I've been lurking BHW for a while, and about once a year see a cool make money guide that I get super interested in, and try to follow as a side income. Sometimes I make enough to say "that was worth it" but nothing mind blowing. My day job actually pays well, but life in China can be boring after living here for over a decade, so I'm always interested in some type of hobby.
I've kind of stumbled into a unique situation after having dinner with my wife and her friend the other week. My wife (who is also an expat) has a Chinese friend who sells high quality replica handbags to a couple of wholesalers in the middle east. It's kind of a cool business she is in, but super risky because she only has 3 customers. All of whom are buying a significant quantity of designer bags from her every month.
My wife and I both like to buy replica products both from her and in some markets around the city we're in. We usually rely on reddit's rep subs to guide us on which factories are the best to buy from for a specific batch.
The last couple weeks I took a deep dive into Reddit's replica subs, and began following and talking to a lot of the sellers these subs claim are the best sellers in China. After compiling my findings, and sharing them with my wife's friend, we learned, while these sellers claim to buy directly from the factories, their quantities are nowhere near what is needed to buy from the good rep factories, and they're obviously using a middleman, or not getting the high-volume rates from the factories.
Living in China, middlemen are everywhere, so this isn't that big of a deal, but dollar signs were shooting off in my head, as I'm realizing the pricing I'll be able to get if I buy from my wife's friend will probably be the same, if not better than these well known rep sellers.
So I scraped a lot of the reviews from /r/repladies handbags. I saved the reviews from the brands I know I can get in a spreadsheet with the score the users left, comments on the issues they found, and the price they paid.
I took these to my contacts little warehouse where she holds some of the inventory, and I began sifting through it to see how her batches compared to the ones that all these ladies on reddit are raving/complaining about. I was pleasantly surprised to see, for the most part, the ones in the warehouse were either the same, or better than the reviews from redditors.
Before going to the warehouse, I discussed with my contact the possibility of my wife and I selling bags and buying from her. She was totally cool with it, and basically said we can buy from her at cost until we're moving quantities similar to her 3 customers, as she is more afraid of losing her future income if any of them go away. So basically, she will help build our business up by providing good pricing early on.
With the spreadsheet, we then went through each of the bags that were really good, and I entered the wholesale cost. Incredibly, the margins here are good. So good that I am confident I can grow a nice little business out of this.
So here is my plan:
1. I will begin marketing these reps on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. My focus here will be selling the fact that my wife and I are a team of expats, living in China. We'll focus on better service than the Chinese sellers. We're not going to lie or cheat our customers, and when something goes wrong, we just refund them, as opposed to what the Chinese do, which is go dark.
2. Another big problem is the Chinese sellers also tell their customers everything is in stock, and then they check with their agent/factory after they've received money. To prevent this, we will guarantee everything we sell is actually in stock, and we will actually confirm it before they send the funds.
3. I am working on accepting as many payment options as possible. I'm on the lookout for setting up a stealth PayPal account, while considering Skrill or 2Checkout. But I think it is important to both accept crypto + standard forms of payment.
4. High quality QC, pre-shipment photos will be sent and require customer confirmation before any product is shipped. And we'd do video calls too upon request. If a customer didn't like the bag, we'd return it and pick up a new one, no questions asked. And if they're really not happy, then we'll refund their money.
Steps I Am Working On:
1. Social Media - I'm really not a fan of social media. But this is necessary for this business. I've begun building a profile on most channels, and I'll organically build it up. It's going be a little annoying messaging and commenting on all these ladies posts, but it should be worth it in the long run.
2. Creating a website - this area is where I'm looking for suggestions. A lot of the rep sellers you can find have these massive ecommerce sites with thousands of products. I really don't want to do this, because I want to only offer products that I know are really good replicas, which our customers will be satisfied with. I'm thinking of making some type of static site, which does not offer checkout, where people can see detailed photos and descriptions of the products we're selling. Then, if they want to order it, they'd contact us directly.
There cons here are that some people will want buy it now, whereas other might lose interest if we don't respond right away. - What do you guys think?
3. Accepting payment - Accepting crypto is easy, but I'm a little worried about getting stealth accounts setup and accept credit cards. Fortunately, the reviews from https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/paypal-solutions-send-receive-withdrawal-remove-limit-from-paypal-easily.458362/ looks good. So I'll probably work with them to get it setup.
Marketing Plan:
Facebook Groups - I will join FB groups, introduce myself and share the products we have. I'll also DM anyone commenting, and open a dialogue with them to get them to trust us. As I begin to get friends/followers, I'll make my own group, where I will be the only one allowed to post for sale, but also leave the group open to conversations on reps.
Instagram - here I'll do follow/unfollow as I post good content on bags. Basically make it a theme style page, where it compares the authentic product with the replica, including the price. I
Website - I still haven't decided. The SEO surprisingly does not look super competitive, but I don't know if I want to spend that much time, until I've further validated this idea via social media and shipping products to a handful of customers.
I'm writing this post to hear feedback on this idea, and if use it as a way to hold myself accountable as I grow this.
When I search these forums, there are a decent number of people against the idea of selling replicas, especially when sellers are leading customers to believe the products are real. I will 100% be honest with my customers, as what I plan to see are replica products. But I do understand the risk here. There is risk in China, as well as other countries, but I'm not looking to build an empire, just be a small fish.
What ideas do you guys have for this? Any holes you can point out, or areas I should stay away from?
I've kind of stumbled into a unique situation after having dinner with my wife and her friend the other week. My wife (who is also an expat) has a Chinese friend who sells high quality replica handbags to a couple of wholesalers in the middle east. It's kind of a cool business she is in, but super risky because she only has 3 customers. All of whom are buying a significant quantity of designer bags from her every month.
My wife and I both like to buy replica products both from her and in some markets around the city we're in. We usually rely on reddit's rep subs to guide us on which factories are the best to buy from for a specific batch.
The last couple weeks I took a deep dive into Reddit's replica subs, and began following and talking to a lot of the sellers these subs claim are the best sellers in China. After compiling my findings, and sharing them with my wife's friend, we learned, while these sellers claim to buy directly from the factories, their quantities are nowhere near what is needed to buy from the good rep factories, and they're obviously using a middleman, or not getting the high-volume rates from the factories.
Living in China, middlemen are everywhere, so this isn't that big of a deal, but dollar signs were shooting off in my head, as I'm realizing the pricing I'll be able to get if I buy from my wife's friend will probably be the same, if not better than these well known rep sellers.
So I scraped a lot of the reviews from /r/repladies handbags. I saved the reviews from the brands I know I can get in a spreadsheet with the score the users left, comments on the issues they found, and the price they paid.
I took these to my contacts little warehouse where she holds some of the inventory, and I began sifting through it to see how her batches compared to the ones that all these ladies on reddit are raving/complaining about. I was pleasantly surprised to see, for the most part, the ones in the warehouse were either the same, or better than the reviews from redditors.
Before going to the warehouse, I discussed with my contact the possibility of my wife and I selling bags and buying from her. She was totally cool with it, and basically said we can buy from her at cost until we're moving quantities similar to her 3 customers, as she is more afraid of losing her future income if any of them go away. So basically, she will help build our business up by providing good pricing early on.
With the spreadsheet, we then went through each of the bags that were really good, and I entered the wholesale cost. Incredibly, the margins here are good. So good that I am confident I can grow a nice little business out of this.
So here is my plan:
1. I will begin marketing these reps on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. My focus here will be selling the fact that my wife and I are a team of expats, living in China. We'll focus on better service than the Chinese sellers. We're not going to lie or cheat our customers, and when something goes wrong, we just refund them, as opposed to what the Chinese do, which is go dark.
2. Another big problem is the Chinese sellers also tell their customers everything is in stock, and then they check with their agent/factory after they've received money. To prevent this, we will guarantee everything we sell is actually in stock, and we will actually confirm it before they send the funds.
3. I am working on accepting as many payment options as possible. I'm on the lookout for setting up a stealth PayPal account, while considering Skrill or 2Checkout. But I think it is important to both accept crypto + standard forms of payment.
4. High quality QC, pre-shipment photos will be sent and require customer confirmation before any product is shipped. And we'd do video calls too upon request. If a customer didn't like the bag, we'd return it and pick up a new one, no questions asked. And if they're really not happy, then we'll refund their money.
Steps I Am Working On:
1. Social Media - I'm really not a fan of social media. But this is necessary for this business. I've begun building a profile on most channels, and I'll organically build it up. It's going be a little annoying messaging and commenting on all these ladies posts, but it should be worth it in the long run.
2. Creating a website - this area is where I'm looking for suggestions. A lot of the rep sellers you can find have these massive ecommerce sites with thousands of products. I really don't want to do this, because I want to only offer products that I know are really good replicas, which our customers will be satisfied with. I'm thinking of making some type of static site, which does not offer checkout, where people can see detailed photos and descriptions of the products we're selling. Then, if they want to order it, they'd contact us directly.
There cons here are that some people will want buy it now, whereas other might lose interest if we don't respond right away. - What do you guys think?
3. Accepting payment - Accepting crypto is easy, but I'm a little worried about getting stealth accounts setup and accept credit cards. Fortunately, the reviews from https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/paypal-solutions-send-receive-withdrawal-remove-limit-from-paypal-easily.458362/ looks good. So I'll probably work with them to get it setup.
Marketing Plan:
Facebook Groups - I will join FB groups, introduce myself and share the products we have. I'll also DM anyone commenting, and open a dialogue with them to get them to trust us. As I begin to get friends/followers, I'll make my own group, where I will be the only one allowed to post for sale, but also leave the group open to conversations on reps.
Instagram - here I'll do follow/unfollow as I post good content on bags. Basically make it a theme style page, where it compares the authentic product with the replica, including the price. I
Website - I still haven't decided. The SEO surprisingly does not look super competitive, but I don't know if I want to spend that much time, until I've further validated this idea via social media and shipping products to a handful of customers.
I'm writing this post to hear feedback on this idea, and if use it as a way to hold myself accountable as I grow this.
When I search these forums, there are a decent number of people against the idea of selling replicas, especially when sellers are leading customers to believe the products are real. I will 100% be honest with my customers, as what I plan to see are replica products. But I do understand the risk here. There is risk in China, as well as other countries, but I'm not looking to build an empire, just be a small fish.
What ideas do you guys have for this? Any holes you can point out, or areas I should stay away from?
