Starting a new e-commerce and would like advice

Hi guyz,

I am from India and working on e commerc business site tht is primarliy focusing NRI's(Non resident Indian) and customers from US, UK, Canada and Europe who wish to buy the products from India.

Ethnic wear, Art & craft and other Indian products will be primary objective to sell. The other aspect will be, Customer can ordert any leagal product thru order form and we will buy and ship the same along with option tht customer can buy the products from diffrenet online portals from India which do not ship the products internationally and we will ship the same to the registered customer on our website

Please suggest/assist with your inputs and ideas for the same.

Thanks and Regards,
Annie

Ok. Great post and great thoughts....To put things in perspective, I'm already moving towards doing what is proposed......I'm based off Texas and own a home in Bangalore, India. I deal with branded liquidation merchandise from high end department stores in US.....so..in the recent past...sourcing hasn't been the problem...

Selling...You would notice 2 issues here...which I may potentially overcome as I have capabilities to route logistics in India....

a) Let's take an example of Ebay. You have 2 options. Either register as a ebay seller in India (ebay.in) which would require you to verify account through an Indian phone number (i just got this process done) and then Paypal will require you to have an SSN equivalent (called as PAN - Permanent Account Number) in India...to receive funds into Paypal account...

b) Option B - Use ebay's global shipping program. I'm unsure of the extreme value we could add through this process to a country like India or China. For example - I had a recent buyer from Hongkong who bought an authentic Longchamp purse I sold. It was through the global shipping program. Net effect, she probably saved less than $50 in the entire process of $585 retail priced product....But unless we can find products that really tick in these countries (and with the dumping of replicas happening from China - No offense meant, but it reality), it is going to be hard.

So why I still think this would work...? As one of my MBA professors said, if you cannot sell to a population of 1.2 Billion+, you can forget about selling your products anywhere else :) Also, research proves that over half of large corporate revenues are from the sold called 3rd world countries due to growing middle class (as rightly pointed out by our friend in this forum). For example, I did a quick search on ebay India and looks like fashion clothing was selling for a significant value (for most part brand did not matter)...So I'm headed in that direction...My dad is based off India currently in our Bangalore apt......so..i'm sending my first shipment of goods to India(20-30 summer dresses and fashion clothing) ...shortly...to India...and logistics would be handled by my dad....

Will keep the team here posted on how it goes.......Do write with any questions you have or any thoughts you have....and I would be happy to contribute...

Hi Carattop:

I'm wondering if one must order huge quantities of products in order to buy high end liquidation items from department stores??? I read all your posts and I'm very impressed with your knowledge :)
Thanks

Hi Sierra,

It might be best if you PM the member for his advice to save waiting too long.

Guys - Is there a reason, I'm not receiving notifications from Salehoo when a forum message is posted or an email is sent by a fellow member? I will check my settings again, but certainly would appreciate the insight though....And Whiterdog - Thank you for your kind words...Knowledge learnt is free to share...As they in the Farmers Insurance Ad - "The more we know, the better we save..We are Farmers...pomporampom pompompom" :)

Reach out to me anytime (i know we are already we are communicating through PM)....

Let me have it checked out for you, but can you confirm that you are selecting the "Notify" box when making a post?

Yes. I do click the notify check box and when I do, i end up receiving notifications (like this one). I got an email stating an update had been added. But this would be for forum posting and not the PM emails rights? For emails sent to me by other members, I do not get notifications. So i end up responding to them 20 days later and feel terrible about it :(

I usually ensure that any sort of communication from my end has a turn around time of 24 hours or lesser.

OK, I just wanted to confirm that your general post notification is working. We have the tech team currently looking at resolving your PM email notification at the moment.

Cheers