Transcription
So recently in our business, we've been changing tactics a little bit, and we've been sourcing a lot of products in North America. This is an angle which we think is really going to pay dividends on our business. In terms of the marketing, uh, we're really going to push that we are North American sourced. Uh, the supply chain, there's loads of benefits there as well, in terms of the cash conversion cycle being a lot quicker, and there's a bunch of other great upside for us sourcing products in the US.
Now, traditionally, we have sourced products in China, and we're going to continue to do that. A lot of success there, but there's other products that we're doing now, and other products that a lot of you guys can do, that can be sourced in North America. And to do that, it takes a couple of different skills compared to sourcing in China. So I wanted to run through six things that we're doing at the moment which has given us a lot of progress in the last few months, and it looks like it should work over the next couple of years. This is a long-term plan for us, uh, making kind of long-term partnerships with these suppliers.
So I'll dive straight in. The first thing that you want to do, you want to go to this website. You might not have heard of this website yet, it's kind of up and coming, and it is called Google. So Google is the obvious answer. Um, there are other websites, things like thomasnet.com or Thomas net.net. Um, Thomas net, I've never seen massive success with it, to be honest. You can go through a lot of suppliers on there, they're generally very antiquated, they're very slow to respond, or they don't respond at all, or they have enormous MOQs. So I don't really like it, to be honest. I'm sure some of you guys have found people on there, but for me, Google is just better. But I'm not talking page one of Google. I'm not talking you search, you search a product and a supplier, and it's the top result, it's a top paid spot, because a lot of these companies that we're looking for, they're not very good at the internet. But that isn't a bad thing. That means that you can get lower MOQs and they can be more flexible. So we're not saying page one, or even page two, or even page three of Google. We're going down, we're going to pages five, six, seven, ten, fifteen, even twenty. You want to go through all these pages, make a huge list, contact everyone, and you're going to see much more success and have much more flexibility, rather than just going for the top results, which 99% of people are also going for.
So the second thing that you want to be doing when you're searching Google, there's two phrases that you also want to include. So let's say it's your, your product, ingredient, or the main product you're going for, attach the word co-packer, or attach the word contract manufacturer. Now, these are generally pretty similar things. What they basically are, are facilities that specialize in co-packing and in manufacturing. So essentially, if you need to bring in different ingredients and different components of your product from other suppliers, you send it to this one facility, they're going to package it all together and get it ready for sale, and they are experts at this. Generally, we found if you don't search specifically for co-packers and contract manufacturers, a lot of other random crap that isn't related will come up on Google, and you are going to have to go deep into page 15, 20 to find these guys. You're better off searching specifically for co-packers and contract manufacturers, and you're going to move a lot faster.
Then the third tip is to get even more specific. And what I mean by that is searching state by state. So for example, I believe Utah is a hotbed for supplement producers. So you want to search Utah specific for these co-packers and for these contract manufacturers. I actually, for one of our products, I found the main ingredient, the main component for it. That took me to a state. It took me to New Mexico, in fact. I then searched for local co-packers in New Mexico. That led me to find a new one that I never would have come across, and that is the person that we're currently working with to make a bunch of products. If you do that, you'd also find that you save a bunch on transport costs because if you are doing heavy volume, a lot of units, you are going to have to buy, you know, a lot of ingredients, a lot of components. So saving that proximity and saving the, the distance that things need to drive. Another benefit of this is because we've sourced local co-packers to the main ingredient supplier, we're saving cost on transport. They haven't got very far to go. In fact, the one that we used, it was 7 miles from the main ingredient source to the co-packing facility. So we didn't actually pay anything to get the ingredients to the co-packer. The guy actually just drove himself and picked it up in his truck, which is very handy.
So the fourth tip I would advise is get creative. And what I mean by that is you might find co-packers in general, um, for example, co-packers that do food packaging, they specialize in human food. And I'm giving this example because this is exactly what happened with us. I found a co-packer that was close to the main ingredient source that I mentioned, and I dropped a message and he said, this is what we're trying to do, here's our product idea. Um, I know you do X at the moment, could you do Y? And just throw it out there, see what happened. Amongst a bunch of others that I contacted, he got back to me really quickly, uh, jumped on a call, which was another thing I'll get to in a minute, and now we're working with him. So we actually started a whole new product line that we're going to run through his co-packing facility. He never thought about getting into this niche, like we're in, wearing pets, as I just said previously. Um, but he can do it. So I went through his website, it didn't tell me that he could do it, but I just got a bit creative, and you can pose that question to them, which is very difficult to do when you're sourcing in China because generally you're going to want to go direct to source. It's a bit harder to have the communication, and they're not going to be as flexible as they are potentially in North America.
So the fifth thing, and I mentioned it a second ago, get on the phone. This is maybe the most important one and the best benefit that we've seen so far. Again, sourcing in China, you're going through WeChat, you're going through WhatsApp, you're going through maybe even Alibaba live chat, which is the worst platform on the internet for talking to anyone. Um, I don't know about you. I mean, I send a message and then it'll be 10 days later, they give me a notification, they actually replied within, within two hours. It's just a useless platform. So with these US suppliers, I'm finding them on Google, I'm dropping them a message, an email, but I'm actually following up with a call. So I just get, I like I said, I'm in Europe, bit of a time difference. You, I'm working into the evenings sometimes, you got to do that. I just put Skype credit on my phone and I give them a call. And that has saved us months, months and months of communication, like getting our idea across and sharing our vision, but also building a relationship. So we're now pretty friendly with a number of contract manufacturers, a number of suppliers in the US, and it just expedited the whole process. We got a product from, from idea. I found a product on Amazon, had the idea within 3 hours, I'd sourced the main ingredient, I'd had a call with a co-packer that we now ended up working with, and that product is in production right now. It's going to be launched in a couple of weeks. It's as insanely fast how you can move compared to China sometimes, where it can take a good few months. You got to ship over the samples as well. Now, look, we can, one thing obviously is, is the samples. You still need to do that. We have partners in the US, um, kind of brand ambassadors that we are sending product out to, but again, it's all very, very sped up because it's a lot closer in proximity. But getting on the phone, as I mentioned, we've done that numerous times now. I probably had four or five calls with him, not just on that first product, but then we gave him the vision for the brand. It turns out he actually has quite a big interest in our niche, and he's coming back to me with with opinions on what we're trying to do as well as advice on the kind of products we can, we can sell because he's, he's done products, uh, in this type of packaging. We're just in a different space. So he actually helped us out quite a lot as well. But that human interaction and building that relationship has been massively beneficial, just because you can get on the phone and you can really explain what you're trying to do together.
And number six, the last thing, ask them for their opinion and ask them to help you source. So we had a bunch of other product ideas, and they were just ideas. And I got the first couple of ones lined up. We have, there's two more in production at the moment, so that'll be three sourced in North America products we have live very shortly. But there's a bunch more, there's about five or six more in fact at the moment, and I just told him the ideas and he said, look, I can help you source these ingredients. I could have done it as well, it takes me a lot of time, right? So he, for really good value, went and sourced ingredients. So while I'm working on other products, he's gone out there, he's found the ingredients, he's brought it all together, and he's given me a quote to do everything. And that's just been massively expedited again. The whole, the whole process is sped up, and we now have an extra five or six products that we can get to market, and we are going to move on and get to market within the next few months. So having that resource, having them source for you, they're not like a, you know, it's not a sourcing agent where you're having to pay them an ongoing fee. We, we paid him for essentially some consultation. He's an expert, he found the ingredients way faster than I could, he knows what goes together, he knows where high quality ingredients can be sourced. He did that, and the whole process has been sped up.
So very quick one, hopefully that is helpful for a lot of you. Leave me some comments down below with any other questions about sourcing in the US. We are sourcing in, in Canada, and we've looked at Mexico as well. So it's not just the US, it's going to be anywhere, anywhere we find in North America. But honestly, anywhere we find where you can just get on the phone, all these rules apply to Europe, and they all apply to the UK. So we have some products we're looking at launching into the UK. I've done the exact same thing. I've got on the phone, it's been super easy, I've applied these exact same rules, and it just helped the whole process. So different style today, let us know if you like it. Like and subscribe. Do people still say that? I don't know. I don't care. Do it anyway, and I'll see you soon.