Help with an importing Idea

[ivasilevitsky]

Hi All. I dont have experience in starting out a business in the importing area and would like some help. I have found plenty of original fashion, ornaments, shamanic artifacts and artisan jewelry and all sorts of works with many different stones, while travelling in Peru. I was thinking about importing some of these things into Australia and selling it there. Firstly I dont know if the economy is right for something like this. Also, i dont really know how to even get started - to sell online or through a shop? How do you normally go about setting this up? Please help!

[Burgo]

Customs may be the right place to start to find out what duty you would be up for should you import quantities. This would give you an idea if what you have in mind is viable, allowing you to work out landed costs etc

Sometime we can buy cheeply overseas but when customs come into the picture the landed cost puh up the prices making the items expensive.

[fiona@vas]

Customs is definitely a good place to start - here's a link to their page on procedures for importing and exporting:
http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=4226

I'd give equal importance to working out where you want to place yourself in the market (exotic and expensive or cheap and cheerful) as this will in part determine your distribution channels and your marketing and promotions.

You mention that you haven't run an import business before...but you don't mention whether you've run a different sort of business before.

Without wanting to dampen your enthusiasm at all, I would encourage you to prepare a full business plan or at the very least do enough research to be able to complete a cashflow projection for the first 12-18 months of the business and satisfy yourself that it's a viable business from a financial perspective.

[mike@engagemarketing]

Following on from what Lisa said - i believe that a 'Value Chain Analysis' is a fantastic place to start the feasibility study process before starting the business. Once you get a head about it, the diagrams can be an enormous help and can go a long way to proving that there is or is not a place in the market for your product.

[ivasilevitsky]

Thanks for all the great suggestions!

Does anything have any idea what the current economic situation means for the importing of Jewelry and clothes market? Are they as hard hit as most other sectors?

Thanks again!

[Linda Cerzs]

Hello:
I think that your idea bout importing products from Peru is great, but you should be very careful about the exchange rate, it could really give too many problems.
Linda Cerzs
New York

[KarenC]

IF you want to check exchange rates here is a good link to bookmark
http://www.xe.com/ucc/

Converting Peru Nuevos Soles - PEN to Australian dollars
Example, for today's date
100.00 PEN

=

47.1186 AUD

Peru Nuevos Soles Australia Dollars 1 PEN = 0.471186 AUD 1 AUD = 2.12230 PEN

This of course will change from day to day.

Customs adds duties and GST on full amount of goods worth over $1000 AUD valued at date of despatch from country of origin.

[Linda Cerzs]

Hi all:
The most complete currency exchange rates calculator is at Bloomberg.com it has almost all currencies in the world
Good luck with your business
Karl Strauss
Economist
Harvard University

[Martin]

Hi Guys, after reading what you want to bring from Peru.

As mentioned before, two things to be considered

1) Customs Duties (If value is over AUD 1000) is around 5% for immitation jewellery (Unless that a tariff concession applies = Free), for ornaments i need to know what they are made of, be careful that none of this is made of wood otherwise AQIS will get involved = more charges. If you would give me a list of what you want to bring I can certainly give you duties, customs tariff and GST (I'm a Customs Broker so I can tell that easily)

2) Transport cost, South American is far away therefore transport cost are enormous if you try to bring them in normal air cargo (Around USD 6/8 per kilo/volume) so think about bringing some samples by post first, that wouldnt be a bad idea

Cheers

[King]

Originally Posted by ivasilevitsky

Thanks for all the great suggestions!

Does anything have any idea what the current economic situation means for the importing of Jewelry and clothes market? Are they as hard hit as most other sectors?

Thanks again!

To be blunt, if you don't know this, then reconsider your idea.

Go and do some market research - you will find out how the downturn has affected different industries, including jewellery.