Have you been longing to learn how to start a profitable business like mini importation? Have you been into mini importation and have been struggling with sales of your products? Worry no more as you are in the right place. In this article is comprehensive information you need to start mini importation, make great sales with a huge profit.
Mini importation Involves buying goods in small quantities, majorly from another country, and importing them to the buyer’s country or country where it would be used or sold. Mini importation business model permits the buying of goods in small quantities, and the interesting part is that the goods are majorly bought directly from the manufacturer while sometimes it’s from a major distributor. Whichever it is, the price is always very low.
Imagine the money you will make when you buy buying from a manufacturer in another country at a very low price (I.e manufacturer’s price) and selling at a very good and highly profitable price (wholesalers or retailers price) users. You can as well sell to wholesalers at a good price depending on the volume of goods you imported and the total cost of the goods after shipping to your country.
Over the years, many people have believed that you must have millions of naira before you can venture into the importation business, but thanks to technological advancements, it is now possible to start mini importation with some thousands of naira and sell to make cool profits as high as 100% or more.
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Basic Requirements to start mini importation business in Nigeria
- Capital: this is the money you use in making your purchases from the supplier who is in another country. Like said earlier, you can now start a mini importation business
- A laptop or phone: since you don’t have to travel to another country before you can start importing goods, you need a device (either a laptop or smartphone) to browse and contact the supplier through the internet.
- A good internet connection: off course to access the platform on the internet, there will be a need for an internet connection.
- An acceptable means of payment: after you might have identified and selected the goods you want to import, it is time to make payment for the goods. Since your transaction will be from another country, there will be a difference in currencies, but the good news is that most of g
- Valid and traceable home or office address: after making your purchases on the platform, it is time to ship it to your resident country. For successful shipping, you must provide a valid and traceable address, it could be a home address or office address.
Where you can start importing from
You can import from any country of your choice, but selecting which country to import from depends on what you want to import. Listed below are some suggested places you can start importing from.
- China: this is the most common location for people who are into mini importation. China alone has more than five (5) importation portals you can choose to start mini importation.
- Vietnam
- USA
- Japan
- Canada
- Mexico,
- Japan,
- Germany etc.
Mini Importation Portals.
Like earlier mentioned, you don’t need a visa, nor a travel ticket before you can start mini importation. Thanks to advancements in technology, you can buy and ship your goods to your location from the comfort of your bedroom. All you need to do is to leverage these technological advancements by accessing the manufacturer or supplier through their websites (online store).
There are many online stores you can make use of, but to ensure you are fully equipped, below is a list of well known and carefully selected online stores you can start with from the comfort of your bedroom.
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- Aliexpress: this is also a China-based e-commerce website where you can buy and import goods at wholesale price.
To get started, visit https://www.aliexpress.com/
- 1688: this is one of the best portals, it is a local Chinese portal, located in China, and it is written in the Chinese language. If you don’t know the language, it could be difficult to understand the website, but thanks to technology, you can translate the website content to English, using browsers that can translate or by using external translators. To get started visit https://www.1688.com
- Alibaba: this is also an online store located in China. It’s contents are written in English and you get to buy from both manufacturers and wholesalers at a very good and cheap price. To get started, visit https://www.alibaba.com
- Amazon: this is a well-known e-commerce store located in the United States and owned by Jeff Bezos who is the world’s richest entrepreneur. Amazon initially started as an online book store in 1995 but later expanded and now offers varieties of goods and gadgets you can import. To get started visit https://www.amazon.com
- www.jd.com: this is also a china based e-commerce store. It is written in the Chinese language and can be translated using a translator it a good browser.
- www.taobao.com
- www.dhgate.com
- www.tmall.com
- www.chinainvasion.com
- www.dealExtreme.com
- www.Everbuying.com
- Ankaka.com etc.
Benefits of starting mini importation in Nigeria
- You don’t need a huge capital to start mini importation in Nigeria. You can start with as low as 10,000 nairas.
- You don’t have to visit or travel to the country you want to buy your products, most of the stores have a website where you can easily get access to their products.
- You don’t have to buy in large quantities, every manufacturer or supplier has a Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) for their products, but this MOQ is usually small and most times comes with a discount. So it’s not most for you to buy a huge quantity.
- For mini importation, you don’t have to have formal documentation before you can buy or get your goods delivered.
- You don’t have to be well experienced in business before you can start mini importation.
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Steps and Tips to get started and how to make good sales
- Choose a product to import: there are various products available that you can import from the above-listed mini importation portals.
Tips to choose a product to import:
- Do a market survey before choosing a product to import: Doing a market survey involves, taking a deep study of what is in demand in the market, note what is trending in the market, and choose the product with the highest demand.
- Going for a product that is of high demand and which also has a low supply in the market will be an added advantage and will also ensure your product has less competition in the market.
- Select hot-selling product: An hot-selling product is a product with high demand in the market, e.g at the outbreak of Coronavirus, nose mask, hand glove, and sanitizer became hot-selling and high-in-demand products.
- Don’t go for heavy products: the higher the weight of the goods you want to import, the higher the shipping fee. So to cut down on expenses, ensure you go for products with lightweight.
- Source your product from your chosen mini importation portal: after you might have selected a product to import, the next step is to choose the right portal to source your product. It is always good you go for business to business (B2B) portals such as 1688.com and alibaba.com to mention a few. By going for B2B portals means you get to buy as a business from the manufacturers and you can as well brand your product in your company/business name.
- Place your order and make your payment: after sourcing for your products, it’s time to place your order and make payment to validate your order. This can be done in two (2) ways
- Doing it yourself: when making payments, many Nigerians face difficulties due to the difference in currency and language as communications are required sometimes when making specific orders for orders to be well received and understood.
- Using procurement agents/companies: to solve the issue of difference in currency and language, you can make use of a procurement agent/ company to make your orders and also payments.
- Choose a logistics company: after you have successfully placed your order and made your payment, you need a logistics company to ship your goods.
N.B: most procurement agents/ companies are also into logistics services. So you can use a company to procure and ship as well.
- Pick up and clearance: after all steps above are done, and your goods have been delivered to Nigeria, you will receive a notification from your shipping company stating your order and how to pick it up.
- N.B: at the point of making payments, you will be given a tracking number and order ID which you will have to supply at the pick-up point to affirm your claims and identities.
You will also pay any outstanding fee or clearance fee. This depends and varies from one logistics company to the other.
Tips to have good sales and make cool profits.
- Ensure your products are affordable/avoid over hiking the price of your goods: do a marketing survey to know the current price of the product you imported. This will help in determining your selling price alongside all cost incurred during importation
- Advertise your products: this is a digital age and you can course leverage on social media to get more buyers. Take your products to the world, advertise your products on the internet to get more reach. There are several ways you can do that both paid and free, choose according to your budget and your target. Social media platforms you can make use of Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, etc.
N.B: you are not limited to the social media platforms mentioned above.
- Set up an e-commerce store: you can also set up an e-commerce store to sell your products online.
- Sell on exiting e-commerce store: in case you can’t afford the cost to set up and maintain an e-commerce store of your own, you can be a seller of various existing e-commerce store such as Jumia (visit www.jumia.com.ng), Konga (visit www.konga.com), Jiji (visit www.Jiji.ng), etc.
- Set up an affiliate marketing model: to get more sales, you can run an affiliate marketing. Running affiliate marketing means you will have people market and sell your products for an agreed percentage of commission.
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I will be glad if you can give some links to China or others country. Thanks
Absolutely am very impressed with the breakdown, with such instruction and guidelines one can go long way. Thanks a lots.
Thank you very much.
This article on how to start a mini importation business in Nigeria and make sales is very educative. I prefer SkyShop skyshop-worldwide .com for mini importation business, the platform allows you shop and ship from the USA, UK, and China. They’ve made mini importation from china to Nigeria and other countries very easy, you just have to register on the website get your UK and China address to shop on mini importation sites, and you goods will be delivered to your UK or China address, then they will ship to your door step here in Nigeria. For USA they do assisted purchase, and the said they are going to include Turkey by the end of this year. They’ve made it easy to start mini importation business in Nigeria
How can I get an agent
is vary nice and educative write up pls keep it up. However can’t you pls make a comprehensive write up on how to start exporting powder cocoa in small scales like in kgs…
Thanks
Thank you for the word of encouragement. Since you’ve requested this article, we’ll do some research and get on the article.