What I dont understand about import/export...

[Southern_Lenders]

According to Entrepreneur.com

" the U.S. Department of Commerce, the big guys make up only about 4 percent of all exporters. Which means that the other 96 percent of exporters--the lion's share are small outfits like yours wil be--when you're new, at least"

As an independant trade merchant, say I want to export high performance auto parts to South Korea, WHY would a buyer in South Korea bother doing business with me?

1. ) The buyer could much more easily go on ebay and buy the parts they desire.

2) The buyer could do a google search, and find the parts they're looking for and buy from a million other sellers, who would then ship to him..again, why us me?

So whats the point of the Merchant?...I'm just a un-necessary middle man. Someone clear this up for me please. In this day-and-age, anyone in a modern nation like the US, UK, Japan, etc... can contact sellers directly for the things they need.

I'm not talking about shipping, obviously goods need to get from one shore to the other. I'm talking about being an international/ Independant merchant.... Whats the advantage here?... The website above says that 90% of I/E's are done by small guys...but how? Do people over seas not buy/sell from the internet?

Are guys, literally flying, or god-forbid, traveling by boat,then walking up to some guys store, and saying "HEY, I'm from the US, and I got something to sell to you!"...

Thanks

[peteVA]

If you are talking about single piece or small orders, the "big boys" don't want to be bothered.

If you look on many US sites, they ship only to the US and maybe Canada. The American people overall are very insular, don't think beyond the shores. This leaves it wide open for someone who is willing to go through the extra step of filling out the customs form when shipping.

There is a vast world out there yearning for things American, and few who are interested in filling the demand.

Well, the Chinese are doing it with fakes. But the percentage of American businesses who export is probably the lowest in the developed nations.

[DerekS]

I'm not sure I get the question. Are you talking about exporting dropship items?

I used to export auto parts (used OEM Toyota MR2 Turbo parts to be specific) to Asia, Europe, and the Americas all the time. Like Pete said, people abroad can't get alot of this stuff, so if you've got the product and you're willing to deal with the customs process, you've got a market.

We sourced the parts ourselves, so there really wasn't a supplier, and perhaps I'm missing the point completely. What I do know is this: if you're willing to simplify the process for the end-user, and make acquiring what they want easy (and priced competitively relative to the ease of acquistion), you'll get buyers. They don't care about how many moving parts there are in the process, as long as they get what they're paying for.

In our case, we were lucky to have a product that, outside of Japan, was really only US centric. For people not in Japan or the US, they had a need. Most US/Japanese MR2 parts dealers didn't want to screw with exporting, so we got their customers.