I tried to import vanilla beans from SE Asia to S. Korea and failed.

Jade Lee
Jade Lee
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

Born and raised in Southeast Asia, I have friends there. Now I’m in living in Seoul. Anywho, one of them called me up and said he wanted to sell vanilla beans to South Korea. All I had to do was find a buyer. (Like that’s easy.) All the profit that came out of it were to be spilt in half between us.

He had found a seller who would get us vanilla beans at a much lower price. And, somehow I found a guy who knew a guy who would be interested.

What I’ve learned from him was brutal.

So vanilla beans are luxury good that are mostly imported from Madagascar. They export 80 percent of the world’s vanilla beans which are harvested and exported in February. When the supply runs out, that’s when Southeastern countries start exporting what they have at a higher price latter in the year.

Humidity is really important because the supply may go bad in storage and while traveling. So having 12 percent of humidity or 11 percent is a huge difference. Consistency is also key.

These vanilla beans calls for high maintenance and are not really worth it for traders because these beans don’t need to be supplied regularly. Only luxury restaurants and fancy patisserie seek them like once a year. And how many of those do we have? Not a lot. Most “vanilla” we shove down our throats are artificial.

Even if I find a buyer, he or she would obviously want to see papers that promise good price and quality.

So I requested for these documents. The answer I got was, “Are you kidding me?” from my friend. If he had asked the seller to get these documents, they would have asked him to leave because there were ‘other’ buyers who were so very interested in buying.

Buyers would not buy vanilla beans from newbie traders like us because you have to be an expert to guarantee good quality. Like I said, they need high maintenance. No question asked, vanilla beans can not be your main item. They will be in demand once a year or twice if you’re lucky.

So will I be trading vanilla beans? Nope. Not an idiot. But if I had a something that I can supply regularly, then yeah, as a side product. Not more than that.

This was a fun experience because I had no idea was trading was all about. Now I get the idea although I’ve only seen the tip of the ice berg. But that’s still something. As life tells us, you tap a hundred times just to get a ‘maybe.’ But that’s okay. I have a full-time job.

Jade Lee

Written by

Jade Lee

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