Product Sourcing in Turkey! - Week in the life of a Business Owner

this is a warehouse holding millions of pounds worth of my stock for my companies I've sourced these products from around the world and I've done it in the most cost effective Frugal way that I know possible and in this video I want to show you all the tricks that I've got up my sleeve to save your business more money and become as profitable as possible I don't care where you're at a business the first stage of saving money is the mindset of frugality and cost saving what I've learned over the last two decades of being in business is there's so many middlemen putting on a five to thirty percent margin across the supply chain that's just not fair for your business let's take this pen for example I know this little fella is made in China he would have been made in bulk and then sold to five different importing agencies it'd be the same product white label that would then come to the UK and then sold to a chain of stationary Distributors and then they would have sold to wholesalers and then the wholesalers would sell to the delivery people that deliver stationery to companies in that little scenario three four five different people have taken the product all putting their margins on top maybe up to fifty percent why not just go direct to the pin Factory and sort the thing yourself and save yourself that potential fifty percent I know a lot of you are probably thinking that's all right for you James you've got this big fat Warehouse you can store the stuff and you've got the cash flow to be able to do this but I promise you my mindset was this at 18 19 years old wherever I could I would try and cut out middlemen and my experience from the 300 people that have been on my podcast just a few of them think like that and the majority just want an easy life and they'll just buy as cheap as they can on a quick Google search but in this video I want to show you how you can save considerably more by being a little bit more proactive and showing you how to get on a plane and actually find factories that will save you money I want to show you some of the products that I bring in from around the world this teddy bear was made in China these glue activated and slime making kits were made in Turkey I bought these foam stickers that are used for Children's Arts and Crafts from China this uniform that I make for all my sites Made in India and what I really want to get over in this video is you don't need to make a hundred thousand items of a single piece which I think is what's in people's psyche and that's why countries like turkey are really good because you can usually get lower minimum order quantities rather than massive volumes like for instance in China and that's another great thing about India they're really good at making textiles but not so good at making plastic pots for ice cream or food there's a little thing here that I really wanted to get over this pot here is a paper pot that's actually non-recyclable it's one of the big things about food packaging it's got a wax lining inside which is needed for food so this what looks like a paper pot is actually non-recyclable made here in the UK and it cost you about 35 Pence with the full printing on that's before you put any bleeding ice cream in this part which is fully recyclable because it's plastic is made in Turkey and it costs you about eight and a half Pence 35 Pence eight and a half Pence and you don't need to make a million of them to save money actually the minimum order quantities for this is only about ten thousand and when you get to build relationships that probably do your deal and bring that right down while you're building your business up how do you get them cool deals well you need to get on a plane and go and see these people to try and negotiate to get better cash flow turns lower the minimum order quantities while you're building the business up all those things are way easy to do if you put in the effort and right now in this video I want to show you just how to do that let's go to Turkey [Music] we're here at a factory in turkey that makes all of our ice cream tubs I recognize these and we're in the showroom now we come here just because we're doing a lot of business with them we want to have good relationships with them and um want to get new ideas all these Napoli containers down here it's where we make our scoop ice cream from so yeah that's what we're doing here I'm very tired because we've literally only slept three hours and we're straight into our first factory visit I'm really looking forward to some shut eye even though we were dead tired we needed to sit down with our partners in turkey and discuss numbers ordering patterns before they showed us around they're really impressive Factory [Music] thank you and how how much does each one of these machines cost I don't know exactly what I think it's around 250 000. so we've got and how many have you got in here right now I think we have got tonight 39 39 times quarter of a million yeah if you make the machines in Turkey some of them we are buying from Japan Japan some of them from Korea [Music] all right day one of Istanbul we've had eight and a half hours sleep so everyone's feeling a little bit better and we're now going to some factories and shops trying to Source arts and craft stuff to put into telecastic and a new company we've created called Faba do something because we're just supplying so much this stuff it's about getting on a plane and getting on the ground is one of the smartest things to do if you're into this sort of thing to really accelerate the growth of product range ideas but also getting those prices down because relationships Drive deals face to face so much better than Zoom we're now really hunting around turkeys factories and showrooms to find new products we want to know pricing minimum order quantities how quick we can get the products and what we think this is going to be a big hit you when you're on these buying trips and things are converted see the process on pound 43 for this but then you decorate yourself I think that's quite expensive it's all about getting into volumes for the rest of the afternoon we were literally shown hundreds of different arts and crafts items we were looking for products that we could bring into the UK that were maybe a little bit more Innovative maybe the better quality can we get a better margin on the stuff they're already buying in we want to know about those crucial minimum order quantities and how we can cash flow all these new Innovative products even if we think they're good we're not sure whether the UK Market would like them so we wanted to get our hands dirty get painting make some good stuff and see if we can put this into our children's arts and crafts company the 500 is really for us to to test the market if it goes through it we will order 5 000 pieces it you know it's not we just need to test it that that could be super popular and just go and realize nobody does don't know do you like just dumb plenty of playing around with arts and crafts seeing new products things I want to know is what are the quantities what the minimum order quantities to bring in especially if they're a new product because what they really want to do is order ten thousand twenty thousand and one thing I want to see if I can work with Partners here in Turkey to do minimum order quantity say 500 sell that into the market and then see if we can then turn that into a quantity product and then make some money on it at that stage I'm really prepared to you know just do a break even lose money even a little bit just to see if it could be the next big thing because sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't you think you've got the best ideas but actually putting it to the market is the best thing to do and it's having partners in countries like this that allows us to accelerate the growth of our business family arts and crafts Children's Arts across are a big thing that I believe that we can be really good at I just want to expand the range already doing millions of Revenue in the UK with it but we could do with another 400 products to really accelerate the growth of this business that's why we're here we are second Factory of the day and now we're talking teddy bears we're trying to get prices for teddy bears manufactured in Turkey we do this in India at the moment some in China but because the volumes are growing want to just be in a situation where we've got really good Supply chains because of covid those SWOT analysis on our business what the strengths what the weaknesses what are the opportunities what are the threats well the weaknesses and threats covid taught us that supply chain issues can be just crushed down at an instant that's why we've got super high inflation and now Supply chains are becoming more back to normal we're seeing inflation come down but just in case there's another epidemic in the next 10 15 years I want to be prepared I want to make sure we've got good Supply chains so could turkey be the new home of the tele-tastic teddy bear who knows let's go and find out [Music] what I'm trying to just to ascertain is yeah if it's similar so we don't want it to be or obviously we want it to be cheaper but we're not the the the benefits of here is getting it quicker it's easier for us to come do r d flying to Turkey not much rather do that than do a 20-hour flight to the Far East you know so always struggle with this you see where the eyes that's where they make they need to make the eyes just a little bit bigger to pull the material away five thousand I mean it just asks if we wanted that is that bear 5000 pieces that will give us a steer whether this is worth spending time on it so after we'd seen the showroom we was taken downstairs into what was a tardis of a teddy bear factory literally hundreds of people were making these works of art some of the best teddy bears and plush toys that I'd ever seen and I've been to lots of teddy bear factories the quality control the safety were brilliant and it was really interesting to see how they operate in turkey compared to other countries I've been around the world oh [Music] so putting it through the metal detector here to make sure no needles are left in the um in the product it's hard to whenever we use new factories if we use these guys I just want to make sure they're on that QC quality and a teddy bear goes in no noise anywhere goes in no noise quite like how they've got this out but nothing can get out of here unless it go through there because you don't know if you've got like 500 Stone machines all these people you know clipping and using metal and really sharp metal that something could just fall inside a teddy bear because it's porous you know that needle goes in you want to make sure that they're really checking all that stuff it's good and that's another factory tour done that was my first time seeing a teddy bear baking plush Factory here in Turkey I've been to Lots in China and again in India and I was really impressed with their quality control over here number of advantages lower minimum all the quantities I think better quality products and you can get the products much quicker if we're ordering stuff from the Far East I've got a factory in six seven months maximum to get it over here we've got to factor in maximum of 10 weeks hopefully eight weeks so for supply chain issues that's really good but again where the turkey get all their raw materials from you've guessed it the Far Eastern China so there's always that worry about supply chain issues but I think the problem is it's going to be more expensive but if we can work on those price points and this could be a good option for us we've now landed in Ankara which is the actual capital of Turkey and we're now visiting another Factory other arts and crafts Factory here in Turkey I don't know where we are but uh let's go and find out some more we got to Ankara and within minutes we were off to the next Factory we got to meet the owners of our sandal manufacturers got a really good relationship with him but we've never actually met them so it's important that we had a cup of tea or coffee in this case Turkish obviously and really built relationships [Music] [Applause] [Music] if you bouncing that's great that is good oh don't put it in the sand that is so cool these are called fsdus freestanding display units and obviously really help sell products and this is actually very expensive to make these in the UK and so obviously they've worked out hard to do cheaper over here so we'll have a good go at this but this is this is cardboard I want to get it done like this being wood and they'll know I mean look at that that just sells the product so get them on the plane coming out here sees these ideas everybody got never would have got this without coming here would you I'm really excited but imagine if I think like if we put these out like a trade show now anyone that watches my videos will know one of my primary factors of business is keeping the cash flowing keeps the business going when you're holding lots and lots of stock that actually ties up cash flow what the aim is to try and sell that stuff as quick as possible now you've got many options that you can use here in the UK you can use stock in finance but that's really expensive you can use invoice factoring in my experience that's even more expensive I'm a typical entrepreneur I work my cash as hard as possible now whilst I'm prepared to take some risk once you build up big relationships with suppliers and they're doing good levels of trade with you that should in my opinion come in with you for the journey because the more that they can do with you the more they build their profitability and if they can take some of the pain of cash flow of building your business because you're building theirs then that's a question that you should ask them and so by going to Turkey and actually meeting people showing that I'm very serious about growing this business and working with them I'll just ask those direct questions listen to this conversation so in summary no more deposits we will pay you on dispatch very good thank you very much that is very helpful that means we will now spend more money with you you free up our cash flow then we can do other things that's very helpful thank you very much and that now means that we've just improved our cash flow how well from that factory we actually buy all of our colored sand We Buy in tens and tens of tons hundreds thousands of tons of this stuff what we've had to do up till now was pay him a 30 deposit on order and not receive the stuff for four months that's just how it usually works and important let me explain to you what that can potentially mean say you put a I don't know 30 000 pound order out 36 9 000 pounds goes out you don't actually see that stock for up to three months and then you pay the balance and then you've got to give your customers credit oh absolute disaster now what we've decided that we can do is pay the deposit on dispatch that immediately frees up probably three months of cash flow for our business now we've still got to finance it but that makes a big big difference I just don't think I would have got that conversation over the line by having a zoom conversation going out there getting on a plane makes a huge difference I hope this video has opened your eyes to just how easy it is to find Partners around the world and save your business and pennies for pounds how easy it is to find and build relationships with the direct factories or products and services to accelerate the profits in your business that's what we're all about if you've got any questions or stuff that you feel like haven't covered please hit them in the comments Below on the video or drop me a message on Instagram you can follow me at James Sinclair entrepreneur I'd love to see you there you can direct message me there and if you want to learn some more stuff and you really want to grow your business why not come along to one of my Seminars the tickets are only a few hundred quid you can buy them on my website jamesinclair.net or there's a link in the video description I literally love teaching my seminars I do these amazing days where I just shower people with knowledge that I've learned over the last 20 years whether it's property investment buying companies or getting customers I cover it all check it all out on my website jamesclare.net in my opinion I think that's the cheapest 300 quid investment you'll ever make to grow your business see one of my seminars bye-bye

Channel: James Sinclair

Views: 210,440

Keywords: business importing, importing business, product sourcing, product hunting, product sourcing in turkey, uk business, import export business, day in the life of a business owner, business owner day in the life, day in the life entrepreneur, entrepreneur day in the life, day in the life vlog, business vlog, entrepreneur vlog

Id: bUE_qboRDaY

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 20 2023