HOW TO START MINI IMPORTATION BUSINESS IN NIGERIA
If you are thinking about starting your own mini importation business, and you have a very small capital, one advice I will give you is forget about the niche thing (Yes, I said it!) and focus on discovering hot-selling products with high-profit margins that would appeal to customers.
Once you have your capital ready, the three major things you should focus on are:
Your Products Research: I always tell a lot of mini importers that the profit doesn’t start from selling but from your product research. If you take your time to do your research, you will discover cheap and quality products with high-profit margins. For example, some choker necklaces were cheap to source from China and had high-profit margins 2 years ago, and girls loved it. Some fidget spinners (anti-stress toys) were cheap to source from China last year and had high-profit margins, and people loved it. You are already limited by your small capital so do not focus on a niche but on discovering cheap, quality and hot-selling products that would multiply your money fast. You can research for those products on Amazon, AliExpress and Jumia. You can also target some of the hot-selling “Ship from Abroad” or “Jumia Global” products on the Jumia website and beat the drop shipper of that product with a better price and faster delivery.
Your Purchasing Price: That a product is cheap and hot-selling doesn’t mean you should just accept any price you see on any Chinese website. Use Amazon and AliExpress express only for product research purposes. Whenever you have discovered and are ready to buy your hot-selling product, go to Alibaba or better use 1688 (use Google Chrome to translate the website to English). The prices on 1688 are usually 20-35% cheaper than what you will get on Amazon or AliExpress if you do your research and negotiation well.
Your Marketing and Sales Strategy: You don’t even need a website to sell some hot-selling products. Create a video about the product and promote the video on social media, or do some webinars and promote the product at the of your webinar, or warm your email list about the product, or promote the product on your social media accounts, or do some Facebook ads if you have extra cash, or list your products on online marketplaces and classified ad sites, or search for niche influencers who would give you a shout-out/talk about your product, or search for an unbranded video of your product and use it to promote your product, or look for any good retailer of your product within your State or location and supply your products to them, or do a combination of any.
With Mimi Logistics, you can buy anything in China and deliver directly to your customers anywhere in Nigeria and even outside Nigeria, which means you can run a Facebook advert to get buyers of your imported products, then when you get potential buyers asking for it, collect their delivery and contact details, then send their details to us to help you deliver to them and collect money on your behalf or deliver to them only if you have collected money from them which is safer for you.
Aside selling on your own through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube adverts, you can sell even more and faster through Jumia and Konga. Mimi Logistics makes it easy for anybody to sell their goods on Jumia whether they live in Lagos, outside Nigeria or anywhere in the world, just CLICK HERE for details on this.
You can make it BIG this year in your mini importation business, so don’t give up.
What To Do If You Don’t Have Capital To Start Your Importation Business
Before you can start mini importation business, you need capital. Startup capital has always been the major challenge many people face when starting an importation business, so in this short article, I will show you some of the fastest ways to raise money to start your mini importation business.
How To Raise Money For Your Importation Business?
Family & Friends: request for interest free loan from your family members or trusted friend.
Drop-shipping: you can start from drop-shipping for other big importers.
What is drop-shipping? Drop-shipping is selling a wholesaler’s product that you don’t have by adding a small profit margin to it, and allowing the wholesaler deliver directly to your buyers without you having to buy the product and keep till you get buyers. Through this means, you can raise capital to start your own mini importation business, we will explain this in details on our blog.
Savings: you can raise money through responsible personal savings plan, but remember, you cannot save money if you don’t have income, so you need an income to be able to start saving, and this will lead us to our final method of raising money for your importation business
Get a job! I have said this countless times, and I will say it again and again, one of the questions I get asked the most by aspiring importers is how they can start the importation business without capital and my answer is very simple: Go and get a job if you cannot do drop-shipping to raise capital!
You see, some of the big entrepreneurs you know today started from the corporate world. They tested the entrepreneurial waters while on-the-job, developed some necessary skills set and saved some money before venturing fully into the entrepreneurial world.
If you don’t have the capital to start your importation business, go and get a job. I don’t care what job it is, just go and get a JOB. Your priority shouldn’t be starting an importation and ecommerce business but having a source of income. When you have secured a source of income, then you can start devoting some of your time to learning some critical things such as how to choose the right niche, how to research for products in any chosen niche, how to source for products on Alibaba/1688, how to negotiate with suppliers on any of the platforms or both, how to arrange payment and shipment, and how to market and sell your imported products. Then when you have saved some money and gotten some basic knowledge or developed some basic skills, you can then start a part-time mini importation business while still running your full-time job. Test the water and see if it’s something you can do on a long-term basis because whether you like it or not, the importation and ecommerce business is NOT for everyone, sadly.
Another means of raising capital is by starting a drop shipping or affiliate marketing business but then you need some products research, sales and marketing skills, and some online marketing budget to start making money in the drop shipping or affiliate marketing business. So if you don’t have capital, go and get a job and start from there.
Need Help?
At Mimi Logistics (MimiLogs), we can help you inspect products in China by visiting your Chinese supplier’s factory in person and do a live video conference with your supplier in his or her factory or warehouse, to ensure the quality you paid for is exactly what your supplier produced for you, but this service is mainly for big importers who do not want to visit China but still want to ensure quality assurance and compliance with their Chinese supplier. We have close to a decade experience in purchasing products in China and shipping to Nigeria. Contact us for details.
