Mini Importation as it is popularly called in Nigeria is the business of buying small and portable products abroad and bringing them down to your country to resell to local buyers, users or consumers without having to travel abroad. Mini Importation is a branch of e-commerce and it is one of the best and hottest online/home business to look at in 2019.
Importation business generally is not new in Nigeria. However, only a few Nigerians actually knew about this lucrative business. I can still remember receiving a business card several years ago with a bold inscription “Importers, Exporters & General Merchandise”. For a moment, I thought within me “This guy must be a big man“. Actually, the importation business was a business exclusive to the Igbos (our brothers and sisters from the east). These people grew from bringing petty items into importing large containers load of goods; cars, electronics, clothes, and textile materials, frozen foods, furniture, building materials, and almost anything you can think of.
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It is no longer a secret that Nigeria is a consuming nation, always depending on imported goods to survive. Even the smallest things like toothpicks, earbud, chewing gum and sweet, knife and spoon, etc are all imported (Thanks to our government). In fact, if you want to know how many things that come into this country on daily basis, you don’t need to go to Apapa to count the number of containers coming in; just look at a young woman close to you especially the ones that call themselves slay queens. From Hair, eyelashes, Eyebrows, lipstick, face powder, earring, and necklace, bra, nails, eyeball, undies, to anything you can think of are all “Not Made in Nigeria”. Nigerians import these items mainly from China, USA, Dubai or the UK. This is why the Igbo men who knew about this business a long time ago are super rich, this is also one of the reasons they don’t want to leave Lagos because that is where their business and money is (Apapa wharf).
In this post, I want to expose to you free of charge, how you can make money importing things from abroad. However, this does not mean that you will make money and become super rich because you decided to import just “anything” you want with the hope that people will just rush and buy everything from you. No sir/ma! There are tips and techniques, steps as well as secrets to every business on the surface of the earth, whether online or offline.
Therefore, I will be showing you how to source good sellable products to import, how and where to sell your imported items/products as fast as possible, how to use different sales channels such Jumia, Konga and others for free, Social Media selling techniques (Facebook, Instagram, etc), how to sell your imported products fast using free and paid advertisement and many more.
Mini Importation Business in Nigeria – Steps and Processes
As I said earlier, Mini Importation is the business of buying products abroad and resell to local buyers in your country without having to travel abroad. The keyword here is “Having to Travel Abroad”. That is to say, you will be doing virtually everything from the comfort of your room. You don’t need any travel ticket or Visa to China or USA before you can become a mini importer.
Things You Need For Mini Importation.
In order to succeed in the importation business in Nigeria, the following are the items/materials you will need..
- Smartphone or Computer with Google Chrome Browser.
- E-commerce Website to Buy From
- Reliable Logistics/Shipping Company
- Startup Capital
- A dedicated Email address ( I will tell you why later)
SmartPhone/Computer with Google Chrome Browser:
Why Google Chrome? To me, it is the best mobile/web browser available at the moment. Apart from that, the Google Chrome browser has an inbuilt language translator to help you translate native websites (Chinese websites) to English easily. When I started mini importation, I didn’t know about some this. The Chinese have wholesale websites where their manufacturers sell their products at wholesale prices. Prices on these websites are so cheap that you will be wondering if they are genuine products. Unfortunately, these websites are in the Chinese language, therefore, you ordinarily need to understand their language before you can buy from there but with Google Chrome, this barrier has been broken.
E-commerce Website
This is the e-commerce website where you will be shopping from. Let me tell you that there a thousand and one websites out there that you can buy from but not all of them is good for business. Below are a few of the e-commerce websites I have personally shopped from; Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Walmart.com, Aliexpress.com, Alibaba.com, dhgate.com, lightinthebox.com, miniinthebox.com, taobao.com, 1688.com, etc.
Logistics/Shipping Company
This company will be in charge of shipping your products to Nigeria. I know you will ask me, Why not DHL, UPS or FedEx? DHL and other express courier companies above are reliable and fast but they are also very expensive, therefore will eat into your profit. Mini importers make use of logistics companies because they are not only fast, they are also affordable compared to the courier companies. Some Logistics companies can even help you source your products from Chinese websites, confirm that the products are genuine and help you make payment while you pay to them in Naira. Your job is just to tell them what you want and they do all the buying, packaging and shipping while you cross your leg and wait for your ‘container’ to land. Isn’t that awesome?
Startup Capital
You will need some money to buy and ship your products. 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k, etc depending on your strength and what you intend importing too.
Dedicated Email Address
You will need a dedicated email address for correspondences. I need to remind you that Chinese men and women are aggressively desperate when it comes to business so once you register on their website, they will ‘kill’ you with emails except you unsubscribe. As at today, I have received a total of 2043 emails from Miniinthebox.com alone, just 1 website o.
So far, I have been able to list out the things we need to successfully kickstart our mini importation business. In my next email, I will be practically showing you how to and where to source for cheap products that you can sell with up to 2X to 5X profit. Stay tuned!
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