urban zen]

For us it's more corporate than the average Imers, we have full company setup and tax codes. We're incorporated in Singapore, and it has options to a few asia-pac regional office of authorize.net, rbs worldpay and others, as well as paypal verified. So you can try that option too.