#451 – Factory Hacks & Sourcing Gold: Real Tips From Inside the Production Line with Isaac Hetzroni
Join us as we explore the dynamic world of sourcing with Isaac Hetzroni, aka @thesourcingguy, a rising influencer known for his insightful content on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Isaac, though lesser-known in the Amazon space, shares his extensive experience in manufacturing, having grown up in the industry with his family’s apparel and electronics factories. He provides valuable insights on whether businesses should look beyond China for sourcing, and shares practical tips on understanding product costs and minimizing risks. Isaac’s engaging social media presence brings these topics to life, making sourcing strategies both informative and entertaining.
We’ll also examine the complexities and misconceptions surrounding sourcing from China, where advanced infrastructure and a skilled workforce have cemented its status as a manufacturing powerhouse. Despite pushes for diversification, replicating China’s efficiency in other countries presents significant challenges. Apparel manufacturing emerges as a more adaptable sector for relocation, yet the transition is fraught with logistical hurdles. The discussion extends to global manufacturing trends and China’s impact on the U.S. market, including the rise of Factory to Consumer strategies and the role of AI in overcoming language barriers, all of which are reshaping global trade relationships.
In this episode, we emphasize the importance of building strong business relationships, especially when dealing with Chinese suppliers. Personal connections often intertwine with professional dealings, and trade shows play a crucial role in maintaining these relationships. We explore strategies for finding the best suppliers beyond platforms like Alibaba, using tools such as Import Yeti and trade shows to discover high-quality factories. Additionally, we highlight the importance of quality control and the advantages of diversifying supply chains to new regions. Tune in to gain insights into effective sourcing strategies, quality control, and the evolving landscape of global manufacturing.
In episode 451 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Isaac discuss:
- 00:00 – Expert Sourcing Strategies With Isaac Hetzroni
- 03:31 – Factory Tours & Sourcing Tips
- 08:14 – Misconceptions About Sourcing in China
- 17:42 – Global Manufacturing and Brain Drain
- 09:03 – The Challenges of Sourcing in China
- 17:42 – Global Manufacturing Trends and China Sourcing
- 22:02 – Sourcing Tips for Manufacturers
- 28:08 – Purchasing in China
- 28:38 – Building Strong Business Relationships in China
- 33:41 – Sourcing the Best Suppliers Without Alibaba
- 34:34 – Strategies for Finding the Best Suppliers
- 37:49 – Creative Freedom in Factory Filming
- 39:25 – Effective Overseas Manufacturing Quality Control
- 43:45 – Lean QC Solutions in Production
- 46:23 – Advantages of Diversifying Supply Chains
- 51:32 – Negotiating Production Priorities With Factories
- 54:13 – Advanced AI for Factory Sourcing
- 58:00 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 451 of the AM/PM podcast. You know sourcing is on everybody’s mind right now, so they can’t get enough of what are the latest tips and strategies. Should I move outside China? Should I not move outside of China? What should I do to get better terms and make more money and make my quality better? That’s what we’re going to be talking about today with Isaac Hetzroni. Isaac is someone you probably haven’t heard of. He’s not really well known in the Amazon world, but he’s got a YouTube and TikTok and Instagram channels with over 250,000 followers where he goes around and actually talks to factories and shows the ins and outs of sourcing. Very, very famous in the social medias, but not very well known to the Amazon world. He’s got some unique perspectives and some great tips for you, so I think you’re going to really enjoy this episode. Here is Isaac. Mr. Isaac Hetzroni, how are you doing man?
Isaac:
Doing great. Happy to be here.
Kevin King:
Yeah, you’re sitting in Bali, Indonesia, right now, but we met what like two weeks ago or something in Austin.
Isaac:
Yeah, so we met in Austin, just got to Bali. We were just in China for the last 10 days as well, so been on the road.
Kevin King:
And now we got introduced because someone told me like, hey, you got to meet this guy. He’s like one of the top sourcing guys out there. I mean, he runs this company. That’s just amazing. But nobody knows him really in the e-commerce or Amazon space because that’s never really been his focus. So tell me a little bit about your background. You grew up like sourcing when you were two years old or something right?
Isaac:
Yeah, I’ve been. Uh, I’ve been sourcing my entire life, um, and so I started in the manufacturing space. Uh, we had a factory in Canada manufacturing clothes. Uh, like 10 employees, very small, uh, factory.
Kevin King:
A family business?
Isaac:
Yeah, we had a family business okay um, so helped out the family business from you know, when I was in diapers and then eventually my other side of my family went and opened up a factory in China making electronics. So I went from apparel manufacturing to electronics manufacturing. So, you know, really lived it and breathed it. And then started my own sourcing agency to help brands source products about eight years ago. So now I’ve been doing the whole agency side and we have a full team in China and traveled all around the world sourcing products and then about three years ago, I started my personal brand, which is the sourcing guy on social media where making content about manufacturing and sourcing. Because what I realized was that I have a very unique upbringing but for a lot of people it’s very hard to learn the fundamentals of sourcing and learn all the tips and there’s a lot of ways you know to mess up. But if you have the right tips and tricks you typically can like reduce your risk of screwing up in China, I’d say by like 90 95. So I started making content about it. People really resonated with it and now we have, like you know, over 400 000 followers, so it’s been great.
Kevin King:
That’s 400,000 followers on Instagram, right? Or is it on TikTok?
Isaac:
Yeah, Instagram and TikTok.
Kevin King:
So the and this, this channel is just you talking about sourcing, like walking through factories and like giving tips and stuff. Or, for those that haven’t watched it, what would they get from watching it?
Isaac:
Yeah. So it’s a lot of. It’s a lot of like tips and a lot of walking through factories, a lot of interviewing factories, talking about pricing and really just showcasing you know, the different intricacies of manufacturing as well as giving people a real insight. Like a very popular series we do is like how much does it really cost? So people can actually see like, okay, if I want to go and get into this specific kind of business, how much does it actually cost to manufacture that specific product? What do the margins look like? And that gives people a lot of ideas. And then we also give away a lot of factory information so people can follow and they’re like, oh shoot, I you know, I saw this video for this really cool product. Isaac gave me the factory and I can go over them directly.
Kevin King:
What do you think of people that watch? Some people are probably watching that that are seriously interested in sourcing and are getting real tips of other people probably watching it from the entertainment value going. Oh my God, this purse I just bought at Walmart costs $1.82 to make and I just paid $49.95 for it, or something in Walmart. Do you think that causes and people don’t understand all the other costs that get layered on top of that? Do you explain all that kind of stuff as well, like look, yeah, that’s what it costs from the factory, but there’s inspection costs, there’s, there’s tariffs, there’s export fees, there’s taxes, there’s transportation, there’s margin, there’s overhead, there’s all. Do you go into all that as well or do you just keep it on the uh, the cool, glamorous side?
Isaac:
Uh, some of my most popular videos are actually where I’m interviewing the factory. They give me the fob price and then live there like on screen I. I’m then calculating like DDP rate, right, so calculating all the other pieces that go into it, and so some products, you know, might increase by like 80% because of the tariff costs, or it’s going to increase based off of, like, it being a really big product and you need to ship it. So you know, some of the stuff is, yeah, we have to be kind of catchy and, at the end of the day, like we’re creating entertainment as well. If we don’t make it, if we don’t make sourcing entertainment relatively mainstream, then I’m going to be talking to an audience of 500 people. And that’s fine, you know. And like look, I like the niche audience and all that kind of thing, but at the end of the day, like to really get the eyeballs and get people talking about product sourcing. You got to make it a little catchy too, which is why we we have to do a little bit of a mixed, mixed content, you know.
Kevin King:
How often are you coming out with new uh content on on that channel?
Isaac:
Not, not a ton, maybe like every five days on the post the video. Um, we’re gonna start on my quality over quantity but. But we really front load. So we were just in China. We shot probably like 40 short form videos and six long form for YouTube in 10 days. So there’s a you know we can like, because most of my day goes running a sourcing agency. We have to really really just like, pack it in and then we have. Then we have content to distribute for, like you know, months after that.
Kevin King:
So you have someone that travels with you, that that films it, or like a buddy, or like do you have an employee, or you just hire someone local in China?
Isaac:
So both. So we have. I have like my producer, who’s also a videographer, and so he has all the editors underneath him. He comes to China or Vietnam or wherever with me, wherever I go on my trips, and so I just bring him and then we also hire like local videographers. So I also have my new content manager in China, because we’re going really heavy into posting content on like red node and we chat, so we set all that up this week and then um, and then he has he’s from the production world, so like he has like an amazing videographer, so like we were. So for like the really quick, short form stuff, we just had my main guy and then we went into the factories. We had like full production and lighting and everything.
Kevin King:
Oh wow. So, uh, you said that you started this. You never really planned to do this and then a couple years ago, you were speaking with uh I think it was Kian and you said and he’s like, hey, why don’t you shoot some video? And you’re like I don’t know. And and then you decided to do it and at first it was kind of a little awkward and not so many people watched, but they just started snowballing and you’ve told me that out of this you’ve gotten some major clients. Uh, have come through some big brands and stuff. I’ve seen you on there and, uh, it’s actually working out as a really good, um, money making tool as well, right?
Isaac:
Yeah, um, I’m. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, like making content, producing content, building a personal brand. And you know, at first it gets really tricky to like get it right and obviously you’re nervous people are going to judge you, you could feel cringy, right. But then you just get better and better, just like anything right, and you start to really enjoy it and now we just have a ton of fun producing the content and, yeah, it’s a fantastic lead source to people. It’s very, especially with the handle. The sourcing guy. It’s like, okay, this guy sources products I need help searching. Okay, let me hit him up. Does he offer as a service? Oh, he does, okay, cool.
Kevin King:
That’s cool. So how old were you when you the first time you went to China?
Isaac:
I think I was 17.
Kevin King:
Oh so you didn’t go as a younger child, even though your family had stuff there. You was 17 when you first went.
Isaac:
Yeah, it was. I was trying for the longest time to like get my dad to come and it was, there was always something. But then once, once, I finally like was like graduating high school and stuff like that and I had more time to really dedicate to working on the business. That’s when we we jumped in on it and he started bringing me to China and stuff like that. But all before that I was still like working, I guess, for the factory.
Kevin King:
So now, how have you been in China probably 20, 50, 100 times?
Isaac:
Been a lot, especially because I was living in Bali the last three years, um to specifically be close to China. So the convenient part about that was I was able to go and take a quick flight, manage a production you know, meet with an employee or whatever, and then come right back.
Kevin King:
So so what is it that you think a lot of people misunderstand when it comes to sourcing in China? I mean a lot of people. China has come a long ways. I just read the book just last week. Was it One Step China or something like that? And they talk about how China has like these six pillars of like all the talk now with tariffs and everything. It’s people like oh, you got to get out of China, get out of China, you got to go to Vietnam, you got to go to Indonesia, you got to go bring it to the United States. And what I think a lot of people don’t understand is that that’s not really possible in a lot of categories Either a pricing, it’s a pricing issue or it’s just fundamentally, we’re not set up for it here. I read some stories that China’s got the massive population, they’ve got the infrastructure, they got all these pockets of areas where you go to Shenzhen and it specializes in electronics and this and this. You go to another area and it specializes in this and the whole infrastructure and all the supply chain is all tightly integrated in there. And then you have the engineering. I mean we can’t get engineers in the United States to run stuff. You got all the engineers. You got a plethora of them. You got the internet. That’s changed everything. You got the populations moving to these big cities. You got all these big things that China it would take the US or some other country 20, 30, 40 years to catch up to. What’s your opinion on China as the world’s factory and what people are saying and what you’re seeing in your business, the people coming to you and saying, hey, we got to get out of here. What are our options?
Isaac:
Yeah, for sure, I mean. So what people don’t talk about enough is that, like, China does make some of the highest quality product in the entire world and people talk a lot about China quality. Like you know, it’s all bad quality but that’s just because, like, the average product from China is lower quality, because the average product on the marketplace is low quality, like across every product that’s produced. So when you go and you look at the average product, you see made in China, a product that breaks. You see me in China there’s a negative view on, okay, China’s low quality. But then if you actually go to China or really look into, like, where the top products are manufactured around the world, like China is the leader because they have all the engineers, they have all the infrastructures, they have all the materials, they have specialization. They’ve been doing it for so long and do anything for so long, you can start getting really, really good at manufacturing certain products. So moving that specialization and expertise to other countries can be very difficult. We’ve been seeing success in moving to other countries, but a lot of times that’s still working with the Chinese factories that are setting up secondary operations like China Plus One strategies outside of China. So it’s just Chinese-owned factories in Vietnam and Cambodia and Myanmar and all these places.
Isaac:
Now, with that said, there’s still really really good non-Chinese-owned factories around the world and like we work with lots of amazing factories around the world. Like all I’ve been doing the last month since Terra started is like helping people move out of China to other places. But you have to like, for the everyday entrepreneur that’s going to be incredibly difficult to execute on because you know China’s pretty easy to manufacture in which is again surprising a lot of people but like China has built all this infrastructure to make it really seamless and quick with low-end cues to manufacture. There’s a lot of standardization between inspections and certifications and logistics and stuff like that. So when you start moving to other countries, let’s say like through LATAM or through South Asia or Africa, you really have to know what you’re doing to execute on. So to kind of wrap that thought off, it’s really a lot of brands will have a rude awakening when they try moving outside China, when they know that or when they understand how much more friction there is.
Kevin King:
Would you say, are there a few product categories that are almost impossible to move out of China and on the flip side of that, are there a couple maybe that just come to mind that are easier to move out of China? I’m not saying totally easy, but easier.
Isaac:
Yeah. Well, I mean, the easiest is going to be like apparel products, cause you know, every country has been producing apparel for a very long time, for the most part for the domestic markets, and to train someone on sewing machine just takes a few weeks. So it’s very easy for you know third world countries or like emerging countries, to go and set up some level of infrastructure for clothing. Um, and you know, a lot of companies are building that infrastructure to take advantage of much lower labor costs, which are a fraction of China, because China’s pretty expensive nowadays from from a labor cost perspective. You know it could be seven, eight times more expensive than some other countries. So, um, that’s like a, that’s like the best category to like easily move out. Uh, and a lot of countries, a lot of big companies, have already moved out of China for those labor benefits. Um, and you know, especially if you can get the like raw materials from those markets, right, so we’re talking, for example, let’s say, we’re going to produce hoodies or t-shirts that are cotton based, right, we can go and produce those in Pakistan, because Pakistan produces tons of they’re an export of cotton, so you can actually produce and mill and then execute the whole product within that region without needing Chinese infrastructure and produce it way cheaper like 20, 30% cheaper a lot of times.
Isaac:
Now, if we’re talking about products that have that still touch China, that’s the harder part, right? How much of the raw materials, how much of the components are still deriving from China, even if we’re able to go and move the manufacturing out of China. Are we really moving manufacturing outside or are we moving final assembly out? That’s the question. How much of the supply chain is still dependent on that? And in a lot of cases, if we’re talking about, say, electronics, yeah, let’s say you’re producing an iPhone like that might have a hundred components, you know. So those components have to come from somewhere and you also need contingencies in your component supply chain, because if you lose one supplier within the product, right, then you can’t finish your product. So trying to go and build that entire infrastructure out of China and have all the component factories out of China is going to take a very long time before we do that. And yes, we’re slowly seeing Vietnam is building more and more and more and that’s kind of becoming like the new manufacturing hub to an extent, but like you don’t have the size and the labor pool in Vietnam, so it’s tricky.
Kevin King:
I saw some stat. This is not solid, but as a rule of thumb it’s a rule of fives and so if someone is making in the US to do manufacturing jobs, let’s just say this is not exact, but the average wage is 30 bucks. Divide that by five and you have China. So the average wage is $6. Divide that by five again and it’s $1.25 or whatever, and you have the average wage in one of these emerging third world countries. And that’s kind of like where it’s been. China used to be the emerging third world at $1.25, but their society has moved way up and they have a pretty strong middle class now has moved way up and they have a pretty strong middle class now. And, like you said too, a lot of when these factories move outside of China, a lot of people don’t realize.
Kevin King:
This hit home to me five years ago during the pandemic. I remember hearing the stories about Wuhan. You know the virus spreading from Wuhan labs and all this stuff and I remember that in a lot of the news one of the biggest hit areas was a part of Italy, northeast Italy, and there’s this massive, these communities, and there’s a documentary, I think, on Netflix or something about the hospitals and all these people dying left and right in Italy and I was like why? Why is this one place in Italy this problem? And it hit me. There’s a ton of Chinese owned manufacturers in that area and there was a lot of people that have flown out of Wuhan before we knew exactly what was happening with uh, COVID, you know, when it was the early days back there, you know, back to visit and back for Chinese New Year and stuff in February or whatever that year, and that’s the cause of it and a lot of people don’t realize. You know that made in Italy doesn’t mean it was made in Italy by some Italian guy sitting on the floor banging a hammer. It’s probably a Chinese factory somewhere.
Kevin King:
So that global manufacturing has become so global that it’s it’s. It’s in a lot of countries like the US that used to manufacture a lot just aren’t set up for it anymore. And I saw some stat. You know, a lot of Chinese used to come to the smarter Chinese used to come to Western universities. They go to London or to the US or something to go to school, but and then someone would end up staying here and then someone would end up going back, but now about half of them are not even leaving anymore. They’re just getting their education in China and staying there to work as an engineer or to do their thing, and so we’re not capturing as many of the smartest people that used to be coming here and staying here and working for Google or Apple or whatever, and so, and so that’s that’s a competitive thing too. That’s that’s changing that a lot of people aren’t talking about. Are you seeing any of that in the factories or the suppliers that you work with?
Isaac:
Yeah, for sure. I mean especially like the, the suppliers we always see like their kids, their kids always go. Maybe they’ll go to America, they’ll learn a bunch and then they come right back to the factory and the biggest trend also just interviewing a factory owner son two days ago and they’re like a huge denim factory. They produce for, like Rag and Bone, Calvin Klein, most you know, like those kind of brands, and you know he was like the guy like I went and went to America, went to college there, learned a ton, and now I learned. And I keep coming back to China and we’re implementing like an F2C strategy, right, and I’m like I’m like F2C is like, yeah, factory to consumer, right, so we’re going back. Yeah, so and so what? The whole idea here is like ok let’s learn everything in America, let’s not stay in America, let’s go back and let’s figure out how we can go and sell to the American market even better, and in this scenario, you know, cut out the middleman and obviously on the Amazon space. This is huge. But now more and more factories are talking about this right. More and more factories are really realizing like the way for them to be incredibly successful and to attack the US market is to build their own brands and sell directly into those markets.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I was talking with someone that deals with Alibaba quite a bit and he said they’re making a huge push right now into. He said that you know, with AI it used to be a language issue and it used to be hard for them to write the listings or be in what people would call Chinglish or whatever. And with AI and some of the tools, now a lot of that’s gone away. And then you have a lot of the factories that have at least salespeople or front-end people that have been speaking English since they were young in China and are proficient in English. But he says the biggest issue is a cultural thing. They still are having a hard time grasping the cultural differences and you even kind of touched on it earlier when you said you know it’s made in China. Sometimes people think that’s a low quality. Well, that’s a lot of times the quality in the West is acceptable quality for an American is different than an acceptable quality for someone in China. And I used to make a crepe maker and I remember the crepe maker. I sent an inspection and there’s some scratches on the side of the crepe. It’s on the bottom, so if it’s sitting on the counter you’d never see it. And my factory’s like what’s the big deal here? The thing works, it heats up, it makes crepes, it does it makes pancakes, does all the things. What’s the big deal? I’m like no, if someone in the US gets that and buys that and they’re going to return it and say, and this is used, or whatever, but in their mind there’s nothing wrong and it’s selling them to the Chinese market might’ve been okay, but selling it to the West wasn’t. Do you do you see that as well? There’s almost like two different standards. Uh, you know people say, go to, uh, uh, 1688, you know it’s a different pricing than you get on Alibaba. It’s almost like it’s a different standard, it’s a different type of packaging or there’s something. Some cost cut somewhere.
Isaac:
Yeah, I’m happy you brought that up because obviously a lot of people like making content, all that kind of stuff. They’re like don’t use Alibaba, use 1688, and like you’re gonna get better pricing. It’s like okay, like yes, but like there probably is a catch. That because there is very different understanding or very different quality and expectations for China market, which is what 1688 is built for. It’s mostly for domestic market and for foreign export. One of my biggest sourcing tips that I recommend people do is when you’re going and sourcing, you’re looking for manufacturers, you’re not looking for product. When you’re sourcing for the right manufacturer, look at their export countries. If they’re 80% domestic market, right, or the 80% Western market is a huge difference in their understanding of the needs, right and the wants of the foreign consumer, the American consumer. And you’re going to have a lot more of these quality issues. You’re going to have a lot more sizing issues. You’re going to have a lot more of these conversations of being like what do you mean? It’s fine, there are going to be scratches on the bottom because they don’t have the experience.
Isaac:
It’s just a very different culture. It’s the complete. It’s as far as you can get in a lot of ways. So, um, 100. But and so, yeah, for me, like a lot of times, the best factories, if you’re talking about, like you trying to produce premium product I’m not saying some people are like I want the cheapest possible product and like my mark, that then that’s my goal. Okay, then yeah, go into 1688, talk to a factory focus on domestic market and like maybe that they get an export license just to work with you, type of thing, right, but um, I like, if I’m producing premium product, I like to work with factories that speak good english, that focus on western markets and that have a really strong understanding of like of what it takes to sell to, you know, let’s say, American buyers.
Kevin King:
What about people? I’m sure you get this on your, on your channel too. People like are afraid to send money to China. I see this all the time. They’re ordering 500 units of something, some small MOQ, and it’s $3,000 or something, and they’re just so scared that they’re going to get ripped off. Do you see a lot of that happening? I mean, in my experience it’s very rare. I mean, yes, there’s some scammers here and there, but I think a lot of people are just because they don’t understand China. It’s the flip, it’s the opposite for this side. They’ve never been there. They don’t understand China. They only understand it from the movies and they think of Bruce Lee or something, and that’s their version of China. Or people in the rice fields leaning over with a big ox behind them that’s their vision of China. Whereas China today is, the big cities especially, are way more sophisticated than anything in the United States From a technological point of view, from how nice they are. There’s some amazing stuff in China that most people that have never been there don’t realize.
Isaac:
Yeah, I mean, it’s literally the coolest, nicest cities in the world in all the ways. You look at the skylines and your jaw drops and that’s why I love posting stories going around China and there’s like 100-story hotels and the craziest views and light shows because they really are so, so advanced. It’s not the auction or the race field. As for sending money to China, yeah, yeah, like again, it’s where I would say that you should be careful and I hear people getting scammed is sending money to non-China, like not China, like sending money to like a lot of like these, like developing countries or south asian countries, um, where there is more less standardization, infrastructure and stuff like that. Um, and you, you really have to be careful and know your factory and you know somebody there, but the China, like you’re pretty consistently going to get your stuff. And the other nice thing is that a lot of factories are on Alibaba and if you go and you transact through Alibaba, you at least have protection there, right where you’re going to have Alibaba trade assurance. You know which is hit or miss like from my actual, but you’re at least going to like it’s hit or miss in the sense that, like you are filing an appeal because there’s scratches underneath your you know waffle maker and people are like I want a full refund on this.
Isaac:
I was going to be like, no, maybe we’ll give you a slight discount, um, but it does give you the protection of being like, hey, I’m gonna send ten thousand dollars to this entity in China and I’m gonna receive some type of good, right. So Alibaba is kind of like this, like fantastic intermediary body and, in a sense, like state of law, because, because they have this whole process, um, where you can put, if you really like fill up, take the time to fill out all the fields and all the details within the actual order listing of when the product’s going to ship, all the product specifications. You attach all the documentation to it. Then you can always open up an appeal there and, from a secondary process, you can even transact through credit cards for transactions under $25,000 on Alibaba. And that’s really good for the new entrepreneur as well working with a new factory, because now you have a secondary layer of protection where you can always call up Chase Bank and be like, hey, I never got my goods.
Kevin King:
There’s also services like Plastique that actually you can pay by credit card even if they don’t take credit card. And Plastique, well, they charge a 3% fee roughly, and then they’ll turn around and they’ll actually wire the money out, and so you have a little bit of protection there. So can you explain what Guangxi is and the importance of it in the Chinese culture?
Isaac:
Yeah, I mean, it’s really all about, uh, building a relationship, um, with your manufacturer, and I think people don’t realize that, like trust and relationship is really the name of the game when it comes to manufacturing. You really want to go and build a friendship with your factory and, like people think it’s very transactional in China and sometimes it can be, but I think that you know so, certain factors we’ve been working with for five plus years and the strength that you can build with them from a long-term perspective because, at the end of the day, they’re your long-term partner, you’re in business with them. So if you’re able to go and build that strong partnership, you can have a lot of success.
Kevin King:
It’s the importance of actually visiting China at some point, maybe not before your first order, but at some point. Going and actually sitting down, having a meal, going to the factory for a visit goes a long ways in their mind of giving you some priority treatment and respect.
Isaac:
Exactly, and that’s why, like I even say like, if you can’t get to China, like hop on a video call, like do a lot more face to face conversation, have them show you around the factory, like talking about your day, talking about like the things you like, because you’re just slowly like building that friendship. And when you go to China, like if you’re, if you’re, if you’re doing you’re purchasing over a 100k year, like you know honestly, like I think that’s probably the breaking point being like okay, I should probably go and like talk to this factory because you’ll be able to go and at least save, you know, in what it costs you to get there. Right, you’ll be able to save that in in cost, but it’s also going to give you so much more visibility, understanding of the manufacturer and that’s going to really help you get to the next level within your business.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I used to, I to. I used to when I was dealing with one of my I think it was that actually crate making factory. I don’t I don’t deal with it anymore but the sales woman used to actually send me pictures of like her on vacation during the dragon boat festival and stuff like that and I thought it was the weirdest thing, is like. And then she would ask me do you have any pictures from your recent thing? And I thought it was so kind of weird. It’s like in in the west where you usually keep you keep those relationships business to business. You know you don’t really bring your personal life in, but in places like China, bringing that in can be. It is a major thing.
Isaac:
A hundred percent. Yeah, and especially like when I was I was running my company in college, I would literally be like send it, like Facetiming my factories from like the bar and just like having to meet my friends and stuff like that, because, think about it like they love American culture. I actually just made a video about this and I’ll post it soon, where it’s like I’m showing like the MLB store in China. So there’s like, if you don’t know what the MLB store is, it’s like the Major League Baseball store. There’s 800 of them in China and they’re literally stores. It’s just like clothing was just like New York Yankees, like full step and repeat, throughout the entire clothes. And so I think people think like within this trade war, they’re like, oh my God, China hates us, all this stuff. It’s like, no, you talk to the average Chinese person and they’re going to talk your ear off about American basketball and they’re going to love American culture. And uh, you know, we saw that with like I should have speed coming to China and all that kind of stuff. So they love any type of view into that. So you know, you can go and show them what it’s like. You know, for me like living in a frat house in a college town that like is like blows their mind, and then it changes things. Because then it’s like okay, let’s say they screw you over, you stopped doing business so they can’t get your pricing. They’re not just losing a customer at this point, Now they’re losing their cool American friend that they eventually want to hang out with when they come to China.
Kevin King:
Do you ever have a lot of your suppliers come to the US? I’ve had that happen, where they come over for a show in Vegas and then they don’t realize that the people live in Miami. They think it’s just like an hour drive away. Hey, we’re here. You want to meet for dinner? Well, no, that’s like five and a half hour flights and you know a few more things. I can’t quite, quite do that you ever see that happen to, where they just don’t quite understand the scope of, uh, the size of the US or something?
Isaac:
I think it’s all the movies I mean plus some, you know, oh, but they, uh, yes, a lot of times they’ll be like, like great, I’ll meet you soon, I’ll be in New York next week and it’s like I’m not in New York, like I live in Texas, but but a lot of times I mean, I’ve had like a really strong relationship factors like they’ll make a trip out, like they’ll come out to Texas or Florida, wherever it is to, to see us. Um, if we need to have that meeting, but also that’s like the benefit of going to the shows especially if there are shows in Las Vegas or whatever it is is, at this point, like what we do is like you know, we have a lot of the factories that we know we’re going to work with and we have, you know, we have our supply chains built out. Trying to meet with them as much as possible is is the way to go, and a lot of times I go to these trade shows just to see the suppliers, like not necessarily to find new suppliers, it’s it’s really just a way to do as much face-to-face time with the factories and just catch up, because I mean, at least for me, I’ll be sourcing for the next 50 years. This is all I’m going to be doing. I love it. So my goal is I want to be working with these factories for 50 years and just build these ridiculously strong relationships where we’re really like business partners and I just know that’s going to really pay off in the long run.
Kevin King:
What is it that you love about it? I mean, when you said that I’m gonna be doing this for 50 years, you had a little uh, uh, get up in your step and a little smile on your face, is it? Do you love the hunt? Do you love the challenge? Do you love the international business flavor? What flair? What is it that drives you?
Isaac:
It’s all of it. I love being in factories. That’s one thing. It’s the same reason why people love TikTok is they love the behind the scenes of how things are made or how things are done. So it’s the same idea. When you go inside a factory, you’re seeing how a product is made. From a young age, I always loved the arbitrage of selling product, and selling. You know, and being like I can get something for this price, I can hunt for a lower price for this and then sell it. You know it’s a fundamental business, but like it’s too extreme when you’re working directly with a factory. So and the international business is just very interesting to me you know you go to China, like we were talking about. You go to China for the first time. You think it’s going to be oxes and rice fields, and you go in and you see, like you walk into Shanghai and you’re like, oh my God, this is like the most insane skyline I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And so you know, when you add all those together, you get a pretty, pretty cool, pretty cool job.
Kevin King:
So when, when it comes to you, you’re going into these factories and showing you know some of the behind the scenes, I would imagine some of these factories are like no, no, I don’t want you to be showing my factory floor and how, how we do stuff, because I know, like at Canton fair, I don’t. If I go to Canton fair I’ve been a couple times I don’t like sourcing at Canton fair itself, I like seeing what people can do. But then I always ask the guys what do you have behind the counter there? Because they don’t put up the good stuff in the fair because all their competition is coming by scoping them out. So the good stuff is either behind the counter or it’s like take a visit out to their factory, if it’s nearby, and actually see what they have to actually get the good stuff. And the same goes for I hear a lot on Alibaba. You know there’s, like you said earlier, there’s a ton of suppliers in Alibaba, but a lot of times the best ones are not on Alibaba because they don’t need that work or they don’t have an English-speaking person, and they’re the ones they’re deeper into the uh into the woods, so to speak, but they, they have enough business, they don’t need to go out and strike. That, which means they’re pretty good at what they do. So how, from a from a seller’s point of view, how, what are some strategies that you like to use to actually really dig out the best yeah, products or suppliers?
Isaac:
Yeah, you’re completely right. Um, the best factories are not on Alibaba. Uh, because if you think about it from like who is the average buyer on Alibaba? Is is kind of like a. They almost call them like not even buyers. They call them like consumers. Like it’s like a retail buyer, like retail in the sense of like people coming in and trying to buy one piece or buy 50 pieces of something. And if you’re producing for the best product for the biggest brands in the world, you’re going to be like pretty busy consistently with those really, really big customers. You’re not going to care for the smaller businesses starting out. So when you’re working with the big factories, you’re actually almost like applying to work with them. You’re like giving like your case of like why they should accept you as a customer. And that’s a big part of like our agency. I think that’s like one of the main things we provide for our agency is the fact that we have the relationships with these factories that are on Alibaba that will not answer their email. That will never work with you. But because we have group volume across our customers, we can like kind of slot you in to the production and so to find these kinds of factories, you know you have to typically like a place like Canton Fair. They’re not going to be, cause it’s again, it’s such a big show and there’s such a low barrier to entry and there’s so many people they don’t want to deal with that kind of stuff. They’re going to be at the more niche shows.
Isaac:
So what’s a good strategy is, if you’re within a specific niche um, let’s say you’re doing like pet products, right, or even go more niche like pet clothing go and start doing research and see and talk to all your suppliers and be like what churches do you guys go to, right, and then you might consistently see oh, we don’t go to the Canton fair, we all go to this one pet apparel show right in in Vegas or in Shanghai once a year, and then those new shows are might be where the good factories actually are. Additionally, you’re going to go through like import records so you can use platforms like import Yeti and there’s a lot of other ones out there, like sourceready.com, which is really great, and you can actually go through the import records and see where the top many top brands are manufacturing their products, because all that’s public right, and then you can reach out to the factories that way. And then you’re also right with the trade shows. You go to the shows or Canton fair, they’re not putting the newest stuff out there because all the competitors are there. They don’t want you know that exposure into it. So a lot of factories in the beginning were very hesitant to go and let me film and show, show it around. But now that I have like the following and they see that I could post a video, like I’ve had videos where I post one video and the factory gets 5,000 inquiries right now that’s a lot. It’s a lot of small inquiries but yeah, like 5,000 people will then like go and like inquire to like reach out with them so they’re seeing okay, this is the way now to go and a way for us to market and the negative implications of showing the factory is outweighed by the opportunity that comes with it. So now we can actually like charge factories to go and film inside and that helps pay for our production costs and it becomes more of like a whole business side.
Kevin King:
Do they try to control a lot of what you’re shooting and like, really try to just kind of do your pre-editor or the messaging for you, or you allowed us a lot of freedom to just kind of go in there and, as long as you’re not like slamming them or something you know, do, do what you want.
Isaac:
That’s where it’s getting trickier, where it’s like if, if we’re getting paid right to go and show a factory, then they’re like oh, you know, we want to show this, but we’ve been, we’ve been sticking pretty strong with being like look, if you, if you want us to come, we need that creative freedom here. Um, and the thing is, we’re also really trying to work with like good factories, cause like, if you’re working with like a bad factory and it’s just not nice inside or whatever it is, and like then you’re going to run into this issue of being, they’ll be like don’t film this area, cause it’s like ugly it’s like but when were working with the factories that produce the biggest brands in the world, and like, and we’re going there because they built such fantastic factories and for the fantastic infrastructure, um, those factories, like are very proud and they’re like yeah, throw them away, like, show off how amazing, because we’re proud of what we’re able to build.
Kevin King:
Talk about the value of uh inspections or having someone. I just heard something the other day that you can actually pay uh, in a lot of Chinese factories or a lot of suppliers, uh, or manufacturers, they will pay someone like 500 dollars a week or a month, I forget what. I think it’s a week to actually sit in the factory like it’s like a representative of for me it’s a Chinese person that speaks the language, but they actually literally like go with their lunch pail to the factory every day and sit there on my behalf just kind of watching the production line. Is that true? Does that really happen that much?
Isaac:
Yeah. So I think my number one tip, number one tip for sourcing products and dealing with overseas manufacturers is hiring third-party QC and quality control. Um, it’s not expensive, like yes, it’s different if you’re hiring. If you’re hiring full-time and you have people coming like you have to be doing a lot of volume with that factory to uh have the influence, to be like we’re gonna have our own private QC person that comes every day, like you need to be doing production with them, which has to be going every day, right? Um, but it’s very standardized. It’s very expected if you are a professional company to hire a QC agent, third party, to go in uh and so like a lot of factories even have like separate QC, third party QC rooms, so like for your QC people to go with their representative and go through product and test. So how it works is it costs about between $150 and $300 for a man day and what that means. It’s like a day of work. So this person is going to go. They’re typically going to. You’re going to work with an agency, typically like a QC agency. Then they’re going to deploy someone who has expertise within your specific niche of product, that’s, within that geographical area and because manufacturing in China is focused around geographical areas. That typically lines up.
Isaac:
So if you’re producing electronics, right, the QC agent is from Shenzhen, so they can just easily get to that factory work the day and they’re going to go and they’re going to follow your specification of the product. You can go and give them all the details of these are the typical defects that we see. This is our product specifications, the testing requirements, all that kind of stuff. And then they’re going to go and start testing product. And they’re going to go and start testing product and you can have them go and you can hire enough people where they test every single product in the production floor or they’re going to do maybe 5% or 10% of the goods and see if they’re seeing defects across the manufacturing process. You can have them go at different times. You can have them go mid-production, you can have them go pre-shipment, you can have them go in and do odds of the factory. So most powerful thing you can ever do is hire a good QC agency and have them go and test the product and check the product before it leaves China, because once it goes and gets to Amazon or gets to your warehouse in the US, it’s very difficult to then go and fix the product or get reparations for the issue.
Kevin King:
Yeah, usually on my POs I’ll actually say there’s going to be an inspection that has to meet these different requirements. You know of minor defects, major defects and so on. And if it doesn’t, they have to fix the problems and then they pay for the second inspection for it to pass. And sometimes they’ll fight back against that. But usually a good factory is like no, we’ll stand by, stand by, work, and then I put in something that if something does get by, um, because maybe, uh, you know this inspection wasn’t as random as it was supposed to be and they kind of influenced that. This is the. They knew some stuff coming first off the line wasn’t so good, so they kind of moved that around and gave the inspector some boxes from the end. Uh, and some stuff does make it through because it’s inevitable not everything’s going to be exactly perfect and it makes it through to the US. If I get returns in the US, I put in my POs that you actually they will replace those or give me a credit or replace those on a future order, and usually a good factory will agree to do that. But what about? I’ve used a factory for five, six orders over the last year. Never been a problem. They’ve always passed inspection. So I decided you know what, I’m going to save my 300 bucks and I’m not going to do an inspection. Uh, on this sixth order, how big a mistake is that?
Isaac:
I think it’s a huge mistake, especially if, like—
Kevin King:
You see it all the time, though, all the time.
Isaac:
You, you always, you know, you think, okay, no, it’s all been good, everything’s going right. But you, you never know, like, what can happen within that last production and what changes can happen. And you know like, especially if you don’t, if you don’t truly understand your bill of materials and like what goes into your product, because sometimes the specific material that you were ordering before is out of stock or whatever it is, or gets more expensive, and the factory is just like, oh, we’re just gonna swap, like, so if you don’t give the exact specifications of, like, this is the exact component, every little—
Kevin King:
It’s like a zipper.
Isaac:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
If you don’t say this is x percent nickel and x percent bronze or whatever, they might substitute something out because to them saving half a cent is major. Um versus you look as like it’s just half a cent, but those little things add up and add up to the functionality and the quality and everything else.
Isaac:
So you’re completely right. So if you don’t lay it out like I need the YKK zipper and all this kind of stuff and then they swap it out in the sixth production and then that can mess up the entire product, like that’s the issue of not hiring the QC, and what we’re seeing now is more lean QC solutions as well for when you don’t need the full full inspection. So I’ve been seeing some QC agencies that do half inspections. So what that means is they’ll do an inspection for like $125 or $150, and they’ll give you a half-man day and they’ll line it up with other productions, with other factories nearby. That’s been kind of interesting. I’ve also seen this trend of doing like virtual QC. So instead of having a factory agent go, they’re going to hop on like a WeChat video and go through product that way. No, I’m not vouching for these methods necessarily, but like, if you’re really really tight on cash, there are different ways for you to go and still get some level of of checks and quality control to. You know, make sure the product is good. But like, if you can and I think you can always afford it you know people are like oh, it’s such a big part, like no, you have to factor this into your to your product cost, because it’s going to cost you way, way more if you don’t more if you don’t.
Kevin King:
So, when people are looking to move outside of China, are you seeing it? Vietnam, which is a lot of Chinese owned factories, are moving over there. The same along the coast or not the coast the border of Mexico and Texas, for example there’s a lot of Chinese owned little industrial areas, or it’s Chinese factories, and they send people over. What are you seeing is probably you know if you had to move it out. I know it’s product dependent, but just as a general rule of thumb, what are the next up and coming manufacturing centers? Is it Vietnam? Is it Indonesia? Is it Colombia? Is it Turkey? I think you might have mentioned something about Africa. There’s a lot of stuff going on over there. At one point, what are you seeing? What are your thoughts on that?
Isaac:
Well, I think that it depends if we’re talking about like smaller niche production or like large scale production. I think if you’re like an apparel, easy places to start moving production to, if you’re like a smaller brand, are going to be places like a Columbia, like a Turkey, like a Portugal, where there’s already been a lot of this like smaller manufacturing. If we’re talking about like what places can like replace China to an extent, it’s going to be India, based off the population and labor. I think they’re still far. They’re still far away from like being at the same quality control and having the same level of infrastructure and producing like that, that level of product. But India is growing like very, very, very fast and it might be like the fastest growing country. Um, so I’m definitely looking heavily at India in the long term as being that that kind of replacement. And uh, Africa is is very exciting as well. Uh, we’re starting to do a lot more manufacturing, uh, in places like Egypt, uh, places like Kenya and Morocco is growing a lot as well, and the benefits of Africa is that there’s a lot of like free trade agreements now so that you can actually it’s, it’s there’s no duties on for majority of African countries into the US. Now there’s going to be a 10% reciprocal tariff, but saving on a duty cost. Sometimes your duty costs can be 30% just from there. So you have the low labor costs. You have a lot of development, you have a lot of Chinese infrastructure that’s coming into that there as well, and you have, uh, some level of raw materials, so and like, yeah, and the low labor cost. So, look, there’s always opportunity to go and diversify your supply chain.
Isaac:
I think every brand should be thinking about diversification, even if it’s not okay. We’re going to move all manufacturing. We’re going to set up contingency supply chains. We’re going to start moving 5%, 10% of our manufacturing outside of China, because you need to start doing this in advance. It’s just like getting money from the bank. They always say, like, get money when you don’t need it, right, like, ask, ask for, like increased credit lines when you’re when business is good, because when business is bad, they’re not going to give it to you. Same thing with your supply chain. Like everyone that’s trying to move their manufacturing right now is having a hard time because you have to like, build these relationships, these factories, and because they’re not going to give you the capacity, the good ones, they’re going to give it to their existing clients. So building it, building your global supply chain and your diversified supply chain when you don’t need it, is the way to have success in the long term. Because when things do hit the fan, like it just did, it’s very easy for you to go and take that 10% of your production and ramp up to 50.
Kevin King:
So how do I cut my production time? I call it my factory and I say I got to reorder here. There we got the molds done, there we got everything done. Maybe they got to get some raw materials in, but maybe you know, it’s nearby, it’s not too far away, and they tell me, okay, it’s for five weeks production time, when I know when they actually put my stuff on the line, it’s two days of work. So they’ve got other stuff ahead. They’ve got a whole schedule ahead of me of other clients. How can I jump the line? What can I do, relationship-wise, financial-wise, gifting-wise, in little red envelopes or whatever it is to actually, so that I can jump the line and get my stuff done in two weeks instead of six weeks? Is it just based. Is there any trips there other than being the biggest guy at the factory, the biggest client at the factory or something?
Isaac:
Yeah, it’s a good question. So the first step is understanding your manufacturing process. So if you’re going to break down the five weeks, you should understand exactly what that five week consists of. How much of that time is ordering or producing the raw materials, how much of it’s going into actual assembly. So, like you know, like you put like a Gantt chart, however you want to visualize it understand it. So if you realize that majority of the time that comes into your production is ordering and preparing the fabrics or the raw materials for your product, then an easy way to cut that down is saying, hey, I’m going to give you guys a deposit, let’s pre-purchase four months worth of the raw materials. I want you guys to warehouse that for me, so then we can go and easily go and pull that product and produce it as needed. Now the other part of that is also, if we’re talking about, let’s say, apparel-based products, are you doing custom manufacturing for your fabrics or your raw material or using stock? Because if they were able to order stock from a supplier versus having to go and custom produce it for you, pulling the stock fabrics is going to be a way faster process because it might take a month to produce the fabric from scratch versus just being able to order from a wholesaler. So have that conversation with the factory. The next part is going to be giving them a good schedule of when you’re going to be placing the orders.
Isaac:
So this is something I learned when I was actually managing production at our factory in China was that the most important part of managing production within the factory is keeping production consistent, because you have a lot of fixed costs. When you’re manufacturing, you have all your labor and so you need to keep it like very flat to an extent where every month you’re doing the same amount of production, because that’s how you stay profitable. If you do too much production, you have to pay a lot of overtime and your factory is kind of in disarray and you’re just like it’s just, it’s hectic. Yeah, it’s profitable, but like again, the overtime hurts, versus if you’re under that kind of threshold. Now you have all your fixed costs and now you’re losing money. So a lot of times we would do projects with clients at a break even, because it meant that we’re filling up a production schedule, because that’s how important it is to keep production.
Isaac:
So if you are able to go and work with your factory and set up a proper plan of saying, every single month or every single two months, I’m expecting to buy this amount of product. This is what it looks like and you set up that plan with them and you relatively stick to that plan. Yes, there can be variations of saying look, I told you I was going to order this much, but I need to cut it down. Whatever it is, you give them ample time. Now they’re able to properly have you on the schedule and slot you, and so they’re able to then plan for that and then that, and then they’re going to have the raw materials ready and that’s. You’re going to go and cut your production time, maybe from five weeks down to two weeks. And then, lastly, yes, money goes a long way. So what that means is is think about like this you’re going and you’re working with your factory and you’ve been hounding them on price. You know you’re, you’re just one of those guys who just every single time, it’s just push, push, push, push, push, which is fine, you can negotiate. So let’s say they’re making a 10% margin on your production, and then new guy comes onto the block and they’re like look, I need the production, I need this done, um, and they make a 40 margin or 50 margin on this new guy’s production. But the guy’s like, look, but I need it done ASAP, I need it done in three weeks. What do you think might happen? Well, don’t you think that maybe that they’re gonna go and push your production back a little bit because you’re the annoying customer they’re making 10% on because they want to get the project on the 40% margin. That has a tighter timeline, yeah, so offering well, first off like having a relationship with the factories is important, so they don’t do that but then offering, hey, look, I’ll pay you an extra X amount of dollars just get this done on time, can go a long way, because then they’re going to prioritize your project and they’re going to somehow miraculously work these crazy shifts and get it done.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I’ve actually done stuff on my purchase orders, whereas if it’s not done by a certain date I get a discount for every day it’s late as well and that sometimes will motivate. If they all agree to that, that sometimes will motivate them to meet the targets as well. What do you see happening with AI and sourcing? I know I don’t know if you want to talk about or not, but there’s a new tool that you said you mentioned to me before that’s coming out and just some other stuff that’s happening in the AI. How do you see that influencing sourcing and supply chain?
Isaac:
Yeah for sure. So AI, I think from a sourcing perspective, especially when I first looked at like AI a few years ago, I was like, oh, we’re like physical product, like that. AI is for all the digital stuff. Like you know, it’s not going to shock the industry that much, but then we started seeing all the new tools and implementing all the new tools within our sourcing process as an agency and it’s mind-blowing how effective it is. So the benefit of AI within product sourcing is the fact that what sourcing is, it’s research in a lot of ways. Right, you’re going and trying to do the research into what factories are out there across the entire world and then doing the research and then reaching out to the right factories, asking the right questions and then being able to go and spit out okay, here’s pricing and details from 15 factories that we reached out to throughout the world and then deciding which ones are going to be the right fit. So right now, we have like a full office of people that are just doing this process manually of going, doing the research, going through databases, finding the right ones, inquiring all that kind of stuff. With AI, that’s completely automated now, because what AI is able to do is able to go and scrape every single database out there. Factories and it’s able to go and build this really, really strong again index or database of all these factories outside of just Alibaba, because Alibaba is a pay to play. Alibaba makes its money from suppliers paying to be on the platform. So if you’re not paying, then you’re not going to be on the list. So AI is able to scrape even more.
Isaac:
Then it’s able to go and search through millions of factories within the database and then say okay, these are the best factories potentially for you, based off of the parameters that you’re giving, and the parameters might be like I’m looking for this kind of product, these kind of product images, and I want this quality level and I want the factory that works with these brands, etc. It’s able to go and then the kicker is that it’s then able to go and inquire for you, and this is where it’s going to get better and better is then inquire with an AI agent to then go and reach out to the factories and get all the information, and so it could even talk in a localized language. Maybe it’s going to talk in Vietnamese to a Vietnamese supplier, which might get you even better pricing right, and then negotiate with it and get all the details and be like well, what’s the MOQ, what certifications do you have? And then the agent can then just go and give you a printout of like okay, here’s all the factories and here’s all the pricing and here’s all the specifications and all this kind of stuff, and so the entire process was automated with AI and just replacing like half our office. So I think it’s very exciting from a sourcing perspective and there’s a lot of really, really great tools that are coming out and doing that. One of them is like source ready, but there’s a lot of really cool tools that are using AI to make this process just super efficient.
Kevin King:
Never a dull moment in sourcing or logistics is there.
Isaac:
You think that there’s a lot of dull moments, right. When you think of like sourcing is so unsexy, but it’s a crazy world. Maybe that’s why. I like it, you know.
Kevin King:
That’s why you like it. That’s why it brings a smile to your face. Well, Isaac, this has been fun. I appreciate you taking some time out of your face. Well, Isaac, this has been fun. I appreciate you taking some time out of your beautiful little escape to Bali there and talking to me back here in Austin. But you’ll be back in Austin later this year, I think you said. But I really appreciate you coming on and sharing. And how do people, if they want to watch your channel or reach out to you if they need some sourcing help? I know you said you don’t deal with a lot of brand new people. It’s more the bigger guys you prefer to deal with. But if they want to reach out, learn more about your company or maybe hook up with you guys or even just watch the channel, what’s the best ways to do that?
Isaac:
Yeah, for sure. I’m just at the Sourcing Guy on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all that kind of stuff, so just shoot me a follow there and you can always just kind of inquire through that. Imprint Genius is our agency and the sourcingguide.com as well, but ultimately happy to give as much guidance as possible to everyone trying to get started with their sourcing journey, or if you’re already doing tens of millions of dollars. Maybe we can help you as well.
Kevin King:
Awesome, Well, thanks, Isaac. I appreciate you coming on, man.
Isaac:
Yeah, thanks for having me. Cheers man.
Kevin King:
Things I’ve been saying for years is the money is made in the sourcing, not in the selling, and hopefully you understood a little bit of that from what Isaac was saying sourcing is. I know it brings a smile to his face, but it’s one of the least glamorous spots or least sexy things to do when it comes to selling products, but it’s one of the most important, and there’s a lot of ins and outs you got to understand there. A lot of little nuances that can make a huge, huge difference. Hopefully you got a lot out of this episode. Something else you can get a lot out of if you subscribe to my newsletter, Billion Dollar Sellers, BillionDollarSellers.com. It’s free. Every Monday and Thursday, a brand new edition comes out totally free. Lots of tips and strategies and news about what’s happening in the Amazon world. I think you’ll really like it. So go to head to billiondollarsellers.com and sign up for that. We’ll be back again next Thursday with another brand new episode of the AM/PM podcast. And remember value is not what you think it is. It’s what your customers believe it is. It’s not what you think it is. Value is what your customers believe it is. See you again next week.
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