Pratique du Shadowing: How Much Money My Importing Business Makes - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo

This is a warehouse holding millions of pounds worth of stock.

One of my companies imports and manufactures teddy bears and children's arts and crafts, and we sell it all over the UK.

I import from China, Turkey, and India.

And in this video, I wanna break down exactly how one of these businesses works, how much money they make, what's the cost of running that business, and how do we get our products to market?

Let's go.

For context, I just wanna show you some of the products that we're really proud to create.

So we create creative products, things that kids can do.

So we don't just make normal teddy bears, we make crazy looking teddy bears and traditional looking teddy bears, but the kids actually stuff them and make them.

And then they put their voices in a sound box and put them inside so they feel like they've got some ownership.

Then we do all of the outfits that the teddy bears wear.

My personal favourite, I've just designed this myself.

I'm like Donatella for Sartre.

And then we do pipe cleaners, all the colours of the rainbow.

We do colour feathers and we do foam stickers and these pom-poms that you use in the craft world, all designed for kids to be really active.

And then we started doing sand art as well.

So these pictures, you pull off each piece of paper and then decorate it with different colored sand.

This is our sand, and we make all the colors of the rainbow on sand as well.

What I wanted to get over on this video is the harsh reality

that I know people are going to say, comment on.

They're going to say, James, why don't you do this stuff in the UK?

Why do you need Turkey?

Why do you need China?

Why do you need India?

Well, you just can't find the workforce to make all this stuff in the UK.

We've got 170 staff in India that run the factory, and they found those people within one week.

You couldn't do that here in the UK.

It'd be impossible to do.

And then there's the raw material problem.

Even when we manufacture stuff in India with our own workforce or in Turkey, the raw materials are coming from China and the Far East.

So you want to make this teddy bear in India, the actual material comes from China.

It just gets finished in India.

You can't get away from it.

You need to use China and the Far East because that is the world's factory.

And when we can manufacture stuff in the UK, yeah, absolutely, I do it.

Manufacture on my own ice cream.

I don't import that from Italy.

We'll make that here.

Manufacture our own signage because we can do that here because we can get the workforce to do it.

So that gives you some context of the business.

Now let's break down the numbers.

How do we make money?

What does it cost to run?

And what's our route to market?

Let's do it.

Okay, total lifetime sales.

The business has done about £7 million since its conception.

What I really need to do is get that happening in one year

and really get it to £10 million a year so that there's really positive cash flow all the time.

The last financial year, we did £1.7 million.

So you can really see how it's grown, because it's been going about seven years, and we've done 1.7 of that seven million in the last 12 months.

There is a degree of seasonality to the business as well.

For example, in January, we did about 30,000 pounds worth of sales.

And this month in March that we're recording this video, we'll do about 200,000 pounds worth of sales.

So there's definitely some seesaw in terms of cash flow into the business.

Let's talk about the routes to market, because the £200,000 worth of sales we've done in March, £190,000 of that was wholesale.

So these are about 40 to 80 customers that buy from us each month.

And sometimes that fluctuates digger ending on the seasonality.

We supply zoos and holiday parks and those types of guys.

So 40 to 80 people are driving £190,000 worth of turnover

and £10,000 worth of turnover comes from our direct to consumer sales.

This is Amazon, eBay, Etsy and on our website.

And that's about 400 people that drives the £10,000 worth of sales

and only 40 to 80 people driving £190,000 worth of sales.

So that's our route to market.

And obviously what I've got to do is, yeah, we want to keep growing our wholesale because that allows us to buy in volume.

But the real trick is to get that 10,000 direct to consumer sales up because they pay straight away.

Whereas our wholesale customers, some of them are on 60 day terms.

So we've done 190,000 pounds worth of sales, but actually probably only 30 to 40 grand of that money is in our bank account.

We won't get the rest of that for another 60 days.

So we've got to cash flow that through the business.

Let's now break down the profit and loss.

We've done about 200,000 pounds worth of sales.

Where does all that 200,000 pounds go?

A warehouse.

You need to have a warehouse.

You need to have a big warehouse.

You've got deliveries in, big lorries, and you've got DPD collecting stuff and raw mail every single day.

You've got forklift trucks, and that really does take up a lot of space.

That, I think, will cost you about 12,000 pounds a month to have a decent warehouse minimum to run this type of business.

Now, the advantage that we have is we own our warehouse.

We own the freehold.

We have a mortgage on it, but we don't have to find a big rent allow yourself £12,000.

Shipping is another big cost.

It was massive last year.

We spent about £370,000 just on shipping, importing all our goods from around the world.

The great news is that is now coming right down.

So a £20,000 bill on a 40-foot shipping container, £20,000 is now only £2,000.

So it's gone back to pre-pandemic levels.

That's great news for us, but for the purposes of this workings out, I've allowed the shipping to be at the higher level because we're talking about what's happened in the past in actuals.

So we spend about 30 grand a month on shipping.

12,000 on the warehouse, 30,000 on shipping, that's 42,000 pounds so far.

I've allowed for about 10,000 pounds worth of R&D, that's research and development.

When you're creating products and you're doing branding, all of that really adds up.

You've gotta hop on a plane, you need to go to India, you need to go to China, you need to go to Turkey.

I've been doing that with a number of members of my staff.

I'm doing that every single year.

That costs a lot of money, it's a lot of time.

Then when you're back in the UK, you're tweaking all those products, so you've got to allow yourself a decent amount of cash for R&D.

Add another 10,000 for that.

100

So 12,000 for the warehouse, 30,000 for shipping, 10,000 pounds for R&D.

101

Then let's talk about labor.

102

We spend about 17,000 pounds a month on labor.

103

Now that's our warehouse team.

104

That's all the people picking and packing the products, getting it out.

105

And then we've got a couple of sales trainers and sales reps that go and train all of our customers.

106

I told you at the beginning, we've got lots of wholesale customers.

107

We actually go to their craft shops, their holiday parks, their zoos, and train them how to use our products.

108

that comes with quite a big cost, about another 17 grand there.

109

Then there's travel and all those other bits and bobs.

110

But stock, obviously, if you're selling stuff and you're making between a 20 and 50% gross profit, that's got to come out of that 200,000.

111

I've allowed for about another 100 grand's worth of stock.

112

So 170K out of the 200,000 is the costs.

113

So we've made a 30,000 pounds profit for the month.

114

You might think that's really flipping fantastic.

115

But the problem is we're growing the business.

116

I don't want it to be 200,000.

117

I need it to get to like 800 to a million pounds a month to shrink the R&D costs, to shrink the warehouse costs, to get the stock moving faster.

118

And so all the profit just gets reinvested back into stock.

119

Because last year, we lost all of our consumer business because we didn't have enough stock.

120

And that is one of the big problems with this business.

121

You just have to hold lots and lots of stock.

122

The good thing about this business is we're not in fashion lines.

123

We're not doing stuff that's going to be here today, gone tomorrow.

124

We repeat all of our lines.

125

So we just need to hold more stock.

126

How do we improve this business?

127

So that's the big question.

128

Now the big challenge here is we did £200,000 worth of sales.

129

But £190,000 of that £200,000 comes from our wholesale customers.

130

And what's the problem there?

131

They might not pay us for 30, 60, 90 days.

132

So we're sending the stock out.

133

We're running the business.

134

We've only had £10,000 of the £200,000 in the bank.

135

That's our direct to consumer business.

136

And we let that really go to pot because during coronavirus, we couldn't get stock in and we prioritised our wholesale customers

137

because they were the people buying regularly from us and they were buying in bigger bulk.

138

But now we've got our stock levels back to normal, back to normal.

139

We can fire on all cylinders, get the marketing going and continue to build that direct to consumer business

140

because that gets us instant cash flow on better margins.

141

Now, look, people might only be spending 30 pounds average order value on

142

our direct to consumer business via the 500 to 10,000 pounds average order value

143

that we do get on some of our trade customers.

144

But we want to get that instant cash flow.

145

So I need to build up

146

that our direct to consumer business is 50 percent of the turnover and wholesale is the other 50 percent.

147

So we've got more regular cash flow so

148

that we're not just investing all of our profits and not keeping any for shareholders or ownership of the business.

149

So that's one of the ways that we're gonna improve the business.

150

We also need to widen the range.

151

That's really gonna help the business.

152

Now we've taken some steps to do that.

153

We now make slime.

154

Kids love slime.

155

So we do all the kits to make slime and all the creatives that go with that.

156

We're making more teddy bear clothes.

157

We're making pipe cleaners and googly eyes and PVA glue and paint.

158

We're doing all of that stuff as well to widen our range so that people can buy that from us as well.

159

And all of our trade customers are begging for us to do it.

160

We've now got the space and the resource to do that.

161

And that's increasing the average order value on our wholesale business, but also increasing our direct-to-consumer market.

162

Talking about that, markets.

163

We need more markets.

164

Now we're doing arts and crafts.

165

We can go to day-nachters and schools that probably didn't want to buy our teddy bears, but we've got all the shipping and the resource to do this.

166

So we need to get more customers, more markets on wholesale and direct-to-consumer.

167

And the widening of the product range has allowed us to get into more markets.

168

Improving GPs is the fastest way to keep more cash in your business.

169

If you're thinking about building an importing business, and you're working to 20, 30% GPs, which some of our products are,

170

it's very difficult if you're not getting paid for a long time to actually start keeping some cash.

171

And I wanna talk about timelines in a moment.

172

So if you can put in some stuff that's got really strong GPs

173

and you sell that regularly and you think about a blended gross profit.

174

So if you can get to a blended gross profit that's much higher than 30%

175

and start thinking about a 50 to 60 to 70% blended gross profit margin,

176

you really start keeping more of your cash because if you're waiting to get paid and you've got low gross profits, it's going to be years and years and years

177

so you can actually pay yourself some dividends

178

and get some cash out of the business because you're just always continually investing into stock.

179

Let's talk about that.

180

If you're thinking about setting up an importing business, I really think the fun begins at year 10.

181

The first years, you're just learning how to import stuff

182

and find the factories and find good trusted suppliers and build some customers.

183

Then the warehouse comes in, then you need more stock because you start getting some big hitter customers

184

that don't pay you on time and it just takes time.

185

So allow yourself 10 years if you want to build an importing business and focus on getting good, strong gross profits so that you can stay in the game.

186

Now, if you like this video, there is a part two coming out.

187

We're actually flying into Turkey and we've made a little documentary about sourcing products in Turkey, meeting partners out there.

188

So if you want to start an importing business, watch out for that video because it's coming up here on the channel very soon.

189

If you'd love this video and you'd like me to help you grow your business, then why not come along to one of my seminars?

190

The one you want to come to is Business Masterclass.

191

This two-day event in London is designed to help grow your business.

192

I go through every facet of running a business, how to scale it, grow it, and turn it into profitability.

193

I'd love to see you there.

194

Tickets are only a few hundred pounds and you can buy them on my website, jamesinclair.net.

195

There's a link in the video description.

196

I'll see you at Business Masterclass.

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.

Pratique du Shadowing: How Much Money My Importing Business Makes - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?