What is the best way to go about procuring ceramic cups in Asia? (By best I mean reliability and scalability.)

I am the founder of a cosmetic company that bootstrapped from nothing to a 7 figure business. It sounds like you are really at the beginning stages of business and there are a lot of opportunities for you. You've got a lot of work ahead of you and you need to build some infrastructure. Your brand is going to be one of the most important things to establish and you won't be able to sell to distributors, salons, or consumers without a clear message of what your company is about. When it comes to distribution of your product, you can either work with a distributor, sell directly to resellers, or sell directly to consumers. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. You'll have the most margin with direct to consumers - but you need skills on ecommerce. When you sell through a distributor you lose tons of control, but you can expand your reach quicker. You also have the slimmest margins; but you don't need to invest as much into sales. Selling direct to salons is a time consuming process; but you have more control of how your product is displayed, and the perception the consumer has of your products. So much of cosmetics is where your product is currently sold. If it's sold in mass market retail, no salon will want to carry it. But the direct answer of your question is you simply need to sell your product to anyone who's willing to buy it. Pick up the phone, hustle, and win over those customers.

#1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. #3) START YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.

Hello! I am a former automobile dealer, and I had an auto repair shop, body shop, and licensed vehicle inspection station in central Missouri. I am very familiar with this industry. I entered this market at the wrong time, grew quickly, and hit the Great Recession at the wrong time. My goal was similar to yours, to wholesale vehicles, but also to export classic cars to the middle East. Canada is a great source for people here, because the prices are in fact lower for US buyers. I am still somewhat involved in the automotive niche, and I even recently purchased a replacement engine on a Scion from Canada because it was about one third of the price that I would have paid anywhere close. One thing you mentioned that stuck out in my mind is focusing on SUVs and trucks. When you specialize, you create your biggest potential. If you can create a name for yourself for supplying a particular size of truck, say a 1/4 ton pickup with an extended cab, you might be able to connect with volume buyers who are looking for low cost alternatives to buying new. This could be municipalities with tight budgets, small transport companies, service industry companies, etc. Once you find a hot niche, word could spread fast, and if you've mastered the supply side, you will be able to move vehicles super fast. And if you have the capability of doing some mechanical upgrades on the vehicles before you sell them, you'll make a greater return on your investment. One example of a hot niche is Jeep Cherokees in Colorado. Cherokees sell for 20% to 30% higher in Colorado than what they go for in the Midwest. I know of a person who did nothing but purchase Cherokees and fix them up for selling in Colorado. He had a very solid business. The advantage to focusing down on a very tight selection of vehicle models is knowing what to expect. You'll know what parts are likely to be worn out at a particular mileage, where these vehicles tend to rust first, what mechanical issues are common, or electrical problems that you can run into. When you are wholesaling and buying anything and everything, you'll heighten your chances of getting burned. I've been there myself, and learned some hard lessons. At the end of my run in the business, I wish I could have hit the rewind button and only scoped out a narrow variety of vehicles that I had the most knowledge on. I plan on re-entering the business soon. I've got a particular car in mind, the 1995 Ford Mustang. I rebuilt one of these, and I know all of the gory details for this car. Right now, they are a dime a dozen, and you can find them everywhere. My plan is to restore them and sell them, because this body style and the Fox body are the next ones which will become "nostalgic". Drill down and find out which pickup truck is your best prospect. Factor in common problems, cost of repair, and demand out on the market. Then stick with that model within a certain range of years, and make a name for yourself in that niche. You are guaranteed to have better success if you take that approach!

I want to begin by assuring you I don't want to rain on your parade. Now... Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is what is critical, and hardly anyone does execution well. NDAs are nice but they won't protect your idea from being ripped off in the medium term at the latest, if it's a winner. Your best protection is that execution thing...people sure like to talk, but they don't like to Do. Do NOT have your prototype made in China. It will take months in shipping back and forth, misunderstandings, finding the right manufacturer, and other difficulties. Do not embroil yourself in that mess. Absolutely you should get a prototype made first. Will it cost you 10-100X what the final version will cost? Of course. Do you need something to show investors, suppliers, channel partners, retail outlets? Yes. All a patent does is protect your idea for awhile from being duplicated in the exact way you are executing it. I can't go make a sticky-note that uses a strip of lightweight glue to hold the paper onto something. 3M has that patent. But I could find another method for holding the paper on, and that would be fine. Worrying about protecting your idea is kind of a waste of time. You should do what you can afford and what makes sense in terms of your time invested to accomplish a level of protection, but don't let this be all-consuming. It's just not worth it. Get out there and make your product and find paths to market. That's what will really pay off. Someone WILL copy your product sooner or later if it's a money-maker. That's why developing great branding is so important: keep the knock-offs in the knock-off category in your buyer's brain, and you as the top quality original.

I've worked in the fashion industry for several years with and with numerous manufacturers. I think it is because it costs $$$ to make bespoke products. Generally consumers only want to pay $ or $$ for basic clothing. You would have to figure out how to sell basics for $$$. Let me know if you'd like a follow up!