Starting a reselling business with imported stock

The hard part of reselling isn't finding products. It's finding out which products sell before you've spent your capital on the wrong ones.

The mistake almost everyone makes first

Someone finds a product on 1688 at a great price, gets excited about the margin, and orders 500 units.

Then they discover the photos flattered it, three competitors already sell it cheaper on Shopee, and the thing that looked like a ₱150 margin is a ₱40 margin after landed cost and platform fees.

Now their capital is in boxes in their living room.

Step 1 — Pick a category you can judge

Pick something you actually understand or use. You will make better calls on quality, spot what is wrong in a product photo, and answer customer questions without guessing.

What tends to work for small resellers:

• Small and light. Freight is charged on volume or weight. Bulky low-value goods are punished hardest.
• Repeat purchase. Consumables beat one-time buys. The second sale to the same customer costs nothing to acquire.
• Hard to compare exactly. If yours is identical to fifty other listings, the only lever left is price, and that is a race you will lose.
• Not fragile, not regulated. Save yourself the breakage and the FDA process while you are learning.

What to avoid at the start: anything requiring FDA registration (cosmetics, food, supplements), anything on the prohibited list, and anything branded that you cannot verify is authentic.

Step 2 — Validate before you buy

Before ordering anything, spend an hour:

1. Search the product on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop. How many sellers? What do they charge? How many units have the top listings actually sold?
2. Read the one and two-star reviews on competitors. That is your product improvement list, free.
3. Work out your realistic selling price — not your hoped-for price. Look at what is actually selling.
4. Compute landed cost, then subtract platform fees, shipping subsidy and returns. What is left is your real margin.

If the real margin is thin at a realistic price, stop. That is the cheapest decision you will ever make.

Step 3 — Order samples by air

Order a handful of units. Not a container. Check the material, the finish, the packaging, whether it matches the listing photos.

Send samples by air, always. Sea freight for samples means waiting weeks, then waiting weeks again for the real order. That is six weeks before your first sale, and it is the single most expensive mistake new importers make. The extra freight on a few units is trivial by comparison.

Step 4 — A small first order

Order enough to test the market properly, not enough to hurt if it fails. For most people that is 50–200 units depending on price point.

Use this batch to learn: which listing photos convert, what price the market accepts, what questions buyers ask, what the return rate is, how fast it moves.

Sell it out completely before reordering. Selling out is information. Sitting on stock is also information, and more expensive.

Step 5 — Price properly

Start from landed cost, not supplier price. Then add:

• Platform commission and payment fees
• Any shipping you subsidise
• Packaging
• Returns and damages at a realistic rate
• Your time

Whatever remains is your margin. If it is under 30% after all of that, the product is probably not worth the working capital.

Step 6 — Scale what worked

Once a product sells reliably:

• Move to sea freight. Much cheaper per unit at volume. Plan around 15–25 days warehouse to warehouse and reorder roughly 35 days out so you never stock out.
• Negotiate on volume. Suppliers discount for repeat orders. Ask.
• Ask about Form E. On a China order of any size, preferential duty is real money.
• Switch to RMB remittance. Bank wires quietly cost 8–10%.
• Add adjacent products. Sell more to customers you already have rather than chasing new ones.

What actually separates the ones who last

Not product picking. Almost everyone gets a winner eventually.

It is knowing their numbers. The resellers still going in year three can tell you their landed cost per unit, their real margin after fees, and their reorder point. The ones who quit were guessing at all three and found out too late that the busy months were not the profitable ones.

Related reading

• Balikbayan box vs commercial cargo
• How to compute landed cost (the formula that matters)
• How to order from 1688 to the Philippines