603: Why Vietnam May Be The Best Kept Secret In Sourcing With Jim Kennemer

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, I’m joined by a very special guest, Jim Kenimer. Jim has spent years on the ground in Vietnam, working directly with factories, suppliers, and entrepreneurs. And while most sellers are fixated on China, Jim has been quietly helping entrepreneurs discover a sourcing ecosystem that is often cheaper, more flexible, and surprisingly overlooked. We’ll dive into what makes Vietnam such an attractive alternative

00:30
The biggest mistake sellers make when sourcing there and why blindly sticking with China might be costing you more than you think. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e-commerce conferences that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches.

00:59
people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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And if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever going to be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Enjoy the show.

01:48
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Jim Candomer back on the show. Jim is the founder of Cosmosourcing and sourcinghub.io, and he’s helped hundreds of clients source more than $100 million worth of products from Vietnam, Mexico, and Southeast Asia. And products that he has sourced have ended up in almost every major retailer for clients from over 30 countries. He also recently spoke at my annual e-commerce conference, The Seller Summit. I invited him on the show today.

02:18
to talk about the current sourcing situation and the latest with tariffs, because I still feel like things change like every single month. We actually just got a shipment in ourselves. Every day. Yeah, every day. Yeah. And with that, welcome to the show, Hey, great. Thank you. It’s pleasure to be here. So I actually have an odd question for you to start. And I know this is really random, but I think I was talking to another speaker at Seller Summit. And I overheard that you get most of the traffic to Cosmos sourcing.

02:46
through AI, like chatbots? Most, but yeah, we’re getting a huge surge in traffic on AI chatbots. Come up apparently pretty highly recommended by ChatGPT. Do you have a strategy for doing that? Just curious. I mean, I’m looking into it. Kind of honestly, having organically, like we have our blog, kind of have a couple blogs now, but Cosmos Orson is the main one and guess it’s just good information. But yes, definitely we’re seeing pretty good conversion rate with our

03:16
Like we’re only getting about thousand visitors a month referral from chat to EBT, but from those, the conversion rate to just meetings and eventually sales has been pretty high, much, higher than Google who get about 50,000 over 50,000 from Google and probably twice as many, but the conversion rates obviously lower to getting meeting and ultimately sells. So yeah, it’s definitely been kind of. Experience you haven’t. Yeah. Trying to figure out why, to be honest. Well, I mean, is blogging still a.

03:44
an essential part of your strategy for. Yeah, it’s definitely kind of the main one. I mean, I get blogging and referrals from previous clients word of mouth. It’s probably still number one, but blogging definitely kind of the new new clients definitely kind of get out there and then, yeah, referrals from clients and then referrals from other people are definitely then. Yeah, I’ve been trying to expand more on LinkedIn and start a YouTube channel that I’ve been.

04:08
procrastinating way too much on. Well, it is easy to procrastinate on that actually. I know. I’ve actually like recorded like three different versions of the same video and I’m just, every time I look at it, like, I don’t want people to see this. He’s the script. I don’t know. I’m too self-conscious about this stuff. So what I like about you is, you you work with a whole bunch of clients and sourcing. what is the current situation with the tariffs? What are your clients thinking? How are they adapting?

04:37
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we work with lot of clients like kind of our tagline has been anywhere but China. But Vietnam still is kind of our bread and butter for sourcing. We got a team based there. But yeah, I mean, definitely there’s a huge influx of clients who are looking to move outside of China, look at alternative sourcing destinations. But at the same time, right now, people just want certainty and there’s not certainty in tariffs. I mean, we got letters that have been agreed on by one side sent to people about tariffs. So maybe it’ll say a 20 percent like Vietnam and

05:05
Theory has a deal at 20 % but nothing’s been signed or fully agreed on by both parties. That should go in fact off to August 1st. So yeah. Pretty soon it’s going to expire, right? Is it the 12th the 1st? So it’s 10 % still now, but on August 1st it’s going to jump up to 20 % on theory based on Trump’s comments, which has so far been a single post on True Social. So we got literally people making millions, tens of millions of dollars in purchase.

05:32
agreements based on a single truth social post that Is pretty uncertain. So yeah, we’re kind of still waiting for the official official announcement, but no one’s on the other side’s objected to it. So it’s Just so there’s still seems to be at least among your clients a Need to go away from China, even though I think feel things feel like they’ve settled somewhat with China right at 55 Yeah, I think that’s gonna be locked in for the short to medium term 55 % and I think

06:02
Yeah, literally yesterday or the day before Trump made comments about the tariffs might be set anywhere from 15 to 50 percent, which he did at AI Summit just off the cuff, by the way. So, yeah, we’re going to kind of see some more settling. But yeah, it’s definitely been a lot of uncertainty. People have been really like we work a lot of clients here are looking at factories or getting quotes from factories, contacts, doing introductions and all that. But they’re just don’t want to pull the trigger until they know.

06:31
everything set in stone because if they place purchase order today, it’s going to take two, three months before the products ready to ship and goes through customs and then they don’t know that the 10 % or 20 % that’s in place now is going to be what they pay in the future. there’s all that is it right now with Vietnam actually, it’s 10 % right now. you said today today? Yeah, on August 1, it will be 20%. It’ll be 20. And then how long is that gonna last? It’s indefinite right now or this indefinite? Yeah, I mean, 20.

07:00
for the short medium term. But yeah, mean, yeah, as far as yeah, it will be definitely kind of locked in at 20%. But just with the way the trade agreements are, there’s nothing locked in. Sure. I mean, given that a lot of the Chinese factories moved their operations to Vietnam in the past decade, I mean, is it really doing anything? A little bit. Yeah, one of the big things too that the True Social Post has a 40 %

07:30
Tariff for goods that go from China into Vietnam, which we’re trying to figure out what exactly is costangly trans-German as a whole is illegal. So now we’re Just doing a 40 % tariff. So we’re yeah, I mean there’s a little bit uncertainty but a lot of that people kind of eluded that if a Substantial amount of raw materials even if the finished goods is made in Vietnam would get taxed at 40 % So yeah, that’s potential that say you source the metal components from China

07:57
ship to Vietnam, made it to a finished good, then the metal component would be taxed at 40 % and then the rest of the product would be taxed at the regular 20 % for instance. But yeah, what’s happening? Is that what you’re seeing? That’s what will happen when it goes into effect. But okay, still trying to get all that clarity on that because I always thought the rules were the materials are okay. And then yeah, as long as you’re transforming it and building something with it, right?

08:26
Yeah, no, that’s that’s how it normally works. But yeah, with that trans shipment, it’s honestly kind of unclear what he’s alluding to because yeah, I trans shipment is also a trans shipment. Normally is when you have a product go from one country, say China into Vietnam and then ship out of Vietnam, clear as a country of origin, which is illegal in that regard. Every word says country of origin is China. Yeah. So yeah. But now in that

08:52
thing explicitly highlighted out that 40 % transshipment tariff, which is less than 55 % from China. So it has a lot of people confused about what exactly it means. just talking to experts, like was talking to a lawyer based in Vietnam about that. And we were just trying to figure it out ourselves. And yeah, as far as we can tell, that’s more or less probably alludes to the materials getting taxed separately if they were to originate or components. Okay. What made the most logical interpretation?

09:22
I guess we’ll say most logical interpretation of that. So the answers I want to get out of today’s episode is why would I go to Vietnam? Like, what are they good at? And then is it realistic for like a little guy to source from there? Like what are the moqs? And I we’re speaking in broad terms because there’s so many different products, but for sure, like just set some expectations for like the volumes and what? Yeah, I mean, Vietnam as a whole does have higher moqs and they do kind of expect

09:51
first time buyers place larger MOQs right off the bat, which has turned off a lot of our clients and more potential clients. So for like clothing, for instance, most apparel projects, you’re looking at about probably about a thousand MOQs. that’s not too bad. Yes, not too bad. Yeah. So a thousand t-shirts, for instance. Yeah. We actually did have a list of manufacturers that did a little MOQs that we maintained in-house, but since the trade war demands gone up and almost all of them as manufacturers raised their MOQs, which were like, we were from 100 to 300.

10:21
up to really a thousand. So MOQs have been going up a lot more in Vietnam. Yeah, furniture, typically we say a container load worth of furniture, which depending on size can be anywhere from 100 to 300, 400 units. So why would I go to Vietnam over China right now? Just strictly manufacturing the types of products. Yeah, I think apparel and textiles, cut and sew items in general are better in Vietnam flat out without tariffs being factored in. It’s their most developed industry.

10:50
As a whole so I mean yeah from our estimation there’s over 6,000 factories that employs over two million people in that industry So it’s pretty advanced it kind of competes at all level So everything from high technical gear jackets about our wear to cheap t-shirts and everything in between are really good a lot of bags back Let’s say I were to move my like handkerchiefs and napkins over there what give me an idea of? Like how much cheaper would be and what like the moq’s would be is it like based on rolls of fabric or?

11:19
Yeah, a lot of is based on rolls of fabric because yeah, fabric rolls come from anywhere, a thousand, ten thousand square meters. So yeah, when you if they have a lot of factories where suppliers do have their own in-house warehouses. So we get a common fabric and just buy from what they have in stock. But most of the time, though, we’re ordering new rolls of fabric specifically for the production. So, yeah, you would probably have a memo queue of a thousand or so. And there’s been a few cases where we buy the roll of fabric and then do a smaller. You just start out and keep it on hand for the second order.

11:49
Okay. so I’m just actually I’m asking you now for selfish reasons. Yeah, go for it. We actually just got a shipment and the tariffs are at 55 and that was, you know, quadruple what it used to be. Yeah. And you know, we were just kind of doing the math and obviously we’re gonna have to raise prices and whatnot. it’s not gonna be a huge deal. But if I go to Vietnam, what price breaks can I expect just even outside of the tariffs or the price is pretty much the same? Prices are relatively comparable.

12:16
without tariffs factored in, especially for cutting sew items. So there’s quite a few suppliers. I mean, we can definitely check for handkerchiefs because you do that you do embroidery in states or do you do it in China? the embroidery here. Yeah, that’s what I thinking. So yeah, just do the raw handkerchiefs, which is we just basically need a fabric cut and an edge sewn on maybe at the it’s a very simple project. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it depends on where the honestly what’s the simpler things like that. A lot of times the majority of the costs will be in the materials.

12:46
And is it cotton or what’s the material? Yeah, 100 % cotton. also sell linen napkins too. Those are a little bit more involved because they have like a hemstitch border. And we also sell aprons. Yeah. Which are pretty easy too. It’s just like three pieces of fabric sewn together. Yeah, for sure. Because yeah, with that, I mean, the majority of costs would probably be still in the fabric and a lot of that fabric it still is sourced from China. But we can definitely talk and in that case, you’re never going to a majority of the value. Because yeah, Vietnam’s starting to crack down a little bit on

13:16
July 1st, they kind of announced some major reforms and they’re not giving an export certificate unless they can verify it. 40 % of the value was made in the country. Are they enforcing that? They’re starting to, yeah. Customs, I hate dealing with Vietnamese customs, but we get stuff held up all the time. So really it sounds like the primary reason is not cost, it’s just the tariff at this point. For a lot of goods, mean, wooden goods…

13:43
are another one that’s probably the biggest advantage in Vietnam without really factoring tariffs just because Vietnam is a tropical country. They have a huge amount of plantations, wood plantations, so they can source all their wood locally. And it’s part of Aishan, so a lot of times we get wood from Cambodia or Thailand as well. And it’s free trade between those countries. So, yeah, those are one of big ones. And then Vietnam is trying to move up a lot in the supply chain. So it really depends on the products. Like we’re doing some silicon and plastic injection molding, and I will say that does come up.

14:12
more expensive than in China, because we do work a lot of clients who are sourcing from China already. But then you’ve got the factors, tariff and the trade uncertainty. So a lot of those people, it will be worth it a lot of times, even to it as backup supplier to Oh, because of the tariffs, like uncertainty of the tariffs. see. Okay, so we got apparel, text, anything textile related wooden products. And then perhaps plastic product. Yeah.

14:40
Yeah, we did about silicone molding a lot of wire goods on metal, stamp metal goods. of the big things are moving in and electronic manufacturing is probably their fastest growing industry. Which literally a few years ago, we were struggling to find anything at all in last few years, literally within like less than two years, we’ve been finding some good prices and starting to do a lot more OEM electronic projects. So it sounds like maybe 70 % of the people that buy stuff or source stuff for like Amazon, whatever could in fact go to Vietnam.

15:10
Is that probably maybe about that? Maybe 50%. I don’t want to like overestimate that, but yeah, you got textiles, plastics and wooden goods and metal, right? I mean, that’s like almost everything. Oh, for sure. And yeah, we are. I mean, our majority of clients are Amazon FBA sellers. OK, yeah. So yeah, it’s definitely. Yeah, a lot of good products there. Plus toys, too. Even you can throw those in there. And as far as you know, 20 % right now is the current situation.

15:39
Yeah, in August 1st. Yeah, which is a lot of people that are thinking that the deal might change I hate to say it but yeah, we’ll see. They’re hoping lower actually because right now Vietnam is 20 % and you know, we’ve been Vietnam has been one the most proactive countries in terms of negotiating deals and getting things going and making concessions to Then Indonesia got 19 Philippines got 19. Thailand got 36 % so Yeah, they’re kind of really hoping to get

16:09
They have a chance to kind of renegotiate and get under 20%. But at the time it’s going to be 20%. And I’m not, kind of think they should just settle and get everything locked in. So walk me through like what to expect. And obviously it’s going to be different from supplier to supplier, but right now for our Chinese suppliers, it’s so easy. We just draw what we on a piece of paper. hand it to them. They send us a sample and then we’re like, okay, good. Then we, you know, just document everything and we just place a bulk order. Is the process as smooth? mean, for a simple product like a handkerchief.

16:37
Yeah, it should be that smooth. Like we’ve worked on some pretty basic line drawings or pencil drawings for some products, but it really depends on the product category. Like we did a set of luggage, soft shell luggage for instance, and you just had pencil drawings and dimensions and we were able to get a couple of factories to work with that. But a lot of other products, like talking about silicone or shoes or whatnot, you really need like full 3D stock files, whatnot with them. Because yeah, with Viet China, a lot of the factories have designers in house and can do

17:05
shop drawings and that’s not really that common in Vietnam. They kind of rely on the clients to provide the tech packs and product specs and step files and DWG files and whatnot. For clothing and everything too, Yeah, for pretty much anything. I see. And so we work with a of third-party designers to get that in those cases. yeah, the factories kind of rely on that. But yeah, like I said, simple products like an ink chip you get away with.

17:30
really actually so that’s a big difference too because we don’t ever do tech packs for our aprons we just work with the designers that they have in-house at the supplier yeah right to mix and match stuff and make changes so you’re saying that the vietnamese factory would not have most of them have well but not all and it’s not as common as china i see yeah china we just work with ideas and then work with the factories a lot more to do the finish goes like basically what you’re doing

17:59
Vietnam I mean where this case is where well like shoes for instance We’ll get pretty detailed drawings, but work with them to do the patterns the actual patterns for the machinery same with some clothings So they’ll do the last step the made for manufacturing step, but they won’t do that conceptualizing stuff as much Right. Yeah, and then in terms of getting stuff out of there. Is it pretty straightforward like just being exporting? Yeah Okay, it’s the same as China really. I mean we’re for freight borders and they owe to you all that. Yeah, we okay, but yes

18:29
more or less the same. Yeah, shipping and all that is pretty commoditized and standardized internationally. So it’s same standards.

18:38
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19:07
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19:18
All right, so that’s Vietnam. seems like it’s pretty viable over China. Yeah, I actually was looking into Mexico at some point too. And I actually found that the prices were just way higher. Yeah, I know you do a lot of sourcing from Mexico, what’s your experience there? Yeah, I know stuff, the higher price. Yeah, I spent two months in Mexico this winter, and we looked a lot of maximum manufacturing. We’re just benchmarking projects from China and Vietnam and Mexico and Mexico was consistently one and a half to two times more expensive, much more limited on what they can do as well.

19:48
So yeah, it was and that’s without tariffs back then. Yeah. With tariffs now. Actually, what are the tariffs right now with Mexico? 30 % at the moment. Oh my God. Ouch. OK. Yeah. So does that, you know, put it out of contention for? Yeah. I haven’t really taken on too many Mexico projects recently, unfortunately. It just seems so convenient, though, because they’re so close and everybody wants Mexico to work. It’s just yeah. I mean, the supply is in there. The man’s there. The supply chain isn’t. Yeah, I mean,

20:18
people that move production to Mexico are going to be the large companies who are setting up their own production facilities in Mexico because it’s easy to do that, but there’s just not the contract manufacturers that folks like you and me can reach out to and just start a project. They’re just not set up for that. Okay. Yeah. All right. So in your experience right now, Mexico doesn’t seem that attractive, both from a cost perspective as well as a tariff perspective. Yeah. But from a logistics perspective, it’s great. Oh yeah. From a logistics perspective, it’s incredible.

20:46
Is Section 321 no longer a thing? Like if you get a warehouse right on the border and they just slip into the US postal system, in theory, there’s no tariff, right? Yeah, theory. Yeah, aspect. I that’s not even de minimis anymore if they’re literally slipping it into the US postal system, right? Yeah. Well, mean, that’s, yeah, it’s still a little bit of a thing, but it’s harder to do. I don’t do too much with that, to be honest. Okay.

21:16
So you also cover Southeast Asia. What are some of the main countries that you have experience with there? Yeah, I think Thailand and Indonesia are the second, second and third best countries to source from. Malaysia has a few pockets of stuff. Like we do some metal goods from Malaysia as well. But Thailand has some pretty decent advanced manufacturing. We’re starting to do some appliances there. Like a tankless hot water heater, for instance, is one of our projects and we found a supplier for that.

21:41
Okay, that sounds really complex. So what is Thailand? Like, why would you go to Thailand versus Vietnam? I really depends on the product category. But I think, like I kind of mentioned the appliances, and they do have a little bit more advanced manufacturing facilities for that, then they have more developed in plastic injection and some injection molding. But right now with 36 % tariffs, it is a little bit more of a challenge. But is it better than China? Probably not, right? I mean, if I was going to do a client, I’d probably go to China, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah, definitely. Well, it

22:11
Financially a price point, yeah. Yeah, it really depends on product because we still do most of our electronics out of China. It’s just too easy to do. Yeah. So what is the advantage of Thailand then? Like why did your client decide to go to Thailand? They wanted more diversity in supply chain was the main reason. And they’re a pretty substantial client in terms of volume. yeah, I mean, they’re in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in purchasing a year for products. So in that case, they just really, really want to have more options.

22:40
Where at all so they’re willing to even not so much lose money, but pay more from Thailand just to have a second option Okay, makes sense. But for like a Amazon seller that does like seven figures and whatnot. Would we be even considering Thailand? It’s worth looking into but it’s not the best. Yeah 36 % terrorists. That’s there’s a lot of tears plus more expensive It’s more expensive than Vietnam and China. Yeah, but not much. So but yeah, and it’s more limited on what you can do there

23:08
And it sounds like they’re good for electronics and plastic molding. Yeah. And we do a lot of some metal goods from Malaysia too. Indonesia is kind of, think Indonesia is probably going to be the next big in our manufacturing base in Southeast Asia in terms of just cheap basic commodities that FBA sellers could potentially buy from. What would Indonesia, just give me an idea of what the price points would be for Indonesia. Yeah. mean, Indonesia has, yeah, it really depends on the product. Like we’re doing a lot more shoes there.

23:37
Sorry move some shoe production there and they’ve been pretty competitive on pricing And we did some industrial wooden goods. That was actually some for instance proud of Indonesia and that’s been relatively reasonably good price by industrial wooden goods I’m talking like kind of palace and what is bulls and some? Wilber handles and stuff some high-density wood So if we normalize, let’s say on apparel, right is Indonesia gonna be cheaper than Vietnam for example, it’s going to be fairly comparable

24:05
Comparable is not the apparel industry is not as developed so it’s gonna be more limited on what they can do I see so they specialize in what you wooden products you said and yeah, I mean they specialize in a few things, but yeah, Mean, what are they so wooden what else? Yeah, I mean wooden goods apparel. They do some apparel. There’s doing um, sorry to do more me electronic manufacturing But it’s still pretty undeveloped in that regard doing a lot of shoes like we do some work boots from Indonesia Not too long ago. I’m still told work boots

24:34
Those were pretty reasonably priced. Okay. I’m just trying to get an idea of where when I would go to a certain country and why. Yeah, right. For sure. Like it seems like China can do all these things. And it sounds like Vietnam is an obvious number two because they do pretty much everything. Yeah. always care for Vietnam. Like we always look at benchmarking and just okay. And then Thailand seems probably not a good solution right now, especially with higher tariffs. I mean, if you’re American. But yeah, I mean, you still don’t have tariffs.

25:04
if you’re Australia or European. So what would be a reason to go to Indonesia then over Vietnam, for example? Yeah, I mean, right now the tariffs are pretty comparable. 19 percent. And that was a formal letter that was sent to Indonesia, which is only one percent less than Vietnam. But yeah, I mean, right now, I think the big thing is just diversity and just exploring options and getting as many contacts as you can just because really the trade war just keeps changing. I see. Yeah. OK. Yeah.

25:33
So really people are just diversifying just a lot of people are because Trump might just change their mind one day and then it’s not like you can shift your manufacturing super quickly on that. No, not at all. But once you kind of do the groundwork, you’re two steps ahead of everybody else. I see. What what are you seeing right now? Like right now, prices have been relatively stable. Are you going to see this? Do you foresee a huge wave of inflation coming this holiday season? Yeah, I mean,

26:01
It’s really depends because I mean a lot of people are eating profits right now because they know that if they raise their prices are going to lose demand and so they’re trying to keep the man stable, but just eating their profit, but it really depends on how much sellers are willing to eat or lose profit right now. But I mean, you’re looking at some benchmarks with like Walmart and products like a year on year and there’s a handful of products that are up 50 % returns of pricing. And I mean, that’s more or less mostly due to.

26:31
the tariffs. But I mean, the real thing is, mean, tariffs, takes like three to six months from the tariffs to be implemented to actually hitting the consumers because you know, that’s how long it takes for the products to go from production import into the supply chain. mean, we had enough stuff to last us till the beginning of next year. And in preparation for all this stuff, we actually stopped supplying our Amazon and just only supplying from our own store. Yes, that’s our main cash cow. But we did just place a new shipment and

27:00
There’s no way that I can’t avoid raising prices. Oh, I know. Yeah, I mean, many people like, yeah, I mean, two million dollars in tariffs. Like, yeah, that client I was talking to, know, mean, he’s close to but yeah, I mean, they pay two million tariffs and he says he’s literally making zero profit at the moment over last three months. Probably even lost money. You might then admit to losing money. what’s the rationale for that, though? I don’t his he’s in a price sensitive target with competitors and he

27:28
Is afraid that if he raises his prices, then they’re going to go to the competitors and going to lose market share. So he’s right now just wants to maintain his market share. I see. And then interesting. Yeah, he’s assuming those competitors are also getting hit with tariffs, but he I guess he’s hoping they blink first and then there is prices they come to him and he gains market share. But it’s yeah, just spree friendship really. All right. So kind of established, at least I have from this conversation, that it seems like Vietnam is the way to go, if not just for developers.

27:58
diversification. right now, tariff relief. Yeah. So how does one go about finding a Vietnamese supplier? No, I know, on Alibaba, it actually has a whole bunch of Vietnamese. Yeah. Yeah. But the big thing is, like, not every supplier is on there only a small fraction less than 20 % are on Alibaba. I mean, there’s still a resource like Yellow Pages, you can actually Google suppliers pretty well in Vietnam, since Google is not blocked in Vietnam. But yeah, I mean, there’s resources like

28:26
If you have a chance to visit Vietnam, go to trade shows. I think that’s the single best thing clients can do. And we have a lot of clients that visit trade shows and then we set up factory visits for them after. are the main trade shows that are over there that happen? Yeah, you got Vifa, got Global Sources has a big trade show. That’s the best general trade show. Yeah. Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought they were just in Hong Kong. No, they got a new one in Vietnam. They started two years ago. I was at the inaugural one, actually. Okay. Yeah. And then, yeah, so they, yeah, they kind of had 600 vendors at that.

28:56
the first trade show and they’re up, I think they’re up to 800 to 1000 now. And yeah, this is a general trade show. most trade shows tend to focus on product categories like BIFAs, like home goods, all right. Yeah. Home goods and furniture. And then there’s ones that are specialized in clothing, another one for shoes. So if you have a specific niche that you’re in, definitely kind of figure out the one that’s your niche and go there. You mentioned the yellow pages. Were you joking or what? No, the yellow pages are for some reason, very active in Vietnam.

29:23
pretty good. Really like yellow pages, like the old school. Yeah, that’d be interesting. We just get contacts from there. You still have to do your legwork. Like once you get the names, them up. So we’ll go on like, yeah, we use them. Just get names, but we’ll go through like 50 100 contacts on yellow pages, look them up on their website and Google and import yeti or whatever on our system and we’ll narrow it down to like 20 or 30 that we think are legit or suitable for clients or even fewer.

29:52
But just from broad, because yeah, they kind of keep it pretty broad. Like you were just looking more clothing factory or just this clothing factory, but it’s not going to specify, oh, these make specifically recycled, you know, T-shirts out of recycled materials type stuff. It’s got to be specified. What about approaching them? Is it any different than a Chinese vendor? You have to follow up with them because like if you’re on Alibabi, put an RFQ out and they come to you. The big difference with Vietnam, you have to be the one who initiates that conversation and kind of follow up with them.

30:22
do really get their contact. They just don’t chase after you. So it’s kind of the opposite in that regard. And so India kind of, yeah, like India, a lot like India, honestly, it’s pretty similar outside of China. just China has that hyper competitive factories where they’re kind of jumping over each other, get business because they competing against everybody. Well, yeah, Vietnam got to go after them. So, but I mean, it’s relatively easy. mean, yeah, we’ve had clients that had poor response rates, but

30:51
We work with a lot of clients to get better RFQs or kind of really on punch up because a lot of time people are like, oh, I just want to buy 50 raw off that. And we’re like, you can do sample order a few orders and then, but you really got to lead in with you want to buy a thousand eventually once everything works out. So we got to lead in with that. And you know, we coach them and we get much better responses rates. And then we are obviously right. Our RFQs when we work with clients too. Right. But yeah, you have to really kind of chase them, follow up with them and make sure your RFQ is appealing.

31:19
But we have good relationship and pre-beta factories with hundreds of factories too already. I know in China we get them on WeChat as soon as we can and then all communication is done through messaging. Nothing is blocked over there, right? So what is the platform of choice for communication? Yeah, WhatsApp or Zalo are the two big ones. Okay. Yeah. All right. So there’s no gotchas or any real differences. Is English easy to communicate with?

31:48
I mean, our team is all local Vietnamese, so they’ll talk to factory Vietnamese. But once we do introductions with clients, they’ll be in English. But yeah, half the time they’ll have English speakers on any factor of export. Okay. Vision will have an English speaker on their sales staff. Handles the face-to-face stuff. then honestly, Google, everybody uses translation apps. So you’re talking all the time. And you’re honestly might be speaking to a Vietnamese native speaker who barely speaks English, but they’re translating everything in works fine. Right.

32:17
Right, okay. All right, so in that regard, it’s pretty straightforward. placing orders and everything pretty much the same? Yeah, it’s effectively the same. transfers. Yeah, mostly wire transfers. For smaller orders, we’ll use other services, but yeah, once you’re at a certain level, definitely kind of do wire transfer and make sure everything’s legit, but yeah. Okay, so it sounds like it’s a pretty good viable alternative that… Yeah, for a lot of people. At least for me, we should be looking at you. Yeah, definitely. Well, okay, let’s go that route.

32:46
What is it? Who is Who is it not for? Yeah, I mean, like I said, kind of you got to really be specific on the products that they do focus on, like kind of talked about the apparel, textiles, clothing, bags, backpacks, all that furniture is all good. But there’s a lot of times with complex projects or very specific products or actually private labels, probably the hardest one to source. So anybody that just wants to have a pre-made product, slap their logo on, it’s very hard to do because

33:15
None the factories really maintain existing products or develop products. They just rely on the clients to make it for them. And I mean, just stuff like, I don’t know, this late of water bottles, for instance, people are really just like, oh, I want this like have very specific things that they want and don’t want to, you know, put the time and develop it. They just spectre factory just by have an option of all these for them to buy and then put a label on. Yeah, just that’s not an option that doesn’t happen. Well, that’s actually a good thing in my eyes.

33:42
Cause then they’re not going to list their own stuff on Amazon against you, right? Is that, yeah, not going to what we haven’t really had as much. Yeah. No real issues with yeah. Factory’s kind of circumventing that because yeah, they’re really manufacturing focused. They’re not sophisticated on the sales aspect and setting up, you know, counterfeit sales. What about, what about IP theft? It’s in theory easier to enforce in Vietnam than China, but obviously you still have to have a lawyer and everything. But yeah, we have internet and internet agreement set up.

34:12
that we can set up with factories that really protect it. So it’s not been as big an issue and there’s more channels to legally enforce it. They’re not going to automatically favor the factory. So I mean, we talked to lawyers, we haven’t had to really follow up with anything, but yeah, there’s all law offices, Western law offices that have representation of Vietnam that can follow through if needed or any type of those. So the likelihood of a factory copying your stuff and then going forward and selling it on Amazon is much more rare than… Correct.

34:42
Yeah, China. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It sounds very attractive right now, at least right this second as we’re Yeah, know. Everything changes so quickly. Yes. Do you do a lot with India or no, I’ve looked at India a lot. And it’s just, it’s a huge country in each province and areas different. And he’s like the whole mindset of how to do business with him is total shift.

35:06
Interesting. And so but in Vietnam, are there different regions that specialize in different? Oh, I Vietnam’s a lot smaller. Yeah. I mean, there’s really three main regions of Vietnam. And really, in the end, you can reduce it just north and south Vietnam. Central Vietnam would be the third region. but yeah, mean, northern Vietnam, around Hanoi, the capital, just near China. So you get a lot of I want to say transshipment, but a lot more cooperation with China. It was worried to do a lot of electronic manufacturing, lot of lighting.

35:35
some stuff like that just because you do still get components like anytime you do lighting like all the LED components, for instance, come from China. There’s as far as I know, none outside of China. Right. But we’ll still do the the finishing and the casing and whatnot from Vietnam. And then, yes, other Vietnam, there’s a lot. Yeah, about 55 percent of the production capacity of the country is around Ho Chi Minh City. And that’s where we do a lot of our furniture, a lot of our clothing, a lot of textiles like we actually put our office in Ben Duong province, which is actually

36:05
just merged with Ho Chi Minh City on July 1st. So now it’s Ho Chi Minh City. But yeah, we specifically put it out there just because it’s super close to the largest industrial area in the country. yeah, we’re like right near all the factories. Okay. And then in terms of trends, do you see, I always felt like Vietnam was just getting more more saturated and companies are moving to Pakistan, Bangladesh. Do you work with any of those countries? No.

36:35
No, it’s hard to find reliable manufacturers there. And a lot of what they’re moving, I’m gonna say is a cheap, as I would say cheaper in large volume products are moving those countries just cause they can get more scale, more workers. I, yeah, Vietnam’s trying to add more sophistication to their production. China essentially. Yeah. They want to be the next China. And a lot of the newer factories are pretty modern, pretty advanced with like, we’re like a cotton sew factory, but they actually have cameras at each station. It says check QC, not just each.

37:05
Supply chain, but literally each pattern so they can actually check you see live and have more computer control automation kind of built in So we’re seeing a lot more factories in that regard like a lot of the plastic congestion volumes to look at injection moldings That’s moving to Vietnam Those machines just need one guy to operate. So it’s there I mean they’re made in Korea or Germany or wherever and they’re Yeah, really automated nowadays make a product So I want to ask you this Do you see manufacturing coming back?

37:34
to the United States based on what you’re seeing? It depends on what level. The thing that I think America should focus on is the high level stuff. Like we make airplanes here, we make cars here, we make high value goods here. And I really feel like that should be the focus of explaining that maybe at ship owning or a few other things, but just stuff like t-shirts and tennis shoes, there’s no reason we need to make that here. It’s not gonna come back, right? Yeah, that’s not going to come back.

38:02
I just don’t understand why you would even want it because it’s a great job, you know? Yeah. OK. Yeah. I mean, microchips and stuff like obviously we’re doing. Yeah, I would definitely focus on some key industries, but I wouldn’t say just bring back all manufacturing here at every level because yeah, in a day like I know there are a few teacher manufacturers and we benchmark prices, but really get a teacher from a factory for like 30 bucks in the United States versus literally one or two dollars from Vietnam.

38:31
Wait that much in the. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s nuts. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And as far as you can tell, they’re more advanced, right? And their factories, like the equipment, everything getting more advanced and like a lot of old factory building new wings and new factories, but all the new factories are quite advanced nowadays. And there’s a lot more investment into factories because it’s getting a little bit harder to hire people. So the factory owners know that. So they’re going definitely kind of adding more automation as much as they can.

39:01
Okay. Let’s talk about Cosmo really quick. Let’s say someone listening and wants to source from Vietnam. What is the process? So they reach out to Cosmo and then what happens? You guys hop on a call. Yeah, we hop on a call. We kind of talked about their product, their MOQs, their product and whatnot. Just make sure they’re a good fit for Vietnam or elsewhere. And then, yeah, they’re a fit. definitely kind of…

39:27
pitch them. But yeah, the way our services work is fully transparent. So we get direct contacts with the factories. We do direct introductions. We try to get as many quotes as we can. So we get about two to six quotes per product category. And we charge a flat rate instead of commission, but this allows us to get multiple quotes. Because most commission agents only work for like two or three factories and you know, they want to directly those factories specifically. So we have our services set up. So we work for the client on the behalf of the client. And then, yeah.

39:53
They’re free to make decision on which factory they want to work with based on which one’s the best fit. Maybe they want price. Maybe they want quality. Maybe. And then general rule of thumb for textiles, a thousand units of. Yeah, that’s a general rule of thumb. We work with some higher end stuff like like we’re some suits and kind of high end dress manufacturers and we can obviously get those lower, but those are definitely higher value goods. We did pretty high end ultra like hiking backpack. But and that was like 100 units, but it was also pretty.

40:22
Oh, one thing I forgot to ask. Turnaround times, are they just similar to China? They’re a little bit slower, but relatively similar. OK. Yeah. It depends on a product. OK. We typically for like clothing, textile, I estimate 30 to 45 days when she was ordered to actually have the product finished. Some more complex items like furniture, probably looking close to 60. OK. And then does Cosmo offer QC services to? We work with we do basic factory business stuff in house, but we work with lot of.

40:50
third-party inspection services, but we’ve definitely coordinated the whole process for them and put them in touch with it, right? Okay Cool, Jim. Where can people find you? Yeah Cosmo sourcing comm is probably the best place. We’re on all the socials That’s Cosmo sourcing or if you want to my email this Jim at Cosmo sourcing comm And you know, it’s my personally is I went on your website as soon as the whole tariff craziness happened and it used to include China But now it says sourcing from anywhere, but China is still sourced from China every now and

41:20
Yeah, we definitely Yeah, I’ve been pivoting away from China. I mean think what China is relatively easy source from China um versus other countries like you just go on Alibaba and I mean Obviously we do our own search and have our own resources and go beyond just Alibaba much more beyond but at the same time like 50 to 75 percent of our results are or were on the same as Alibaba so it’s hard to really tell client hey and

41:48
Sometimes the best bet. yeah, we kind of realized there’s much more difficulty in finding factories outside of China. like for us, we’re we’re going to build a team out there. Like we mentioned, there’s not like a central Alibaba type resources. So we, yeah, we have our team reach out, you know, pre-vet factories, build a relationship with factories. totally makes sense. Yeah. And kind of do all that work for you and try to make everything as seamless and easy as possible. Cool. Jim, thanks for coming on, No problem. was a pleasure. your time. Thank you. Hope you enjoyed this episode.

42:17
If you’re only sourcing in China right now, you might want to diversify your suppliers. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 603. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com.

42:45
And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.