What Product Should I Import?
Many people who want to start an import export business already know what product they’d like to start importing, or at least they think they do. Fact is most would-be importers came up with the product to import typically when they were on a vacation in a Third World country. While there they bought a souvenir and as the product was so cheap, they imagined that their mother, another relative or a friend would pay three-times if not four or five-times the amount for such a product than they would and instantly concluded that this is the product they will start importing.
Is that a correct way to decide on what product to import? No! Most entrepreneurs usually fall in love with a product and think that everyone else will feel the same way about it they do. But that is hardly the case.
The other half of the newbie import export businessmen asks, “What product should I import?” That is indeed a better way to start your business venture than coming up with a preconceived idea of already having a product developed and then start looking for customers to sell it to, or worse, deciding to sell it to the customers that live the closest to you, for example those in your neighborhood, town or state.
Remember, you do not start marketing after the product is developed and ready to sell!
Better question may be, “What’s lucrative product to import?” although the same dilemma continues – who will be your customer!
While the success of your business certainly depends upon the decisions you make, it is a business plan that gives you a path to follow, outlines research you need to do, measures the results, allocates resources, and outlines step by step actions you need to take towards your goal.
To decide on a product to import you need to answer many questions, some of which will require you to conduct some kind of information-gathering process first, a research, may be survey.
The single most important question you will need to answer for yourself is: Who will be my customers? Where do they live? What are the wants and desires of my target market? How do they live? What type of products appeal to them and why?
Once you start answering these questions, more related questions will follow. Based on the results of your research you will come up with answers what may be the best product to import, or better, design and develop a new product for your target market.
Remember, people seldom fail in business because they have overanalyzed their customer!