Getting Suppliers

Business Supplies
and not the pen and papers sort

Finished registering a business? Great. Just like me, you'd have to find some suppliers to get your running. I did this a couple of weeks ago and it was really difficult for us entrepreneurs in Malaysia since there isn't any real directory or listing to help us find suppliers.

I can guide you with what I did for my business, but you would need to apply it to your business sector.

First of all was getting an idea of where can you find suppliers. A great resource is actually alibaba.com which has suppliers from everywhere in the world with every kind of products imaginable. You just have to search hard for it. I searched a for a few local suppliers as I was new in the business and getting foreign suppliers would be counter productive. Although China could supply me with cheaper products the cost of transporting it here would be too expensive. I looked up for the local suppliers contact and called or emailed them regarding getting them to be my supplier. However most of them was uncooperative or had very terrible product selection. I had to abandon my online search for suppliers.

I turned to another idea, as I was involved in the retailing of phone accessories, why don't I head to the number one place in Malaysia to get phone related items. Low Yat. I chose a weekday morning where there will be the fewest number of people bustling around in Low Yat and went around asking shops if they supplied phone cases in bulk. I found a few at the back of the shopping areas. Usually they don't have fancy signs or any resemblance to a nice shop but they do have shelves filled to the brim with items you need. You can always go to an area that specializes in selling your items. Maybe for fashion items you can always head to Chow Kit areas. I've helped my friends find some suppliers there once or twice. 

Anyhow, I went to the few suppliers at Low Yat to get a baseline price for phone accessories and I was happy to find out that these items are supplied at way below the price of people selling it at stores. Like way way below. So I chose one shop that had a decent selection of items and registered my business with them. For the first time purchase I have to spend a minimum of RM 300 and any subsequent purchases need only be RM 100 minimum. RM 300 netted me roughly 50 items, mostly phone cases. I paid for the stuffs and went back. 

Now I had a decent suppliers and also more importantly I had the stuffs for me to sell. I sat down and catalogued my items in Excel. Naming them and giving them their sales price. I priced them at roughly double my cost price. I know this may seem like too much to some people, but doubling my cost price doesn't mean I'll receive 50% profit. I do have other cost to cover. 

Then I had the task of photographing them since by now I've decided to sell them online. Of course I needed photos of them. I browsed through the internet for people who sells these things and found that most of em just placed the items on their beds and take picture with their phones. Terrible lighting and photo quality. I decided I wanted it too look pleasing at the very least. However the process of doing so was quite lengthy and demands it's own post which I will diligently do so in the future.

In conclusion, suppliers are essential to your business success. If you can't get the best suppliers, you can't get the best things. This will affect you down the road. Search hard and research hard. Make sure they're trustworthy and cooperative in doing business with you!

Thats all from me now, I'll post up my online store obstacles next. Give me a comment about your tries on getting suppliers or if you have any question!

Yours truly,
Young and Gunning

Starting Up a Business

Starting up is always unnerving
and mine was sort of scary

I've told you my introduction. Which is really just telling you what I am trying to do. Now for the "What needs to be done" part.

Any sane minded person let alone a businessman would sit down and plan any endeavour he/she plans to undertake. No exception here. Here's what to plan and what I've planned for my business.

First thing that I came to mind when I wanted to plan was, what is my goal? Am I doing this for my holiday or am I doing this for real? I decided that I want to push this idea to be a long term plan be a major part of my life. I wanted it to be BIG. 

But then again, everything must start small, so I went to the next item on my list, what is it that I want to sell or provide service? I sat down for quite some time regarding this. I need something that I know, that I can sell and that people will buy. I wrestled long about this part. It was amazingly difficult. It is in fact mightily difficult that I have not settled down on one right now but I wanted to get going! I knew if I did something it might come to me. So I did. For now, I'll sell phone accessories. How about that? I knew the stuff, I somewhat knew the market and people liked to buy them. Plus they were kind of expensive out in the open market.

Next up, who am I? Not literally me. I mean who is the business? Is the business serious or community driven? Catered to the young or the old? I needed a business identity. Getting a name was also quite difficult. I wanted something I can brand as mine but also explained my products - phone accessories in this case. It took a while but then I decided. Well no, I don't have the customer base, lets get something going that's generic and understandable. Let's be serious. Let's use Google Keyword Tool to best figure out the most searched item on Google relating to phone accessories. Phone cases. Well, I'll name it Phone Cases Something then. What should this Something be. What will drive most people from Google to me? I'll narrow down the search to Malaysian geography. Okay people like to know where to buy phone cases here in Malaysia. That makes sense. Okay I'll name it Phone Cases Malaysia. How about that? Yeah, most suitable name for Google to index and people will understand it the moment they see it.

Now what would I sell? This was not as difficult because by this time the business name has already told me what to sell. Phone cases, mainly. What type of phone cases? Let's use Google Keyword Tool again. Most searched phone cases on the web? iPhones, Samsung Galaxy S3 and the S4. Very little searches for other phones. Then it's settled. I'll sell phone cases and accessories for the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4 for now!

How would I sell these things? I was contemplating on opening a physical store but I could not wrap my head around the difficulties in doing so. Having to pay for rent, set up shop and wait there. No no no. That was not for me. I live in 2013. Everything is online and social nowadays. So I decided to sell it online but now I had to decide a market place for it. There's plentiful of option to choose from including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and also good old Website. I told my self why not sell on all of them. It can't hurt. Each channel can gain me new customers and any failed channel can be closed down. So hey. Let's open a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a Website for my business. I was fine with the first three, but the last one had me scratching. I knew quite a lot about technology and some idea about programming, however web design and hosting was never my back alley. This was a very interesting challenge in itself which I will write a post about extensively in the future, so be prepared for it!

The last part was also doubly important. Where to get my capital? I needed money to run my business and I needed quite a few. I went through my bank book which became a dead end. It doesn't have enough for me to get moving. I'm starting to get disappointed but then I remembered I had invested some sum of money in mutual funds. It took me a couple of hours to sort out how much money I could take out. It seems my luck (and all that investing)  was good because I had enough for the business and slightly more if things go south. I'll be withdrawing that in the near future. Let's hope this is a better investment that mutual funds.

So to recap and summarise for people who don't like to read long posts:

1. What is your goal? Long term business or short
2. What is it that you want to sell? Think it through but don't be afraid to start off with anything
3. What will the business identity be? Is it serious or is it fun and social. A business name is important too
4. What exactly will be your products? You need to narrow it down a little
5. How would you sell it? Physical store, online or even casual selling can be an option
6. How would you get your capital? You need money to make money, don't be afraid to put money in because every experience you gain is worth more than the money you might lose.

That's all from me now. I'll follow up with me registering my business and procedures for doing so.

Yours truly,

Young and Gunning