Right! I am a ONE MAN business, and I sell to anywhere in the world, from the US. Even China and Russia. (Well, OK, not Palestine and North Korea.) I have a FedEx account, PayPal and a credit card merchant account, and run my own web store. I get a LOT of international orders, it runs around 30 international right now. My items are less expensive than a P&P machine, but if I can do it, really any business can.
You do have to come up with a harmonized tariff number for your items. The Dept. of Commerce can help you get the number, but it is a lot faster to look it up on their web site.
JonDo your products need to comply with regulations as varied and complex as those of electronics and if so, do they? Do you comply with the tax laws of the countries you sell to?
Literally, not munitions. Maybe a hint of dual-use though, as I sell servo and stepper controller boards and servo amplifiers. The only place I really got worried is I had a potential customer in Palestine, and I had a strong feeling that the Israelis would not let servo control hardware in, what with the "metal shops" that make rockets to shoot at Israel. So, I was really glad when that customer just went away.
Tax laws of countries I sell to? That is the CUSTOMER's problem! I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse. For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties. But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%. I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.
I have to pay taxes to two US states (the one where I reside and one where I sold stuff to a state university) I REALLY don't want to have to pay taxes to foreign countries. As far as I know, with no presence in any foreign country, no reps or agents, I do not have to deal with any of that.
Jon
Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.
How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?
You get a signature on delivery & accept payment by Paypal or into your bank etc before shipping.
But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.
Tax laws of countries I sell to? That is the CUSTOMER's problem! I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse. For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties. But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%. I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.
You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country.
A new, affordable tool for building your own boards:
Usually most countries assign tax and regulation compliance duty to importers (which is your final buyer if it's a direct international order), so you can sell to any country as long as you are complying to US EAR rules. Will your customer evade use tax? Will you customer risk running a non CE certified gear? That's their responsibility, not yours.
You will be guilty if you help them to dodge tax by declaring fake CN22 value, but other than that, I see no risk at all selling internationally. As a side note, almost all Chinese sellers declare $0 gift on CN22, and so far I've never heard of anyone got caught. Foreign laws don't work in China, and the buyer has plausible deniability. Win win situation for both seller and buyer, and fuck the government.
...and speaking of feeders, I don't want to cut pieces of tape off reels and mount them on separate feeders for this machine. I'd rather it either work with just pieces of tape stuck to the bed or with tape right off the reel. The last thing I want to do when I want to run off 10 of some PCB is start by loading up a bunch of feeders for my manual PnP.
The foot-pedal cord can become an issue and your foot keeps losing the pedal, unless you use a massive, captive housing flavor ... matter of preference I think ...
You are correct. The issue is the customer that ignores your message on the check-out screen of your web-store saying "please do not ask us to mark this item as a gift, we cannot do so an such requests will be ignored", then writes "please mark this as a gift"... then when your $2,800 pick and place machine arrives, they send you an irate email demanding you pay the 500 Euro import taxes they just got charged - and when you refuse and point to the note on the website, they get more angry and refuse to pay the customs fee. A day or two later, you get a chargeback on your credit card account or on PayPal, but your $2800 machine sits in customs for months until you get a call asking if you want to pay the $300 to get it shipped back.
... You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country. The next day they say it must be lost and want you to send a replacement...
You get angry and vow never to ship without a signature again... but now you're back to people screaming bloody murder for "ripping them off" by charging $500 for shipping - even though that is what DHL is charging you.
You see, international trade ain't hard at all. It is just about having the proper attitude.
Quite right.
My company is only small with just a couple of employees & we ship product overseas all the time without hassles. We offer support from our Australian Office. We have an address in the USA for customers to ship any faulty product to which then sends it back to Australia for examination. The big thing to remember is that your product must be RELIABLE. The costs involved in warranty claims therefore becomes insignificant compared to the profits made by selling to overseas customers.
Does your product require certifying, conformity testing or anything similar and, if yes, is it done?
Manual P&P greatly relies on steady hands; nature of the beast! (Gen II may address this!)
The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.
The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.
Due to the tax and certification overheads, we decided to stick with the US market for now, but, we plan to partner up with an EU distributor, soon. Sorry for the inconvenience! you can take it up with the regulatory authorities making it rather impossible to work internationally unless you're Google!Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.
How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?
But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.
A cheap affordable pick and place machine, great...
I was watching the video and thinking "nice, now he is teaching the machine how to do the first pick and place..." then after some repeat placings I realized it was manual??
I'm sorry, but it seems a bit silly to do all that engineering into what is seemingly well constructed mechanics and then skip the the last step of putting in step motors and control to make it automatic.
My suggestion, add the step motors and control, ditch the custom screen in favor of a mobile application that can be used with any Android device and you have a winner product.