India Sourcing Trip - Interview With Meghla Bhardwaj about Sourcing from India

hi everyone this is Yelena from Amazonia PPC and today with us we have a very very special guest today our guest is Miga bage uh she is the founder of India sourcing trip and also has 20 years of experience in sourcing from India uh she has become very uh familiar um now lately especially because she's a public speaker in all of these um Amazon related events and we're very happy and honored to have her as our guest today to talk about sourcing from India so migla welcome and we're happy to have you here thank you so much for having me on the show Ela it's really nice to be here awesome for us too um can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and um what it is that you're currently doing yeah absolutely so um basically I've got almost uh 20 years experience in saucing from India and China so I started my career in India working for a company called Global source is as basically a Marketplace and uh then I moved to the Philippines I worked there for three years and then I moved to China and I was based in China for about 10 years before moving to Singapore I'm currently in Singapore and um I've been here for about five years so when I was in China I used to do um I used to work on Research reports for importers and that's how I got a good understanding of how manufacturing and exports and trade work um I used to visit a lot of factories in China and WR about how products are manufactured um in in China in the factories you know what what are the things that affect product quality and the price and what are the challenges that importers will face when saucing from China and also India so that's my background and then when I was in in China and also in India I used to visit a lot of trade shows and uh you know that's how I got a good understanding of uh how to how to um attend trade shows if you're a buyer to to look for new products and then recently about four years ago I started working with Amazon sellers organizing a conference for Amazon sellers who are interested in sourcing private label products from Asia and the con Conference was held in Hong Kong and then um last year I started this trip to India called India sourcing trip like you mentioned and uh because I saw that there was a need for um Amazon sellers to diversify uh their sourcing to other countries and so so you know there was um there were a lot of Amazon sellers who were asking me how to sauce from India because I'm of Indian origin and you know I have some experience there so then I thought that there was I saw the need in the market for more education and uh um you know just just more information about sourcing from India so that's how um you know the trip and everything started interesting and definitely there is a huge opportunity uh for Sellers and also for manufacturers from India to connect and do business together um especially having in mind these latest trends that have happened in legislation from the USA introducing tariffs to Chinese uh exporters and um also more and more Chinese sellers joining the Amazon um Amazon platform so what is your take on these latest changes especially in the last couple of months yeah definitely I think what uh sellers have realized is that they cannot put all their eggs in one basket they have to diversify their sourcing Marketplace uh you know where they Source from to diversify their risks because when the trade tariffs happened when the uh you know tension between the US and and China occurred then a lot of people were affected um significantly their production costs increased and it was just not profitable for them to Source you know those products so it affected a lot of U you know Amazon sellers and that's when they realized that oh there is a need to diversify and uh I think one of the reasons that uh you know sellers are looking to India is because um there are a lot of unique products that can be found in India that are not available in China or in in other countries um there are a lot of handcrafted items that India specializes in that are high quality and that are um quite differentiated and that you know also helps sellers to differentiate their own brand because everyone is sourcing from China but if you have a product that's different It's s from another country then you know that gives you a competitive advantage and a lot of these products are you know handmade handcrafted and they can command a higher price and therefore they can be more profitable so that's another thing that I'm I'm seeing you know sellers um doing when they're saucing from India um they're also they're also developing stories behind the products because a lot of these um products are manufactured you know like by people in villages or by women in villages or um you know by by like underprivileged communities for example there's this one supplier that um that that uh produces products with the help of tribals you know there are these tribal people who live in a in a certain city in India and then they produce all of those products so there are stories that can be created around products that are sourced from India I agree I agree um usually um everything's moving towards the right to Consumer model um in when it comes to online e-commmerce uh businesses so one of the ways that businesses um as such as direct to Consumer Brands will survive in 2020 is through creating a dialogue with their customers and if there's like a backstory to how these products are being produced and can definitely be a contributing uh factor and um also one of the things that we have as a feedback from one of our clients is that quality of these materials that are used in India for the same or very similar price are much higher than the quality is better than when it comes to from China so for example one of our clients um has a brand that is in the home decor industry but they have sort of transcended into a B2B brand that now sells um Hotel accessories and all of their are all of their products are imported in sourced in from uh India and they what just what like you said they have like a higher price point so they don't um really necessarily base their business model on the economy of scale but rather than that they just focus on working with higher end clients have U you know lower volumes but higher profits in general and a lot of uh sellers who do their product research one of the main uh you know conditions for them to even consider selling the product is a certain price point below which they won't even go like you know some of them say it's $20 uh selling price and some of them say it's 15 whatever uh works for them in terms of uh sales volume per month so um I I can definitely see that there's an opportunity there for for sourcing in from India so you mentioned that there's this uh brand that um makes their production come in a collaboration with the some tribals so um how does this work how do they ensure the quality is top level so um first of all you know going back to the previous point I also want to point out that in India um if you Source a product from uh an export focused supplier then the quality is really good and you'll also get you know the designs and all are suited to Western taste because these are suppliers that cater to the to the export Market they focus on exports and um you know they they understand the requirements of export markets the regulations the the quality requirements and everything but there are also a large number of manufacturers in India that focus on the domestic market and if you Source from those types of suppliers you know maybe the price would be lower but the quality might not be that that good so that's something to keep in mind when you're sourcing from India you want to make sure that you are cring from an export focused uh supplier that has experience um in in exports for sure um and then so talking about this specific company that works with with tribals so so this company what they do is they have their in-house staff that actually goes to um the the village where these tribals work and um there is like a Community Hall over there where people from these different families come and they um you know they they paint products or they polish or you know whatever they create the products there in that Community Hall and then this this supplier they send their QC person there and their staff to um you know explain to those tribal people like what what exactly is needed what is the design that needs to be made you know they do all of that training and then they do the QC and all themselves so it's very different from how it works in a factory um you know where the workers are inhouse and and things like that so this is of course this is not how all of the production is done in India this is just one example that I gave that was that I thought is kind of a unique you know unique product and a unique Brand Story I understand so uh considering that there are various ways in which you can approach uh sourcing in India depending on the size of your own brand I guess would be uh the starting point uh there are differences in how do you approach production too so when we're talking about uh export focused uh suppliers so where how do we how would we start finding them like for example what the best approach would be should we go to the indiamart website and look out for them there or the best way would be to personally go to fairs and just generally what are the advantages of each approach and the downsides so one of the one of the first things that you can do is just do a Google search so whatever product you're looking for type in that product and then India manufacturer or India supplier and you'll you'll see a list of um you know manufacturers and usually they are the export Focus suppliers that come up first um most of their websites will not be updated with their with their latest products but you will get uh some basic information about the company who their customers are and what kind of product categories they manufacture so that's one thing then the other thing you could do is um look on supplier directories such as Alibaba and Global Sources so these are the two main export Focus directories where you'll find exporters and so once you do a search on these directories and you'll need to further refine your search results to search by country to filter by country and then select India and then you will see India suppliers on those websites of course the majority of suppliers on both of these websites are from China but they do have suppliers from India as well and uh in fact both Alibaba and Global Sources have offices in India and with you know active sales teams and they're actually recruiting suppliers for their website so you will find export Focus suppliers over there now indiia Mt is a local Marketplace and the thing with indiia m is that there are a lot of suppliers that focus on the domestic Market as well on India on indiia Mart and in fact their focus India Mart's focus is mostly on on domestic suppliers it's not uh focused on export focused suppliers like Global Sources and Alibaba so India Mar of course has more Indian suppliers but it's more difficult to find um you know export experience suppliers or exporters on indiamart so you might have to you know search a bit more and dig dig a little deeper and there are a lot of sourcing agents or trading companies and wholesalers on indiaart as well so if possible I would avoid indiamart you know focus on Global Sources and alipa um and then you you can also work with sourcing agents so there are a lot of sourcing agents in India in various cities and many times these sourcing agents specialize in certain product categories for example you have certain agents that uh you know specialize in garments or textiles or home decor items and they usually have a database of suppliers that they themselves have vetted so that's another way and sourcing agents typically charge you know anywhere from five to 10% of the order value as as their commission so just keep that in mind um another way to look for suppliers is to serve SE for um export promotion councils so in India there are these government organizations that are responsible for increasing the export in in their specific industry so for example there'll be like a silk export promotion Council or a handicrafts export promotional Council so you can do a Google search look for their websites and reach out to them and usually they have a list of exporters that are members of of uh you know their uh of that Council and if you reach out to them send them an email they will usually have lists that they can send to you but of course the list might be very long and it might not be updated with the latest information and uh it's also a bit difficult to get a sense of what that supplier specializes in because they might list a lot of different product categories that they can manufacture so I mean it's you can get a list but then you'll have to sift through you know the the the companies there and maybe individually look at their we sites and talk to the companies to actually find out what exactly they specialize in what products they actually produce and then lastly um another way to find suppliers is just to go there and uh there are a couple of saucing trade shows that you can attend so there's this one trade show called the Indian handicrafts and Gifts fair that is the most important export focused fair in India it's like the Canton Fair of India and it's held in Delhi um there are about 3,000 exporters that exhibit at that fair is held twice a year April and October and uh it's it's for ex for importers so domestic or local people are not allowed to enter the fair I mean unless of course they are uh they are from a souring agency or they represent buyers so once you register for the fair they'll actually manually check and confirm your registration so you know it's it's very very export focused um and so that's a very good way of you know U meeting a lot lot of suppliers at the same time seeing a ton of different products and um Al you know one of the advantages of sourcing at a trade show is that you can touch and feel products you know that's something that you can't do when you're sourcing online and going to a trade show just speeds up the sourcing process a lot you know when you're sourcing online then you're talking to suppliers one by one getting samples from them you know that that takes a couple of weeks and then going back and forth with different suppliers but when you're there at the fair you know you're talking to them face to face you're getting a sense of how how well they can communicate what their experience is you can you know see their body language and everything and you can meet the boss of the factory like usually the the owner of the factory will be there at the trade show and so you get a sense of what the company specializes in and how easy it might be to you know work with the company and then the other advantage of trade show is that suppliers will take you more seriously because they know that you are a real buyer you have invested the time and money and effort to you know travel thousands of kilometers to this fair so of course you are serious about importing so once you follow up with suppliers after the show they'll be more responsive um they will prioritize your orders and they will just take you more seriously than someone who's just contacting them online yeah that makes total sense um a lot of the things that you mentioned are actually advantages and a lot of sellers actually also enjoy uh going there personally it's like a Disneyland for them because such a fast choice of you know products and new product ideas that they might have not even thought about before so definitely um so who is the best candidate uh you mentioned there's like three different ways in which you can uh Source Products from India uh and it looks like it's not so difficult at least it sounds to me it's not that difficult only if you have the right information so um uh who is best to what is the best way to start according to the size of uh sellers like for example if you don't uh have a huge need for big order quantities then obviously it won't make a lot of sense to go there personally but for bigger sellers it won't make a lot of sense to lose time uh through uh you know doing it all online and then uh dealing with a lot of samples and communication online so what is your uh view about that yeah so I think regardless of whether you're a an experienced or new seller it makes sense to go there if you have the capital because if you um if you have you know the money to invest in a trip over there even if you're starting just starting out if you're new but you know you have capital from other businesses or you know whatever if you have if and if you can afford it then I would say going there is the best because it speeds up the entire process and it gives you a lot of information and learning and you know talking to all of the suppliers will um give you a lot of experience that you might take you know like a couple of years to learn if you just do it online so and this this is true for China as well not only India if you're if you can afford it you should definitely go visit you know the factory visit trade shows China and India however if you don't have capital and if you're just starting um you know with a small cap with with a bit of capital and you're just uh you know doing this as a side business um and not treating it as a full-fledged business as such um then I would suggest sourcing online and taking it slow and uh because when you travel to a country then you know you're of course spending a lot and if you're going with a saucing trip then you you've got to pay for that and then you've got to pay for your flight and everything um and then you're spending almost a you know a week to 10 days traveling and everything so um and then on top of that you have to have capital for inventory as well right so if you can afford it I think you should definitely go there uh but if you can't if you're just starting small then I would say Source online um one of the advantages of sourcing from India is that a lot of lot of the suppliers will do small mqs and so you know when you're in China most of the time times they will want like thousands of pieces as theq but in India especially if it's a handcrafted product then they can do like even you know five pieces that's one big Advantage actually for Amazon sellers and why they why they like saucing from India in fact when we were there in October you know with with this group for on India saucing trip some of the sellers were so shocked to see the the low moqs that suppliers were asking for and they were like I can't believe it it's just 20 pieces you know we can start with 20 pieces is so that I think is a huge opportunity because you don't have to invest thousands of dollars on one skew the approach that you can take when you're sourcing from India is that you can um Source multiple products or multiple skus and then test them and see what works and then depending on you know what kind of um um like CPC you get when you're running PPC or what kind of sales velocity you get you know you can decide which product to scale and um you know source larger quantities so I think that's a big Advantage it's a bit it's a bit less riskier I would say when you're starting with smaller products the other thing that some suppliers will do in India is that instead of having a minimum order quantity they will have a minimum order value so that means they'll say that okay the minimum order value is like $5,000 and you can take anything you want you know you can take like five pieces of this 10 pieces of this and you know any color any size but it just should be a minimum of $5,000 so that I think is also really good again it it allows you to test different products and see what works yeah a lot of sellers would find this kind of flexibility very useful uh for testing out new products especially if you do a lot of product launches and already have like an existing brand and want to see what works and what doesn't work so I can I can definitely see the difference and the value in all of that um and you also mentioned that Indian sellers when you're there personally obviously it will give you a much better Head Start than when you communicate back and forth online with the all of these suppliers and also one of the bigger advantages of sourcing from India versus sourcing from China would definitely be uh language barrier there's no language barrier like a lot of Indian sellers in India English is your second language official language that a lot of people are speaking it so um there is not such a huge language barrier as what it is in China where you have to have some kind of agent working for you there and like you mentioned is specialized just for certain category and it all depends on how valuable and contributing this agent is a lot of the communication can just slip through the cracks and that's super sensitive especially if you have a product that's very dependent on the kind of quality and everything uh you know backlashes through product reviews on Amazon so you can't really play with that kind of thing so when you mentioned that there's like a minimum uh minimum order value so where is this flexibility coming from how does this work for uh suppliers like what is the reason why they're so flexible versus the Chinese suppliers one of the main reasons that they're flexible is because a lot of these products are handmade so they don't have you know like huge machine means that they need to run and they don't have you know very large um like raw material minimum order requirements from their suppliers as such uh there are a lot of small scale um you know like raw material suppliers and smallscale factories and another thing to note is that the government promotes um you know handcrafted and the handicraft industry a lot so what the government has done is that there are certain ities in the country that have been developed as production hubs of certain categories and um within those cities the government has set up certain facilities that can be used by various suppliers to give you an example there is a city in the north of in in Northern India called moradabad where a lot of the metal production is done it's known as a metal City because there are a lot of like brass and uh iron steel like all the metal production is done there however um a lot of the factories don't have casting facilities in house so there is a common uh government run casting facility that any supplier can go and use so they don't need to invest uh heavily you know in in in-house casting facilities so that's you know an advantage and then there are other things like you know maybe like the polishing machines or certain other machines are also available in that facility that is run by the government and that also allow s um suppliers to you know be flexible in terms of minimum Auto quantities because they don't have um uh you know first of all they don't have to invest a lot in setting up their own machines a lot of them do once they scale and you know once they are bigger there are a few factories in that City that do have casting in-house but by and large most of them uh just use the common facilities that are provided by the government interesting okay so you mentioned that there 's a a city that is called the metal city um I also heard that uh when it comes to India it's number one world exporter of cotton so that might obviously be one of the categories to that are the most convenient for uh sourcing so um I guess the whole textile um categories might fall onto that and what other categories you might suggest that are best for sourcing from India yeah so one of the biggest categories is home decor items and most of these products are handcrafted so they are wooden metal uh kind of products another very fast growing category is eco-friendly products and these are also doing very well on Amazon currently yeah um and I I know a lot of sellers who are actually sourcing eco-friendly products from India and doing pretty well so there are quite a few unique products in this category that India has developed for example um there are these disposable plates that are made from sugar cane waste it's known as Bas so that's a very you know eco-friendly kind of material because these plates are biodegradable and uh you know they're not made of plastic or any of the other man-made kind of materials and then when we we were at the fair in October we saw these um rugs that were made from recycled pet bottles you know plastic water bottles so they they literally cut up the plastic water bottles that have been disposed and then turn them into yarn and then weave them into um you know various things like cushion covers rugs um tablecloths and all sorts of fabric based products and the fabric doesn't feel very plasticky or it doesn't feel plasticky at all like if you didn't know they're made from you know this this plastic um you couldn't tell it just looks like any you know normal kind of uh um fabric so there's a lot of R&D that's going into developing these kinds of products in India in fact the it domestically also you know the government is trying to push um um eco-friendliness over there so for example in a lot of the bigger cities single use Plastics are now banned and they only use like paper bags or uh cloth bags uh you know those kinds of things McDonald's for example does not use plastic spoons they use Wooden Spoons over there so you know that's something else to consider interesting um and then there's leather leather is a very big category too and uh growing pretty fast so there's um jackets and shoes and belts um another category to consider is furniture and Furnishings so there's wooden furniture a lot of wooden furniture being manufactured and there are all sorts of wood like there's mango wood that's pretty popular that's more at the low end and then there's at the high end there's also tea wood that's available um so yeah wooden products and Furniture um and then also fishings so there's uh carpets rugs uh tablecloths uh things like that mostly made from cotton or other natural materials um a lot of the rugs you'll find are made from jot which is also a natural material um also there are these very beautiful rugs that are made from waste materials you know so that's another thing that that a lot of India suppliers are focusing on upcycling materials or recycling materials so these are basically waste Fabrics that are disposed by factories because these are apparel factories you know like when they're cutting the fabric to make make a garment then there's a lot of fabric waste so then all this fabric waste is collected and then it's woven into you know rugs and and stuff like that so that was very interesting I thought there's this one company that I know of that actually makes B BS from upcycled materials like um old tents or you know Canvas OR like old bags so things that have been disposed of they get those materials they clean them and then you know they make bags out of those materials again it's it's good for the environment because they're upcycling um products another big category from India is superfoods and this is quite popular noway with Amazon sellers as well so there are things like um uh you know turmeric or ashwagandha these are all herbs that are kind of very popular and um a lot of Amazon sellers are selling those products as well then there are things like tea and coffee you could do those as well there are spices um a lot of people are doing spices and lentils and rice you know those kinds of things as well so these are not your typical products that you know uh people who are starting out would do but as you grow and you get more experience you can you know take a invest a little bit more and uh try to do these kinds of products and I know a few bigger sellers that are actually really doing very well in superfoods so yeah I think those are some of the categories what you won't find in India is electronics so that's um that's a category that's not um yet sourceable from India but there are a lot of factories I'm seeing that are currently being set up in fact um there are a lot of Chinese factories that are setting up their own factories in India because they want to cater to the domestic Market there's a huge huge huge domestic market for electronics and um most of the electronics factories currently are selling domestically but over time I think over the next few years we will definitely see a trend where a lot of these factories will also export uh on an oem basis that's very interesting um are there any other categories that are currently not available The Source from uh India aside from Electronics um yeah electronics and then also in terms of textiles um man-made textiles you know like Nyon polyester those kinds of things jackets outerwear those things are better sourced in China uh they're more you know competitively priced and there are more there's more suppliers for those products but products that are made from natural materials are better sourced in India I can see there's a huge opportunity um especially like you mentioned for superf Foods we know that there's a huge Trend and also in the supplements very competitive categor so um I can definitely see a really good opportunity there so um yeah there was this company actually that I met at a trade show um there were an Israel uh company Israeli company and they were sourcing Tea and Other herbs from India and they were selling them as um you know like herbal drinks so it was tea mixed with some other herbs and you know like this is a soothing kind of tea because it's mixed with certain herbs that have you know a cing quality or something like that that's something else that you know people can consider you have tea and then blend those different teas with various herbs and uh you know Market those as like drinks I see so uh there's a huge opportunity for sellers who are a little bit more experienced in that product development uh base uh basically just trying to figure out a way to connect that uh those raw materials that are high in quality and that are domestically available in India to create a product that will the the Western Market will appreciate and recognize so um yeah definitely understand um is there are there some like obstacles or maybe some things that affect organization from sourcing in sourcing from India like for example we we know uh beforehand that on January 25th there is a Chinese New Year coming up and then for the upcoming month for the whole month all factories are going to be closed and people are going home so no production is going to be available so that you know beforehand to place your order a little bit more for for that extra month that the fact AR working so are there any kind of like seasonal or you know cultural differences sour when you're sourcing from India to keep in mind yes definitely so I'll talk about a few of the challenges first and then I'll come to the cultural um and and some of the holidays uh and and the other challenges so I think one of the biggest limitation of course sourcing from India is that there are limited number of categories so in China you can Source anything in everything right you'll be able to find it so that's something that you'll find when you're sourcing from India there are specific products that you can source so you need to be aware of what Cate can be sourced and um you know sometimes you got to do a comparison um of that product from India and China and see um if it is competitive to Source you know from which country uh sometimes you also might find that lead times are longer especially for handcrafted products um it's not generally the rule as such but it does happen often and especially if you're just starting out suppliers might not prioritize your orders and uh you know that that's one of the reasons for for longer lead times also the other reason is a lot of these products are handcrafted so that does take time and then many of the people who you know work on these handcrafted products they're actually Artisans they're not Factory workers Mo like some of them are Factory workers of course and you know if a if a company has a lot of In-House Factory workers doing stuff then their lead times will be faster but if they're Outsourcing some of the production to Artisans then that might have an effect on the lead time because you know maybe the Artisan is working for another Factory or there's some problem in in their family or um you know the artisen doesn't want to work for certain days or whatever so that's that's something that's a bit difficult to manage for factories uh you know when they're Outsourcing specific aspects or specific steps in the production to Artisans so typically you'll find that um the lead time is you know can go up to like 50 days almost two months whereas in China it'll be like you know 15 days 30 days maximum but in India for handmade handcrafted products it can be longer so that's something to something to keep in mind another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes it's difficult to find suppliers you know you'll find that challenge uh in in China you know there's Alibaba there's Global Sources a lot of the suppliers are online but in India a lot of the suppliers might not be online so you know you even if you search on supplier directories you might not be able to find them easily and so it it might take more effort uh you might have to go through a sourcing agent or a trade show or you know other avenues so that's something that you'll find and then another thing is that a lot of the service providers like logistics companies um you know some of the QC companies and all there and even the suppliers they're not very familiar with Amazon requirements so um you know like Freight forwarders most of them they they don't know how to send products to FBA especially if uh if the seller is not based in you in the US and they don't have a company in the US um you know then some some of the logistics companies might not know how to manage things like you know who's the Importer of record and and and things like that and then also when you're uh when you're shipping to Amazon and then if you have to ship your products to different fulfillment centers some logistics companies might not be able to manage that as well so you've got to choose the logistics company very carefully and you know make sure that they are familiar with with FBA requirements and then suppliers sometimes are not aware of you know the labeling requirements or how to do packaging or things like that so um that's not a big challenge I mean once you have to like train these suppliers and tell them what to do and you know then it becomes easier after they've done it a couple of times so it's something like you know maybe what China suppliers were three or four years ago when FBA supp from when Amazon sellers were starting to Source from China you know Chinese suppliers didn't really know what to do but now of course they are you know so familiar with Amazon requirements and um uh you know it's it's not an issue at all so in terms of holidays uh there are a couple of things to keep in mind in India um usually there are a lot of holidays during the end of the year because there's one main Festival in India for Hindus that's called Diwali and that's the biggest Festival uh it's usually in October or November it it doesn't have a fixed date similar to Chinese New Year and even though the official holidays are maybe like two or three days but you know sometimes workers will go back home to their uh you know to their F to their families if they are uh working in the cities for example or they'll just take time off so that's one time when you have to be you know a bit aware of and then in India there are a lot of holidays throughout the year you know one day here two day two days here things like that so for example um there are a lot of religions in India there's there Christians Hindus Muslims and so there there are holidays for all of the key festivals in each religion so you know for Eid it's a holiday then for Christmas and other Christian festivals and and for Hindu festivals so that's something just to keep in mind another thing to keep in mind is that some cities have more um of you you know Muslim workers for example or or a certain religion or a certain community of workers and their um Traditions may be a little different for example this metal City that I was talking about moradabad most of the Artisans and workers there are Muslims and so they prefer not to work on Fridays and so some of the factories are actually closed on Friday Saturday instead or only Friday instead of Sunday they work on Sundays right they're closed on Fridays so those are little things that you need to be aware of and then um yeah again you know if if the city there more Muslims in the city then they will not take leave on diali which is a Hindu festival but it'll be for Eid you know so just just talk to your supplier and ask them when are the major festivals and when do they expect to have uh you know their workers going on leave or not being in the factory so that's just something to keep in mind um another thing that might disrupt uh production sometimes is the monsoon season so during um July August that's when there are heavy rains throughout the country and the rain the monsoon season actually starts from the southern part of India and it moves up towards the North and so during that time sometimes it becomes so bad that there is like extreme flooding in some cities especially in major cities like Mumbai which is a major port where a lot of the shipments you know go out from um that City becomes very flooded and sometimes it just comes to a stand still for a couple of days so that's something that could affect your production as well um you know of course transportation problems or maybe the roads are closed so therefore your products can't go from the factory to the port or it's just that um um you know maybe the factory itself is flooded right that that also happens sometimes as water in the factory floor so your products might get affected so that's something to keep in mind another little thing to keep in mind is that there are there are big Regional differences in the country so for example the northern part and also the Northwestern part actually is more of a desert area it's very hot it's um the state is called Rajasthan um and there's this specific technique of printing that's called block printing over there in Rajasthan that's very popular it's a very popular type of printing um however this block printing works really well in hot summer months but when it's when it rains then block printing does not work very really well one because it doesn't dry and two because um the the the ink spreads a little bit in the in the cloth in the you know Fabric and so it it doesn't come out very sharp so if you're doing block printing you know you just have to be aware of that that summer months are better for blog printing rather than Monsoon or or winter months yeah that's actually really really huge pieces of advice that you shared with us uh so basically it comes down to really understanding that area geographically and also demographically um in which you are doing your production and also trying to avoid if possible the whole monsoon season because um if you can or pre-order for and avoid these two months during these two months then they would be uh the approach um that's the safest approach basically if possible yeah yeah it also depends on where your factory is with City they are in um but it's always good to know that this is an issue so that you can ask the factory you know if it's going to be an issue for them yeah and also a big piece of advice the information that you gave us is that um there is not like a coherent big uh one big culture inside of India but more like Diversified cultures everyone living together you just have to see uh which part you need to pay attention to and uh how to organize your business according to it so exactly in fact in India you know each state has its own language with a different script so I I'm from I'm from North India if I go to south of India then I have I cannot read their language I cannot understand what they're saying and that is one reason why English is you know like the common language spoken by everyone because it's the language that helps us communicate you know with with people from different states so that's something to consider it's a very diverse country with very different cultures and and Customs that differ from state to state okay so definitely something to keep in mind um when it comes to all of these uh differences and everything that needs to be taken into account when you're sourcing from India then definitely it would be help to have some kind of agent or guide or a host or someone who can help you understand what are the things uh to ask about you don't have to be know everything up front but you at least have to know uh what what is the types of information that you will need if you want to do business long term so um I wanted to talk about a little bit more about the India sourcing trip and how it came to be and uh who is it helpful for and uh what is it included your sourcing trip and uh just generally what kind of value can it bring to sellers who are looking to Source from India absolutely so let me talk about how it started um and one of the reasons it started was because of the trade war between China and the US and at that time um I think it was two years ago or so um I was doing I mean I'm still doing the conference in Hong Kong but when I was talking to sellers they were looking for alternative ative markets and some sellers were reaching out to me and asking if I knew any suppliers in India and you know if I knew how it worked and so that that's how the idea was born because I saw that there is a need among Amazon sellers to Source uh from alternative markets and because I had experience in India I thought that hey let me do a saucing trip because there's no better way to sauce from a country than to go there and I also realized that there's not a lot of information available about how to Source from India there is so information about China there are YouTube videos blogs experts but really nothing about India so that's why one of the first things that I did was I wrote an ebook about how to Source from India to give people an idea like an overview of what can be sourced how to Source you know how to find suppliers because I realized that people really didn't have any idea I mean especially Amazon sellers they didn't have any idea of where to begin so that was the first thing that I did and then um the saucing trip that I organized is um is basically you can call it like a saucing trip with e-commerce and Amazon coaching um it's there are three aspects on the trip that we focus on learning sourcing and also cultural experience so um We Gather a group of about um more than 15 coaches there are e-commerce coaches and they are sourcing coaches that accompany the group to teach them um first of all everything that there is to learn about sourcing from India so we do a full day conference when we are in India where we have experts talking about things like how to find suppliers how to vet suppliers uh how to do negotiation cultural sensitivities all of those things that will take people a couple of years to learn if they do it themselves so this is like this almost like a crash course in sourcing from India and then we have a lot of e-commerce coaches from the US from Australia from all different countries there's Tim Jordan who's one of the coaches he is from um he's quite popular among uh you know Amazon sellers in the US and then there's Gary hang from 820 sourcing he's one of the coaches uh there's Chris Thomas and Margaret jolly and Kevin Alden from Australia um Margaret has been sourcing products from India for almost two years and she stopped her China sourcing entirely and her brand is you know she sells on Amazon us um all of her products are made in India um and so what the coaches do is that they travel with the group and they help people identify Amazon products at the trade show that's one of the biggest things that they help with they guide people on how to validate products how to vet products and then how to find amazona products so um we go to this trade show called the Indian handicrafts and Gifts fair that I was mentioning earlier that's one of the major export fairs in India and um we do a guided tour of the fair first of all we tell people how to talk to suppliers how to look for products that they can source and then the coaches are available to walk with um any of the attendees uh you know walk the show floor and and talk to suppliers together with the attendees um and then um we also have a lot of cultural experience so India has a very rich you know culture and history so we visit the Taj Mahal we do a day trip to the Taj mahel that is one of the Seven Wonders of the World and we also do do an uh a cultural program a dance program exclusively for our group so it's called Bollywood night where we have this you know dance party and everybody can participate and you know there's like loud music and drums and everything and like a local dance troop will do some Indian dance and then we have like hennah and you know you can wear turbans or wear Indian dresses so just kind of experiencing the culture a little bit which is um you know something that people find very exciting because it's it's just something different that they do so yeah those are the three aspects that we focus on learning sourcing and cultural aspects and uh it's an eight day trip the next one is in April it starts from the 13th of April to the 20th of April so um in case people are interested in learning more they can go to indias sourcing trip.com to get more information about the trip yes I've been on the website and I also familiar familiarize myself with all these aspects of the trip that you just shared with us and um definitely see the need for that cultural aspect because it's so important uh yeah to be understood really well when you're doing business with uh Indian suppliers so um definitely but when you mentioned uh identifying Amazon products does that mean that someone will help you understand that there are certain Dimensions or inspection elements or documentation that you have to keep in mind when you are considering a product yes there are those aspects and also how much demand there would be for that product and how competitive that product category is and how easy would it be for you to launch that product and differentiate yourself from all of the other sellers I think that's something that people really struggle with identifying products um that they can differentiate and and sell well because increasingly Amazon is becoming very competitive um and so so this is one of the main challenges we find you know sellers face they can't find profitable products to source and so that's something that these e-commerce coaches are you know more experienced with um because they themselves have been you know helping other sellers for quite a few years and they themselves have been selling products so they know immediately you know when they see a product if it will sell or not and um also during the evenings you know when we go to the trade shows and during the evenings we usually have like Mastermind sessions where uh we also do oneon-one coaching and so people can actually you know open up their computers and then they go the coaches will go into helium 10 and do some you know keyword research and product validation and right then and there you know they they can um kind of tell attendees if this is a good product or not so I think that is a big help getting access to all of these e-commerce coaches from eight days and you know being being able to pick their brains and uh ask them questions I think that in itself is it covers the cost of the of the you know the the investment that you do into the trip because usually like these you know experts and all they they charge a few hundred dollars for their time but when you're on a saucing trip like this you know whether in India or China they are trapped they can't go anywhere they're with you for eight days exactly so yeah I I usually tell attendees that you know make the most of this time that you have with these coaches ask them questions pick their brains and just learn from them as much as possible yeah that's definitely one of the advantages and also um all these connections that you make with other participants are usually lifelong friendships and collaborations maybe uh business collaborations for them um yeah absolutely so we form a WhatsApp group and also a Facebook group of all the attendees and uh the WhatsApp group stays active even after the trip so if you have any questions you know when when you're back you can always just post in the WhatsApp group and some of the coaches or other attendees will help you so you kind of get like a support group um as well you know after the trip so it's not just during the trip and in fact we also do a lot of pre-trip webinars leading up to the trip we do about seven or eight webinars before the trip some of them are to help you prepare and others are to cover things like you know if you're a newb we'll also go over things like Seller Central and how to set up your account and and things like that and then we also cover things like product validation product research listing optimization and then even after the trip we'll we'll do a couple of webinars um you know on basics of PPC or uh how to do your photographs how to do your copy things like that so yeah it's it's almost like a course you know you start a month before the trip and then there's training during the trip and then we do follow-ups and help you place orders and start uh you know putting your products up after the trip and then after the trip you also get a onehour coaching call totally free for with any of the coaches so if you have any questions you can just uh you know set up a call with any of them that's the kind of opportunity that really really didn't exist in the prior years before especially if we're just focusing on the India Supply suppliers um in IND the indan suppliers so definitely a huge opportunity for people I can see that there's this certain demographic that might fit really well for the India sourcing trip like for example if people uh want to have a change in their career and they have some savings maybe they want to invest in a new business and uh be free from 9o5 perspective um they might find this guided tours really useful and really um they won't even know how much value they will get because they don't know how painful it might be when you're doing it on your own yes exactly like for example we when we first started out with our own brand we had no guidance in terms of like for example quality insurance so we had quality issues with the stock that was already in Amazon FBA Warehouse so it was a it was a mess so I wish I had someone to tell me all these things and just um predict what might happen and let me know so that I can be much more prepared so definitely see a lot of value there okay so you mentioned that there's going to be an ebook that we'll share with the viewers of this uh interview and um I'm going to share the link below in below our video so that they can um go there and download it and uh read all the basics of uh understanding what it uh means to Source from India and if there's any additional information uh they can contact you directly would that be definitely awesome yeah absolutely so yeah the ebook is at indias sourcing trip.com ebook and I also have a Facebook group that um where I'm quite active answering questions and doing live webinars every week so um just search for souring from India for Amazon FBA and uh feel free to join the group you can reach out to me on messenger on Facebook and um yeah I'll be happy to help if anybody has any questions about Sting from India okay great um migla thank you so much for being my guest and for sharing all this information I personally learned so much from you in this session and I also know that a lot of our audience big part of our audience will consider sourcing from India and um uh benefit a lot of value from your ebook so um thank you so much for having me okay great bye bye bye