There has been international trade for thousands of years, but it has never been more common than today. It used to take numerous months to get tea from China to Britain and took a month or so to import cotton from America. Nowadays it takes a week to import a package from China.
People endangered their lives to earn money from international markets and these days all the exporter/importer has to risk is the postage, yet the rewards can be just as high. Luckily for importer/exporters, most people are deterred from entering this business because they believe that it is complicated.
The paperwork can appear to be complicated at first, but when you think about it, the last thing that an exporting country wants is to put up barriers to international trade. When you have filled the documents in once or twice you will never have issues with it again.
if you want to import from, perhaps, China, read the forms a number of times. If you cannot make sense of them, phone the closest embassy or consulate and politely request assistance. If that does not work (and I am certain it will) have a professional import/export adviser fill in the forms for you and then remember how to do it yourself for next time.
Start small. Begin your foray into import/export small and with inexpensive items. This is not because of the risk of losing money, but because you will not have too much money tied up if you make mistakes and your goods are held until the difficulty is rectified. For the same reason, do not begin with perishable items.
Another good reason for starting small, is that you will get used to filling in the documents more quickly, if you have to do it frequently and repeat orders are a perfect method of doing this. You can always increase the size of the order with every order to take advantage of bulk purchase orders.
The exporters will have exported before, so they are the perfect people to ask for advice on delivery. They will be falling over themselves to help you export their items and that will make your work far easier. it is really only a case of ‘ask and thou shalt receive’.
if you are ordering items from the other side of the world, then you will need air freight and this is very simple to arrange on line. Again, ask the exporter/manufacturer to sort this out for you. Later, if you have a fantastic product and a solid market, you can order in bulk and have it delivered in containers by ship.
An air of mystique has been built up by importer/exporters to protect themselves from competition. The fact is that it is not difficult at all and even if you are a disabled dyslexic, there is all the help that you could ever need out there for you. Do not get put off by ‘the language barrier’ either – because there isn’t one.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with boxes for shipping art. If you want to know more go to Where Can I Buy Shipping Boxes?