Small Business

Getting your first Order

Byorp — A journey of 4 months, and 4000 Nautical Miles

It is every millennial’s dream now a days to start something of their own. A little side hustle for the extra income, their own start up for the challenge or a business out of curiosity and passion for execution. And that’s how even our journey started — Byorp — our passion project!

Byorp is a platform selling stylish and definitely functional office and travel bags across Europe. Order your favourite bag now, and continue to read our story as we process your order and ship it before you are done reading!

Here we go, with high patriotic feelings and of course the added advantage of the growing Indian economy and exports, it started with a simple idea. Through this article I will mention what to look out for in each step, the costs involved and what worked best for us.

The Idea

The idea — LCCS — Low Cost Country Sourcing. Source products or raw materials from countries with lower labour costs, add a margin and sell the products across Europe. Living in the Netherlands for the past 5 years, we now have a fair understanding of the European market, the spending patterns and trends of the European folks. This helped us figure out the most lucrative products and the price points for the products we decided to sell. Now that we have a plan basic business plan, the next step was to find the right products. Deciding to start small, we were looking for products which could cost us less than €20 landed and the price point is 2x-4x in the European market.

Registering a Business in the Netherlands

Before you being, you need to have a business registered. Starting small, we went with a sole proprietor company as opposed to a private limited or a corporate. These had complex requirements and structure of directors and was more suitable for start-ups with Investors. To register a business in the Netherlands, simply book an appointment in the Kvk (chamber of commerce) website and make a visit at the scheduled time. They ask a few basic questions about your ideas and intentions, then register the company.

Sourcing

Next, sourcing. The best option for LCCS at the moment is China. However, owing to our Indian roots we decided to go with India. The government of India is encouraging suppliers in the country and giving them the right push to increase exports.

While sourcing, there are multiple factors to consider —

1. The quality of the products produced
2. The trustworthiness and responsiveness of the supplier for a long term relationship
3. The lead times to fulfil the order
4. Their process of procurement of raw materials and manufacturing
5. The possible shipping options
6. Price in the selling market and payment possibilities

Through all these moving parts, what worked best for us was asking the supplier to send us samples. This easily checks most of the above points. It helped us assess the suppliers interest, work closely with them on the pricing, the shipping options, the lead times, and eventually once the products arrived, we could also check the quality of the products and weigh the time vs price vs quality holistically.

Most suppliers did not respond in a timely manner, were new to exports and did not want to get distracted, charged too much, had extremely long lead times or simply ghosted us. Finding the right supplier is a daunting task but also the most crucial one for your business to succeed in the long run. This was the most time consuming part of the process and took us 2+ months to narrow down to the right supplier.

Shipping

There are multiple modes of shipping, by sea, air, road, rail etc. Road and raid do not apply for the India — Europe connection so we were left with sea and air. Our products are not perishables so we did not the speed/urgency of air. Hence, we went with the safe and economical option of Sea. Shipping of the goods included —

1. Transport from the supplier warehouse to the sea port
2. Transport via cargo from the port in India (Navashiva) to Netherlands (Rotterdam)
3. Customs clearance at both ports
4. Last mile delivery to our storage in the Netherlands.

As first timers and for folks without contacts or knowledge in the shipping industry, it is easiest to go with a provider who does shipping end to end. One who takes the goods from the supplier’s warehouse and drops them at your doorstep, completely hassle free and insured. Cargoplot was our obvious choice. Not only did they handle the entire shipping but were very transparent about the costs and helps us better understand the process and weigh the options we had. Being new to exports and imports, they even helped us with any naive questions we had. Extremely considerate and responsive shipping provider who I would strongly recommend to anyone else starting out with imports and exports.

It cost us about a quarter of the value of our goods for shipping. Due to the read sea war, ships from India, had to go around the continent of Africa to reach Europe. Though we felt the shipping costs were on the higher side, there was very little in our control and the geopolitical impact was rather unexpected.

Setting up our web shop and Social Media

Byorp is our online webshop and Shopify was our platform of choice due to simplicity. Though there are more upcoming platforms we just went with the one where everything comes built in and we could set the web shop up in a couple of days without much technical knowledge.

Setting up an instagram business account @byorp.store and a facebook page for the business are essential for a D2C brand. Consumers need to be able to find your brand and relate to it.

Leveraging Friends & Family

Now that all the set up is done, the consignment has arrived, it is just a wait till your first order. Usually the first few orders come in from friends and family and it is best to leverage your network and ask them to share it with theirs and spread through word of mouth. Thats the easiest way to build trust with the first set of customers.

Few other methods to try out are to go physical and showing samples to nearby shops and stalls in the same segment. They give you insights which help you better target your products.

The other more common way for reaching your first order is paid marketing or running ads in Instagram and Facebook. This helps target the right online customers who are searching for your products actively and position your products across their screens while they browse.

Our First Order

Ours was from a whatsapp message in a local group. It was for Phoenix. You never know who is looking for your products so try to be wide in your reach.

From here on, good luck to you in your adventure and hope you have ordered your favourite from Byorp already!