I need your input

[montepora]

Dear all:

This is my first post here. I am a hobbyist that got into the trade not long ago. My business mainly involves exporting quality American made products. From dry goods to hardware, now I am thinking of live stock and live rock from Marshall Island.

I would like to deal with the collector/exporter from Marshall Island directly. I will place the order in the US and have the goods ship elsewhere (not in the US). My customers overseas have all the importation papers ready upon receiving the goods. Due to the localities of these countries, only the buyers know what documentation is needed. I am basically buying the goods, QA, and arrange the shipping.

I am now pretty much familiar with the procedures on export but on the dry goods of course. Now I need to know the following:

1) Can anyone point me to the right contact in MI?

2) For live stocks, I know they have to be shipped via air. What about LR?

3) Do I have to set up an in-house account in deals like this? I know that for Walt Smith you have to set up an in-house account first. If yes, how much do you think the amount would be?

If you feel that there are more things I need to be aware of, please feel free to let me know. For any information that you feel are not appropriate to be disclosed on this forum, please feel free to PM me. Thank you all.

Sincerely yours,

Montepora

 

[MaryHM]

What would stop your potential overseas customers from ordering directly from MI and passing you (and your surcharge) over?? Seems like a risky deal to me.

 

[montepora]

Mary:

Thank you for your reply. Actually, the buyers in these countries I am dealing with are my partners in business. Due to different trade laws and to simplify the tax process, especially we are not big enough to support an international company at this time, we act as different business entities.

I have reasonable mark- up for the products I export to them, they buy them with the best deal I could offer here plus the best deal I could find for shipping. I also act as the bridge for dealing with the US and other vendors where my partners lack the language skills to communicate with them effectively.

Where my partners are located at this time, they lack the quality and up to date products for the rapidly growing marine hobby. Whatever is available to them are either poor in quality or been marked up to an unreasonable amount. A good example is that a X brand of skimmer comes without users manual and when the water intake of the skimmer is leaking, the maunfacturer told the end users that this skimmer is designed to be used in-sump and that is why the leakage is OK. Not to mentioned if these products available to them are useful or not.

We are currently trying to battle these big importers there to offer a wide variety of the qualitative products to the end users there. We are also very dedicated in coral propagations as well. If you like, I can PM you a link of the recent tradeshow we attend and the effort we took to display our captive raised SPS corals.

I especially want to thank many vendors that I am dealing with here for their understandings and supports. Again, I welcome all inputs and leads that are offered to me, once again, thank you all.

Montepora