467: Vietnam: The Untold Gold Mine For Sourcing You’ve Been Ignoring With Jim Kennemer

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today I have my friend Jim Kenimer on the show and Jim runs a sourcing agency called Cosmos Sourcing where he helps others source products from Vietnam. Now as China is getting more more expensive, especially with tariffs, Vietnam can be a great alternative. So in this episode, Jim tells us how to find suppliers over there and what to expect. But before we begin,

00:28
I want to thank Jeff Oxford of 180Marketing.com for sponsoring this episode. 180Marketing.com is an agency that specializes in helping e-commerce stores boost their SEO traffic. Now in the past, I used Jeff and his firm managed to grow my search traffic by 4x in just six months. In fact, 180Marketing is one of the few SEO agencies that I trust 100%. For more information, go to 180Marketing.com or just email Jeff at 180Marketing.com.

00:57
I also want to thank Sellerboard for sponsoring this episode. Sellerboard is profit analysis software that helps you figure out exactly how much profit you are making selling on Amazon. Now, if you’re an Amazon seller, you’re probably aware that there many hidden fees in selling on the platform and Sellerboard organizes all that information for you in a clear and concise fashion. Now, personally, I recommend Sellerboard because they’re among the least expensive software that I know of that does this, which is one of the reasons why I like them and recommend them.

01:24
For more information, go to mywifecouterjob.com slash seller board and try them free for 30 days. It’s a no brainer. Once again, that’s mywifecouterjob.com slash seller board. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I run with my partner, Tony. And unlike this one, where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out.

01:53
the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now on to the show.

02:04
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Jim Kenimer on the show. Now, Jim and I met randomly when we were on the same panel run by Global Sources. And when we met, I knew I had to have him on the show. He’s the founder of Cosmos Sourcing and sourcinghub.io. He’s helped hundreds of clients source more than $100 million worth of products from both China and Vietnam. And products that he has sourced have ended up in almost every major retailer for clients from over 30 countries.

02:34
The reason I wanted to have Jim on the show is because production and sourcing is slowly shifting away from China to places like Vietnam, and Jim just happens to be a sourcing expert for Vietnam. And with that, welcome to show, Jim. How you doing? Thank you. It’s pleasure. Thanks for having me. I’m doing great. Yeah, you know, I love going on these panels with different companies because I always end up meeting someone interesting. Yeah, same. I love them. I really do meet a lot of cool people on those panels.

03:01
Tell me a little bit about your background and how did you get into sourcing specifically from Vietnam? Yeah, so actually, yeah, I started like in China like most people so in 2011 I moved to China got my MBA from a university in Shanghai Hultin International Business School. That for a year and then afterwards I was actually working as project manager for an IT company so unrelated actually but just the whole being in China being in Shanghai I had contacts and friends and

03:29
Really anybody kind of reached out to me just out of the blue a lot of times. Just asked me, hey, I’m looking for this product. Do you know a factory or I have a factory. I’m trying to, I found this product on Alibaba. I came to check the factory for me. So I started just doing that on the side, kind of a little side hustle. And after doing that for about a year, I decided to quit my job and actually to focus on sourcing because I enjoyed sourcing more than sitting at desk all day. So yeah, I started sourcing in China and then 2014.

03:58
I decided to move to Vietnam. Actually, I visited on vacation earlier, fell in love with the country. I was like, this is where I want to be. So I moved to Vietnam, started sourcing from Vietnam full time. At the time, Trans-Pacific Partnership was in the works, which ended up getting canceled. would have been the largest free trade agreement in history with 14 countries, with Vietnam being one of them and the US being another. Even though it got canceled, was still in Vietnam, still had a lot of projects, still had lot of interest from clients. So I kept kind of focusing on both Vietnam and China. And yeah, it didn’t.

04:27
2017 trade war happened and yeah trade war happened So business kind of boomed and kind of was in the right place at the right time and pretty much mostly sourcing Vietnam sentence Does that mean you speak fluent Chinese? No Okay, I try this you can go to school in Shanghai for however many years. Yeah, it was an international business school. So it was English language classes Okay. Yeah, and when you were in China

04:52
You didn’t speak the language yet, you could just go into the factory and communicate, okay? basic Chinese, but it’s very bad and out of practice. I’m terrible at learning languages. I’ve actually, taken probably equivalent of about four semesters worth of Chinese classes throughout my time, all the way from undergrad up until, and it just doesn’t stick. I’ve done the same with Spanish and I’m just not, I’m just not a language-intended Okay, it’s clearly not necessary at all then to do what you do. I mean,

05:19
Yeah, I mean, I often hire assistants to translate a lot of times and like my staff in Vietnam is entirely bilingual. So we have stuff on the ground. I know basics of Chinese and Vietnamese. I can go around town and order food and whatnot. So I’m not like completely in the dark. level as mine then. Yeah, probably. I am curious since you mentioned it, what was this free trade treaty? Can you just give me like a little bit of detail on that? Like what was supposed to happen? Yeah, so it was the trade specific partnership.

05:48
It would have covered 14 countries in full that had a free trade agreement. Vietnam, United States, Canada, trying to think of the others. I know Chile was one of them, Mexico, Australia. So what are the implications of that though? Yeah, well, I mean, it got canceled, unfortunately, because it never could get ratified. But the implications would have been that all 14 countries along the Pacific Rim, I know China was excluded. was specifically designed. Oh, against China, okay. Yeah, against China. kind of.

06:16
leverage, help boost these developing economies. Yeah, and it would have been the largest free trade agreement in history. Kind of portions of it are still in effect and Vietnam’s always been pretty proactive about getting free trade agreements. they have one with the EU that just kind of got recently. But how does that benefit like a buyer? Oh, from a buyer’s perspective, you don’t have to pay tariffs or high taxes. So you get a much lower rate. Okay, got it. Yeah.

06:45
the free trade agreement was in effect, you would basically pay no tax or very minimal taxes to get your products imported from Vietnam to the United States or whatever countries were in the free trade agreement. I see. I mean, there’s already tariffs from China and they haven’t gone away. So I mean, it’s already cheaper, right? Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I think we’ll stay because they’re actually really politically popular. Oh, the tariffs are?

07:12
Yeah, I mean, Biden has made no effort to take him away, even though he has fully has that power. You know, think his I think his political populous just be having tough stance stance on China at the moment. So I think I don’t anticipate terrorists going away. My opinion, my professional opinion. And know that so which is kind of unfortunate and all these other activities against China to related to computer chips and semiconductors also. Yeah. So so why would someone source from Vietnam over China?

07:43
Generally it’s cheaper. It’s kind of more politically stable. But it’s less hands-on from the government, I would say that. Just in terms of things like COVID, you they had total lockdowns in China and then back to nothing and that’s caused tons of disruptions. Vietnam was pretty smart with how they managed COVID lockdowns. They had one of lowest rates of COVID. They actually had one of the highest or not the highest.

08:09
that had one of the highest and fastest vaccination programs in the world. had some, I want say they had like 80 % of their, once the vaccines were released, they had some like 80 % of their population vaccinated within two months, I believe. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Which is great. There are no major lockdowns for that. Just in terms of experience, I find them pretty easy to work with. I do find China easy to work with for the record and yeah, generally cheaper labor, different, they have different skills. much cheaper are we talking about here?

08:38
It used to be a lot cheaper when I first started sourcing in 2014 I was getting sometimes 30 40 percent savings, but Wow Yeah, I mean the man for Vietnam has gone up a lot. So it’s a lot of times probably comparable pre tariffs and In terms of pricing just cause labor costs have gone up in the last several years and demand for Vietnamese products Has gone up. So it’s pretty comparable now, but without like the same price you mean without yes, I would say about 10 to

09:06
Same price to 10 % cheaper is what you probably should expect. So it’s not huge anymore, I guess. So where the savings are really is if you’re on like a tariff list from China, then Vietnam is your best bet. Yeah. And there’s free trade agreements too with Europe too. So you get savings there even though they don’t have tariffs against Chinese goods. Right. Yeah. Okay. And with Vietnam, you kind of have to focus on specific products too, because you know, trying to get everything in any quantities and any style. Vietnam, you know, they specialize in a handful of products.

09:36
such as, they do wooden goods really well, clothing really well. Any I’m sorry, what were the two things? You said clothing and what else? Wooden goods, anything made of wood. Wooden goods, okay. Yeah, we do a lot of furniture from Vietnam, a lot of rattan, a lot of bamboo. Rattan is like wicker. It’s like rattan baskets. Let’s see if I have Because I know from China, tariffs on wooden pencils, for example, is like 25 % or I can’t remember what it was. Something ridiculously high.

10:05
But that’s not the case in Vietnam, right? No, it’s not the case and one I mean Vietnam is a tropical country. So there’s tons of forest and plantations So they actually get the wood the raw material is pretty cheap and it’s very high quality woods to a Lot of words we work with our kasha teak bamboo bamboo is probably most sustainable material going to work with maybe you’re into sustainability Akasha grows super fast. So it’s pretty sustainable like is used

10:31
Rubberwood which looks a lot like oak and then they import some woods like we get some virgin spruce and a few other woods Imported from Canada. So let me just kind of rephrase that question then so yeah If what products would you definitely source from Vietnam over China? Material I clothing. I would do wooden goods. I would do a lot of furniture I want to say all furniture, but we do tons of furniture in Vietnam. Um, I would do bags from Vietnam

10:57
Backpacks purse bags like leather or canvas or what every time I think yeah leather bags canvas bags We do some shoes are kind of tricky at that moment, but we do a lot of shoes still try to think what else I would say those my bags over China. I’m just curious. Is it just the pricing or what? Yes the pricing and the factories they have huge factories that do I mean cut and sew is just a broad category of cutting fabric sewing it correct? Yeah, so bags clothing off into that so

11:25
They have just huge factories and relatively cheap labor to make it. And yeah, from our experience, bags have been pretty consistently cheaper. mean, because China like kind of owns textiles, I feel. I think Vietnam has a very good competitive edge with textiles over China. And is it mainly price or is it skill? I price and quality too. There’s a lot of skill. Yeah, because I mean, there’s a lot of the old factories. I mean, they have like thousands of people working at a

11:54
massive factories cutting and constantly. But even new, they’re getting new technology that makes it a lot more efficient too. I mean, look at your bags, like Patagonia, North Face, all those big companies make their backpacks in Vietnam. I know some luxury brands like Tory Burch or Michelle O’Cores and whatnot make their purses in Vietnam. Lulu Mom makes a lot of their clothing in Vietnam. Lulu Lemon, I always miss that name for some reason.

12:21
I first read it as Luluban, it’s been in my head since. Are a lot of these companies in Vietnam, Chinese companies that kind of move factories over there? Because I know that in my experience that’s happened to some of ours. Yeah, it exists. It’s not every company. I would say at least 50 % are still Vietnamese owned. Vietnam, unlike China, companies and foreigners can own factories. So there are a lot more foreign owned companies. They tend to have Vietnamese man.

12:48
Often have Vietnamese management but kind of going back to free trade agreement part of the free trade agreement allows You know, there’s no tariffs but on the other hand allows foreign companies to own the factories and actually own these So like a lot of factories are Japanese owned a lot are South Korean owned and we work with tons of South Korean Japanese owned factories One of the biggest furniture factories is Indonesian known. Um, it’s huge like comically huge like literally one of the biggest factories ever visited. Um, Yeah, I mean there’s

13:17
Few day we worked like Danish and French known furniture companies like we do a lot of metal goods. Um Like we do like fasteners like bolts nuts screws all that type of stuff work with the Japanese own factory That’s you know, they have Japanese management so they get the whole efficiency and latest technology But the cheaper labor costs they would get a good balance of that in lot of So I guess a million dollar question here is how do you find a supplier in Vietnam? And I’m gonna ask this question in two parts. So number one

13:46
Like in China, you can pretty much find a factory that caters to every type of customer, whether they be small or large. Yeah. Is that the case in Vietnam? No, no, it’s really not. And I mentioned shoes earlier. There’s not really good shoe factories that do small orders anymore that we found. It used to be case like a few years ago, but I know COVID supply chain disruptions or whatever, just the shoe quality of shoes that you need to get to make shoes is bigger, like several thousand units now.

14:15
Per thousand units per order. Yeah for order just them. Oh cute to make the first order Like we try to do some projects with like one or five hundred shoes to start off, you know for small startups But it’s not doable but I mean with a lot of products you can but yeah You kind of do need to be more selective calls the factories It’s a smaller country. It’s about 1 15th the size of China So there’s limited factories and if the factory doesn’t exist, unfortunately doesn’t exist, right? I mean

14:42
We do tend to have a lot of luck with small orders too for products. Can you just define what a small order is to you? I would say small is less than 500 units. Oh, okay. So there are places that accept small orders like that. Yeah, a lot of times though with small orders they’re going to be handmade items. Like we’ve done luxury purses that are handmade for instance and then some leather briefcases that are handmade but if you kind of want to have a production run like actual line like assembly line.

15:10
You know, gotta have the MOQ, it takes time to set up those lines. What would you say like an MOQ for would be to set up like a line for like a bag or something? Yeah, for a bag I would probably say that 500. Oh, 500 units? Yeah. Okay, that’s not bad at all. Bag is a pretty simple item. There are more complex items where they’re gonna be higher. And a lot of times it depends on the value too.

15:36
We’ve done like kind of high-end hiking backpacks and those we had a really low MQ I think 200 units, but those were also going for almost thousand bucks actually. Really? Yeah, they were very high-end backpacks. sell or to produce? To sell. To produce it was still about 200 bucks. Wow, that’s pricey. Yeah, it was. It was a very specific niche ultra lightweight backpack. So yeah, was some advanced materials that we had to import from Taiwan and South Korea too.

16:05
What about clothing like if you wanted to make like women’s clothing what were the moqs there look like I? Would probably say about a thousand units that’s units per style per size. Yeah, I would say per style you can make some extra colors, but um Yeah about thousand one two three thousand

16:22
I’d probably say 2000 even have a decent mix of styles, but 1000 for SKU would probably be typical. Okay, wow. So there’s no like Alibaba for Vietnam. So how do you actually find a supplier? Well, one good thing is Google isn’t banned in Vietnam. So you can actually Google factories. Oh, a lot of times. Yellow Pages is actually a decent resource. Oh, sorry, the Yellow Pages? Yeah, the Yellow Pages, classic Yellow Pages. Like yellowpages.com, you mean?

16:50
Yeah, they have a Vietnamese website, but yes. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I haven’t heard that name in a while. Yeah. mean, with that, I mean, there’s going be, they list a lot of factories and it’s not the best updated, but if you’re willing to like reach out and call content at 50 factories or whatever, probably get a response from 10 to 15, but you get a response and then narrow it down. But I mean, for us like too, we have

17:15
We go a lot of trade shows. have access to trade database, because customs data is public knowledge, but you can sign up for a service like Import Genius or Panjiva. personally use Import Genius to get contacts or just names. And then we look it up. And then our team is actually based in Ben Duong province, which is just outside of Ho Chi Minh City, which is made in a dust-ridden area. we just from kind of going to events and our team just being on the ground there, we get a lot of contacts locally too that way.

17:42
How would just someone who’s listening to this podcast without using a sourcing agent find a supplier in Vietnam? I I mean for the most part you’d probably have to use like the kind of resource I mentioned and just be active and I’m just be aware you got to make a lot of cold calls and emails because we when we contact we do emails whatsapp calling

18:09
Zalo which is a local kind of whatsapp-esque service. Kind of like WeChat. Just be prepared to contact a lot of factories and do a lot of research. But there are factories out there. Can you walk me what you would say? What would you ask first? Is it the as Yeah, I we create, I would say just create a basic simple prompt. Like hey, I’m so-and-so, we’re American based buyer, we’re looking…

18:39
I’m just gonna say women’s dresses. We’re looking to make X amount of women’s dresses and we have the design files. Before we contact factories, you need to have the design files or product spec sheets too. Because if you just contact them and say, oh, we’re going to develop them later, they’re not going to take you seriously. So if you have the product spec sheets and sign files ready to go, you don’t have to attach them to the first email, just say you got them. And tell them, hey, we got the product spec sheets, design files, and we’re prepared to make an order of 1,000 units, if suitable. Can you give us a quote?

19:08
Just kind of solicit a quote. It’s card RFQ request for quote anytime you kind of first connect with contact a factory Just because you want to get them to quote you for your products and so right? Um, have a guide on our website if you want to Google request for quote Cosmos forcing I’ll definitely put that in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah for sure. Mm-hmm Is the process the same as China like they’ll create a sample for you and that sort of thing and yeah, it’s pretty similar Yeah, that’s all pretty standardized. So yeah, once you contact a factory

19:36
You know, you want to negotiate prices, get a firm quote first. And then when you kind of negotiate and again, negotiate sample cost, just so you know the cost are and lead time or samples. then, yeah, when you’re ready and happy with the factory, once you kind of vetted them, kind of want to check them out, make sure they’re legit and everything. Yeah, pay for a sample and get a sample made. How does one verify that a factory is legit? I would check third party resources. Like for us, there’s we have.

20:03
I’m trying to think of a regular person. If you want to really do it right, I would say hire an inspection company. There are tons of inspection companies like Tesco, Vietnam Inspection Service, Chima, that spoke QIMA. That will go to the factory for like three, four hundred bucks. And it’s worth paying because you’re about to send a factory $1000 presumably. Go to the factory, check their business licenses, check their restoration, check their equipment, make sure…

20:32
If you’re doing a pre-production inspection, which you should, they’ll check to make sure they’ve done similar items. So if you’re making a woman’s dress, they’ll see that they made woman dresses before. yeah, check out the factory and send you a pretty detailed inspection report with pass fail grading on everything. My first book, The Family First Entrepreneur, just debuted as a Wall Street Journal business bestseller. And not only that, but my book was also featured on a billboard in Times Square during the launch. I’m literally in awe right now.

21:02
I’ve also enjoyed all the incredible reviews of my book that have been coming in from readers all over the world. Now you have not picked up a copy yet, there is no better day than today. It’s available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere books are sold. Now if you’re curious about what the Family First Entrepreneur is all about, it will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that does not require you to work yourself to death, because you can in fact achieve financial success without being a stranger to your kids. You can make good money and have the freedom to enjoy it.

21:31
and you definitely don’t have to work 80 hours a week and be a slave to your business just to make it all work. I will teach you how to start a business from the perspective of a parent who makes both business and family work. Not only that, but I made it a no brainer to grab the book because I’m still giving out $690 in free bonuses. And here’s what you get. Instant access to my three day print on demand workshop. And in this workshop, I teach exactly how to get started running a print on demand e-commerce store and provide you with a free website theme as well.

22:01
You also get access to my two day passive income workshop where I’ll teach you how to make money with blogging, podcasting, and YouTube. Go to mywifequitterjob.com slash book and I’ll send you the bonuses, invitations to book parties that I’ll be throwing all over the country, and special offers. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash book. Now back to the show.

22:23
Where would one check to see the licensing and everything for a Vietnam company? And is language a problem? Yeah, okay, so first question. They should have copy on hand and if they’re legit, they’ll be able to share it with you. Okay. And there’s some government websites that you can kind of cross-verify it. They’ll give you a registration number, what not. We often use Vietnam credit, which is a government-ran, this is government-ran kind of service that you can just check the credit worthiness.

22:53
pretty much just says yes, they’re in good standing or they’re not. All that will mean from our end, it’s a little bit complex, I don’t know if this is beginner tip, but yeah, I would go through and kind of check that they have a business license registered with the government and that the banking, that they have bank accounts and that the bank accounts are in good standing. It doesn’t tell you the exact credit score, it just says yes, they’re in good standing or no, they’re not.

23:15
and if they don’t exist in database and those say they don’t exist and What second one? Oh English? Yeah, so for English, they’ll have somebody on staff, but um It really varies. Um, it’s sometimes there’ll be somebody fluent. Sometimes it’d be fairly broken English. It really depends on the factory. Um One thing too with Vietnam more than China is a lot of times they don’t have dedicated sales staff so they’ll often have an engineer who as Kind of like once a week, I guess or whatever

23:45
checks emails, but his main job is engineer. So he’ll go through and kind of talk that kind of answer the emails. And when you get in contact with the engineers and those people, they can be pretty direct. I know a lot of people are kind of used to sales people kind of wooing them. Hello, super friendly. You know, trying to really drum up and the salesman is like, yeah, we can do it. Great. And then ask how much and they’ll give you costs and then pretty straight to the point. Which I kind of like just cause.

24:15
You get in get out with the meetings you get exact pricing time. You want to make a modification They can they have the authority to actually you know actually tell you the price because a lot of times what sells people they’re like Oh, I’ll let you know what’s in it over and they send it to somebody and then a few days later, But engineers they can do a lot of times pretty quickly What’s the export infrastructure like I can’t imagine it being as mature as China? Yeah, they’re used to exporting. Um, yeah, that’s another tip is when you talk to factories

24:45
You need to ask them if they’ve exported to, if you’re American buyer, for instance, you need to ask them, have you exported America? Cause there are standards that, you know, they need to know. It really varies by product too. Anytime you work with a freight forwarder, they’ll clear the standards and make sure everything’s legit before they ship or they should. But yeah, in terms of export infrastructure. Yeah. A lot of factories are set up for export exporting, which is great. You can ask oftentimes clients or whatnot.

25:15
they’ll have certifications, ASTM or ISO certifications you can check. guess what I’m getting at is what is list of questions you would ask when you’re vetting a vendor? Yeah, I would ask first and foremost, do you have experience exporting to United States or whatever your country is? And then kind of quiz them on their certifications. Most factories, basic certification is ISO 9001. And then,

25:43
Like if you do wooden goods, for instance, you got to comply with the Lacey Act, which, know, you got to defumigate the woods. You got to have a certificate of origin for the woods. You got to, you know, certify that as, you know, legally or legally harvested from, you can be from plantation or you can actually do forest, but there’s also forest and standing on the council. If you want to go even further, FSC, which will make sure that everything was, for instance, um, there’s like some carcinogens you can’t use in fabrics or, um, in materials.

26:14
For instance from out of hide so China’s used to this already Vietnam. Do you actually have to ask these questions? I would advise to yes, okay All right, if you don’t ask him I mean you can have an inspection if you don’t know what to ask I would hire an inspection service and they’ll Make sure everything’s in line. Okay Yeah, those inspection service. Definitely that that’s your job is to know what the certifications are. Make sure everything’s in compliance Is everything conducted in US dollars as well?

26:41
Yeah, we do almost everything in US dollars and Vietnamese bank accounts. They you can hold for foreign currencies in Vietnamese bank accounts. Okay. And with just the dong being worse inflation in America right now is they they love UST. Yeah, yeah. So what would you say are like the major trade offs? If you’re choosing between China and Vietnam? Yeah, that’s a question. Yeah, like I said, you kind of need to be selective about your product categories. With China, you just go to China, go to Alibaba.

27:12
spend a few days on there or not even days, get tons of contacts with factories, reach out to them. It’s super simple. Vietnam’s still a little bit undeveloped in terms of networks and internet sourcing and whatnot. So you do need be much more proactive and reach out to the factories. There’s not really a way to just post your request on a website and then factories come to you. You have to go to the factories, which I know frustrates a lot of people.

27:41
If I can give a plug to Cosmos Sourcing, you can just go to us and we can do all that for you. I want to get into how much you charge and that stuff at the end. So yeah, it’s much more proactive. Kind of had to follow up with them. They do want your business, but they’re not as they just don’t come across as eager. I don’t know. Even though they do want it just as much. And it really, like I said, if you have specific products that V9 specializes in, it’s pretty good, but it’s like not for every product.

28:11
Alright, well assuming that what you want to source is something that Vietnam specializes in, what are some cases where I’d want to go to China over Vietnam? I mean, if it’s not something Vietnam specializes in, it… I mean, you still can get everything in eating quantities. Like, if you have low MOQs for lot of items, I find China can be better. If you do electronic items, China’s still better. Especially OEM. for the stuff that Vietnam might specialize in. Like you mentioned wooden products, textiles. Yeah.

28:42
I don’t know. feel like you should go to Vietnam. But um, well, yeah, it doesn’t it sounds like you’re You’re a beginner. I mean, would say it’s easier to deal with China a lot of times, especially your first time starting off just to find the factories. So I mean, if you have a address or something, you can actually you can get more quotes. You can actually get more factories from China regardless, just because they’re just for the sheer fact that there’s more factories that do it. Yeah.

29:10
They’re generally easier to deal with like I said, not every factory in Vietnam has a salesperson. So You know get somebody who’s really kind of walks you through the process So does that mean that just not as responsive is that I? Say yeah, I would say that’s a way to say yes I actually would prefer to talk to an engineer to be honest with you right? all the facts and you’re in and out. Yeah, exactly No, I’m saying why like the meetings we have like it turns some clients off because we have people visit factories in Vietnam

29:38
You know, they fly all the way from the United States, come to factory and they’ll sit down with an engineer and they’re pretty much in and out. You can do a meeting like 20 minutes and it’s just, oh, how much would this cost? Great. We make this very, very great. How much would it cost? Oh, that much. What’s the lead time? We can do it to start production in three weeks and be done with two months, know, straight to the point. And, you know, like China, when you go to China, like the factories take you to lunch or dinner, give you drinks. It’s an experience. I love that.

30:07
I mean a few factories in Vietnam will do it, but it’s not over top like China. So yeah, mean we’ll have casual meetings and like, you know, drink tea and whatnot just at the office, but it’s not like the whole What do you use to communicate with your vendors over there? Are they on WhatsApp or? Yeah, WhatsApp, Zalo. I say Zalo probably is the most common one, Z-A-L-O, and emails, mostly emails. Okay. Yeah, we’ll set up kind of just kind of what they’re working on.

30:36
So is email still the best initial contact method? Like you look for them on like the Yellow Pages for example, or Google and whatnot and you send them an email? Yeah, we usually do email first. Like when we research factories, like our team, when we research factories, you know, we can just tell which ones are good factories and worth following up with. So we tend to email them first and the ones that respond by email will keep that conversation in email.

31:01
but a lot of times they don’t. we’ll then kind of reach out by phone and kind of follow up with email or they’re on Zalo. We can get the context of the person on Zalo. We use LinkedIn too sometimes, actually quite a bit to kind of reach out to them that way. So we’ll kind of do a full court press of just whatever method gets a response. And we kind of press them at least probably three or four times each factory that we want to get quotes from, just to quote us until we get a response.

31:29
You know, not every factory quotes, so a lot of times they say we have capacity or we don’t think it’s suitable, but we at least try to get a response of some sort. I know it’s hard to generalize in an entire country, but from what I’m gathering, it seems like you have to be a lot more persistent with a Vietnam factory because they’re not necessarily, they don’t have salespeople, so they’re not necessarily trying to solicit new business. You really have to approach them, know what you want to get, and be direct. Yeah, and a lot of times they,

31:58
Yeah, you kind of do have to be a little bit more direct with them. mean, there’s exceptions that factories like there’s a lot of factories that are pretty proactive about getting sales, but it’s just something that a lot of people when they first kind of get in touch with Vietnam, they kind of dismiss factories that, you know, don’t seem super responsive, even though they’re pretty good. So I would just say be persistent if you think this is a good factory, but don’t be too persistent. But you can definitely follow up multiple times with the factory to get a response. But once you’re in contact with them and they

32:27
You know, once you’re in contact, like say 1000 dress, their dress factory, they need the business. They’ll definitely respond more and kind of give quotes. yeah. So back to the question on tradeoffs outside of price, why would I go to Vietnam over China? Yeah, I I would say a lot of products are pretty good quality as well. I think the textiles they make are very high quality. They work with like high end brands, like I said, same with furniture.

32:56
furniture and wooden goods, like the wood is very high quality tropical hardwood. So it’s much denser than your basic pine. So, and then in general, the labor force in Vietnam is pretty young. So they’re pretty skilled in terms of like what they can make. And yeah, I mean, it’s kind of, it’s easier to work with too sometimes. Like there’s not as much bureaucracy or headaches or anything. Like I never, I feel like I never really deal with the government or any government issues in Vietnam like I did with China.

33:27
Which is always nice. It seems like the major trade-off is just getting that initial contact then. that accurate? pretty much. Because… I we work factories for years and they’re really… a lot of factories are easy to work with. It’s true to point, but you just pick an order and it’s consistent order and they’re responsive and everything. I know for me, just in my experience, and this is only one data point, is every year this happens. Like after Chinese New Year, like half the workforce doesn’t want to come back to work.

33:55
Yeah. then sometimes we have to scramble to find, you know, a new vendor or, or like the materials in the same way do textiles. Yeah. Would you say it’s generally more consistent in Vietnam or does the same thing kind of happen? I know we’re generalizing the entire country. Pretty similar Chinese New Year or not Chinese New Year. It’s Tet holidays, T-E-T in Vietnam. So Lunar New Year is the same date, same general concept. But yes, the way the contracts work too and

34:24
Both Vietnam and China is they tend to workers tend to sign on one-year contracts to begin and end at arm Tet or Chinese New Year And so yeah right before Tet holidays a lot of it. Well, a lot of workers just quit early You know have extra long holiday and then after the Tet holidays or arm is same deal They got a you know hire new workers and sign new contracts. So this a slow upstart a lot of times To get the workers in so yeah, it’s definitely same issues same issue. Okay, it’s not

34:53
I don’t know. I’m gonna say it’s as bad. But yeah, it’s something to keep in mind. It just seems like maybe for someone just starting out, like if someone’s listening and they’re just starting out, it seems like China is still the easier way to go. Probably. It’s easier for first-time buyers and especially if you kind of have a smaller kind of have, if you have limited capital and you kind of want to start small and kind of work your way up. What would you say would be like the minimum capital that you would need to just have something made

35:23
Textile wise over in Vietnam. I probably say about 20,000 bucks 20,000. Okay. Wow. Okay. So that’s Yeah Okay, yeah and What about actually visiting the factories is it the same or? Okay. Yeah, there’s no issues visiting factories in Vietnam. Um Yeah, you can fly in a range of visits. We have people visiting all time. We have I’m several guests coming in over the next month or so

35:53
To visit so it’s yeah, you go in visit factories If you want to do production you just see what they’re doing what they make get it started that way and if you have samples made like we have a client who has Probably about to visit I think three times because he’s making I think golf bags and it’s pretty complex because he has very everything’s customized But he’s you visit before made an initial then when the samples are made he’s visiting for samples And now we’re starting production or we’ll start production around April. So we’re planning a visit

36:20
for him during the production run and he wants to be there, you know, just see the bags be made. So for something like a golf bag, there’s a whole bunch of different parts, zippers, pockets, materials, everything. Do they handle all the different materials or? Yeah. Most factories have their back end, what you call the back end supply chain, back end sourcing. So yeah, we expect in most cases, unless you have really unique fabrics or really unique needs for the factory to…

36:49
to get the products to procure the raw materials. So that’s pretty expected. We worked with Kodura and we had to source that separately in some special material. Like I mentioned the high end hiking bag one time, we had to source the material separately because it was very ultra lightweight material that was only made by one factory in Taiwan. was… What about packaging? Most factories can do basic packaging in a house. So if you have what we call kind of brown packaging, just the cardboard or…

37:19
Plastic bags they can do all that and it’s we often call retail ready packaging which means it’s ready to go into retail Yes, if you’re FBA seller, know, you need a barcode on the outside They can most factories can do all that and we can bet them beforehand. Okay, make sure they do that Okay So it seems like okay if you have the money And let’s say we just go through someone like you for for sourcing

37:44
Vietnam will tend to be cheaper and the quality is good mainly because there’s no tariffs and the hurdle really is just finding the factory and kind of developing that relationship. Correct. And as far as you can tell, once you’re kind of in production, there’s really no major disadvantage of going with Vietnam over a Chinese factory. No, there’s not really that.

38:08
What I mean if they have their meet all your qualifications once you kind of bet them everything then there’s not really any specific disadvantages I Mean is it harder to vet because like an Alibaba they actually vet them all for you now Yeah, if you just go through a trade assurance So so basically you have to do this your own legwork Is there anything like trade assurance over with the Vietnam factory probably not right? Not really No, yeah, and yeah, we got a lot of people saying hey I’m trying to find factory of Alibaba trade assurance Vietnam. I’m with that. Yeah

38:37
Okay. Yeah, and just in general, Vietnamese just don’t trust the Chinese, to be honest. I don’t get too deep into that. But yeah, in general, they don’t trust Alibaba, they don’t trust using Chinese-based platforms. they don’t. I can see that. Yeah. I can see that. Let’s talk about Cosmo real quick. How much do you charge? What are your services? Yeah, our basic services,

39:03
We so we do a different pricing model than most other sourcing companies. We charge a flat rate instead of commission. And so the reason we charge a flat rate is you’ll get full contact details of every factory work with what do you direct your introduction between you and the factories and you can work directly with the factories. But our basic sourcing, simple sourcing starts at 1500 USD and then we have kind of a pro tier. So a lot of times you need certifications, certifications, whatnot. And that kind of starts at 2000 USD. But our basic package is 1500 USD. So 1500 that’s defined just

39:33
That’s per project. I would I would gather right we do it by product category So we generally find a product categories of one factory and make it so if you’re doing clothing for instance And you got like let’s just say ten different women’s dresses or ten women garments But they’re effectively the same one factory make all ten styles and that would be one product category Okay, that actually ends up being cheaper because a lot of times the sourcing companies will take like five percent or something like that off Yeah, production run right? Yeah, which yeah for fifteen hundred bucks. Okay. Yeah and

40:03
Another thing too, like why we do a thyroid in Vietnam instead of China, because when I first started sourcing, I was doing commission like everybody else, worked fine. And then I moved to Vietnam. I was trying to do commission. They just don’t trust middlemen in Vietnam like they do in China. And so there’s just kind of expectation to that the Vietnamese factories work with the end client. So I set my services up so that, yeah, if you were reach out.

40:27
with us, you’ll be talking directly to the factory, you can work directly with the factory. We can assist, we have additional services to help out, make sure everything’s going smoothly and nothing sketchy’s going on, but yeah. Okay, do you guys provide, I guess just referrals to freight forwarders and… Yeah, we do referrals to freight forwarders and same with inspections. We visit factories all the time, just with our team, but it’s, they’re basic visits to be honest.

40:52
The more detailed inspections I think are better served by an inspection company because they’ll go in and get full test of every product But we get samples in all the time from fact for clients who just have the sample shipped to us and we can do checking out and do basic checks but Let me ask you this what other countries are kind of up and coming? Yeah, we’re actually looking at expanding to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan right now, but

41:21
done anything there yet. So I would say all of those countries. think Taiwan’s pretty up already. But they, in terms of Taiwan, they do a lot of high end precision stuff. Like with the projects we like to do in there were automobile and airplane parts actually. Yeah, LED casings for airplanes specifically. So they do a lot of high end precision stuff. You probably know that Taiwan TMSC.

41:45
Yeah, the biggest microchip factory in the world is based there. So they do super advanced stuff in Taiwan. It’s very high end, very precision stuff. In terms of low cost Thailand, we’re looking at doing some clothing. Indonesia actually does a lot of shoes. So we’re looking at doing shoes there. I’ve looked at Bangladesh, but I don’t trust Bangladesh to be honest. What about Pakistan? Yeah, I would say probably Southeast Asia in general. I would say most countries in Southeast Asia are pretty up and coming. I think those are the next Vietnam. think that’s next boom. Next area. Yeah, I really have it.

42:15
Massive growth. Yeah. Well, hey, Jim, cool. Thanks. Thanks a lot for coming on. Where can people find you and your company? Where should they go? Yeah. Cosmosourcing.com is our website. Just Google Cosmosourcing. We come up. If you want to get in touch with me directly, can shoot me an email at info at Cosmosourcing.com and I’ll respond. I’m also on Facebook, on LinkedIn, or on Instagram. So if you want to follow us there, all under Cosmosourcing, you can, but I think probably.

42:45
email and just go into our website is probably the best. Cool. Hey, well, Jim, hey, thanks a lot for coming on, man. Thank you so much. was pleasure.

42:57
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now John is a great person to speak with about sourcing from Vietnam and diversifying your suppliers is a great idea. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 467. And once again, I want to thank Sellerboard, which is the Amazon profit software that I recommend for Amazon sellers. By going to mywifecoderjob.com slash Sellerboard, you can get 30 days for free. Once again, that’s mywifecoderjob.com slash S-E-L-L-E-R-B-O-A-R-D.

43:26
I also want to thank 180marketing.com for sponsoring this episode. 180 Marketing is the agency that I use to grow my search traffic by 4x in just six months. more information, email Jeff at 180marketing.com. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and they’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.