Shadowing Practice: Why Everything You Own Was Bought for 10x Less - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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And so it means that we can deliver prices that no one else in the industry to compete with.
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Have markets like this.
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Like this, yeah, we want to change that though.
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Direct from the store.
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Almost nothing you pay for is the product.
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It's the people standing between you and the person who made it.
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And no industry is quite like building supplies in Australia.
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It alone is worth 240 billion every year in a country that's currently facing a housing crisis
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and yet people are being forced to pay double what their materials are actually worth.
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You will destroy the market. In Australia.
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And a lot of people will hate you.
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I know this because I've moved my entire life to the other side of this supply chain, where most of these building materials actually come from.
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This is BloomBuild.
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We're building a billion dollar business on one idea.
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Connect you directly to the factory and cut out every middleman who's marking the product up and never needed to be there.
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It's not just us that wins.
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It's everyone who's ever been taken advantage of by these higher prices.
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We are here to reshape the market.
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We're here to give customers an alternative.
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And we are going to stop at nothing until our business is the market standard.
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My point that I'm really trying to ram home is
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that the same tile that's sitting here in a Chinese factory is the same tile that you are buying in Australia.
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It's all coming from here.
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It is all the same tile.
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So here's what today is really about.
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It's finding the root cause of why almost everything you buy is double the cost of what it should be.
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Why no one's called it out sooner and why we're fixing it starting today with just this one tile.
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This is how we're bridging the gap from the factories in China straight to the customer's door
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and soon the rest of the world.
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This is a type of tile from Australia's biggest tile retailer.
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They're called National Tiles.
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And today, we're going to be walking around
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and I'm going to show you where a tile like this actually comes from and what the true price really is.
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We're in Foshan, China.
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And so if you don't know, China has all these different manufacturing areas.
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Where we are, Foshan is focused on tiles and ceramics.
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And so behind me, you can literally see all of this showroom, showroom, showroom, showroom is a different showroom for a different factory.
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And what's amazing is you can literally find in China the source for anything you are looking to buy.
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This is where the world is produced.
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And there are different literal cities for different types of products.
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For furniture, for electronics, for tiles, for ceramics, for anything that could go into a home.
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China has a city for it.
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And the tile that we are sourcing today is not some special tile.
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This is literally the tile.
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It's a porcelain tile.
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This makes up the vast majority of what most people use
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when they're doing a home renovation or a big build in Australia
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And we picked this tile specifically
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because it is overpriced compared to what I guarantee We are gonna find here in China today
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Our next supplier definitely isn't the sexiest
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But we have bought a ton of tiles from these guys previously
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and they are one of the best when it comes to quality
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and price in All of China and so let's go see if we can find this tile Hello, how are you?
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We're John Jack.
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Yeah Yes, ah you want to out shake me?
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Where is our example tile?
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Yeah, I think you have this one.
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Oh Nice there we go Straight on it.
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Oh Yeah, very nice Yep,
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this one is closest Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And the price for this?
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Fix one.
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I need to check back.
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Yeah, so we've literally found within literally 15 seconds the tile that we're looking for, which is crazy.
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So now we just gotta check the price and see what this actually really costs.
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You wait.
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I guarantee you'll be surprised.
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Because you know why the tile's so expensive in Australia?
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You know how the big company usually buy through the wholesaler and the distributor and the importer.
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And so the problem is that the big retailer in Australia, they buy through five people.
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So one, two, three, four.
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Yes.
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Yeah, five layers.
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And everyone takes a margin.
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And so it's super expensive.
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And so by the time it gets to even like the retailer, the retailer is not the one actually ripping the customer off because they don't even make that much money.
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So now your way is to cut all the charge.
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Exactly, cut the middleman.
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Exactly, cut the middleman, exactly, direct to the consumer.
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Correct, exactly.
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And so if we can just bridge a gap where we can help you market the product to the end customer, you make more money because we're giving more order volume to you,
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and then we organize everything to just send to them and customer.
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Yes, correct.
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Yeah.
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And that's why I live in Hong Kong.
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So I come back and forth here to Forshan every week.
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So we build big business, market very hard, make Australians save money.
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Yeah.
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It is good for the consumer, markets like this.
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Like this, yeah.
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We want to change that though.
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It's better.
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Direct from the source.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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You should write our website, marketing.
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You're very good.
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Yeah.
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Surprise, surprise.
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Guys, we found so many supplies that all have the same tile, and funny enough, they're giving us the same price.
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Now, stay tuned.
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I promise I'm going to show you what that price really is
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and what it's actually going to cost us to get the tile into Australia.
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But before we do that, we have to go and check the tile, the real quality.
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And so we're going to jump in the car.
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I'm going to take you to where they actually warehouse all these tiles here in China, and we can go and check the quality together and see if this is something that we would actually buy.
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We have made it into the belly of the beast.
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We're literally here in the supplies warehouse now and we're going to go
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and find the exact tile that we just saw in the showroom.
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You can see they stock tons of ranges and literally there are rows and rows and rows and rows of tiles.
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And so the advantage of our business model is we literally sell the vast majority of this range on our website.
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And so we're just trying to find out now exactly where the tile really is
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so we can go and have a look at it.
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I'm going to show you exactly what it would be
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if you were to get this tile here from the factory in China.
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The process usually is, is once we identify a tile that we want, they print a slip at the office.
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Matthew, like right now, is giving the slip to a warehouse lady.
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She goes and finds exactly where the tile is.
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The problem with China as well is all this stuff sits on someone's like WeChat or Excel.
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None of it is digitized.
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And so we're the first in the industry to really bring digitization to this industry.
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It is so transformative to know what stock exists in China
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and the ability for us to then list it on our website
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because it allows everyday Australians to tap in to the stock that's sitting here,
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which traditionally means you'd have to go through like six hands for it to reach you.
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And so I think we might have found something.
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Here we go.
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Okay.
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Nice.
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When we look at these tiles, there's a few key things we're looking for.
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First is, there's obviously, you run your hand across it and you're feeling for any abnormal bumps, anything that stands out.
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So call it the flatness.
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Next is the edging.
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You really want to make sure that the edging is exactly what you want.
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You can see it's a square edge here.
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Sometimes they're rounded, so it depends the spec of the tile.
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Next is, this is a 9mm porcelain tile.
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And so the example that we gave you before is also a 9mm porcelain tile with a very similar design to this.
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Next is the batch because each batch
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that a tile supplier like these guys produces is sometimes a different colour
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And so we have to always be very careful that
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if we're gonna buy for a customer like a thousand square metres of tiles
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That each one of those thousand square metres is exactly the same colour, especially if the batch is different Now this is a P3 tile
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and in Australia we can only sell P3 tiles
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because that's the minimum slit resistance if you want to put it on the floor.
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Because if we didn't, if you had water on your feet, got out of the shower, stood on this, and it wasn't slip resistant, you'd fall over.
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And so we need to make sure that it's the same.
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And you can see here, it is exactly the same as what a major retailer is selling in Australia.
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My point that I'm really trying to ram home is
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that the same tile that's sitting here in a Chinese factory is the same tile that you are buying in Australia.
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It's all coming from here.
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It is all the same tile.
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The difference is these guys and their price is one -fifth the price that you are paying in Australia.
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And so something needs to change.
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The entire system is broken and us being here right now and showing you this is living proof of that.
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And you can't deny it.
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When people think China, they think of really crap quality.
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Let me be the first to tell you
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that the vast majority of building materials that you buy and products in general come from China.
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And some of the best products that you consume come from China.
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So much of China has changed over the last 20 years.
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20 years ago, China was not what it was today.
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And I think that's where that stigma started.
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And that's why, like, when we walk around here
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and I look at the reasons why I moved my entire life to China, it's to make sure that we can find the 5 % to 10 % of the market that's producing the top.
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Obviously, our industry is building materials and tiles.
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But I think that what's cool is that
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because we're trying to really make a change for Australians You can take
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that same approach and you could do this for any business
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that you also want to build
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if you're watching this It's all about being able to connect the source with the end consumer
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And that's what we're doing with building materials And
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so take what we're doing here use this in your own business
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because we are on a mission to create a revolution in Australia We really want to make a change
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because China is now the future.
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This is where everything is happening.
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We can't make tiles in Australia anymore.
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It's just not possible, at least priced competitively.
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And so we're trying to tap into the benefits that China brings
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and trying to bring those benefits directly to the end consumer.
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I could be anywhere else in the world, but I choose to be here in Foshan, in China, to be able to make sure what our customer gets is not just the same as the tile
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that you saw before.
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It is better.
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We want it to be better.
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And the fact
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that we can bring it to the customer for much cheaper than what they're currently buying Is the reason
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that we're gonna be able to change this industry It doesn't matter what they say, it matters what a supplier does And I have seen so many times, you know, a supplier say that they can fulfill something They have this sort of stock,
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they can do a certain price, they can get something on a truck by a certain time It's never true, it's all lies, they just want to appease you And so, when you're in China, always,
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if you can make the trip here, make the trip here If you can, you know, use a QC person on the ground, quality control person to come and inspect whatever you're buying, do it.
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So take every opportunity to try and minimize your risk.
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And that's what we do here in China.
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Because for us, obviously price is important, but quality is number one.
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We want to make the customer the very, very, very, very, very best quality that we can.
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Otherwise, if we can't do that, what we do here just isn't perfect.
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You've just watched us find a tile.
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Now, here's what happens to every one of them that we go on and sell.
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What I'm about to show you is the part no one can copy from a desk.
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Because one of the biggest advantages in being a business isn't the idea.
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It's being exactly at the source where the business needs you to be.
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How do you revolutionize an entire industry if you're not willing to be there in person on the ground to do it?
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Oh, come look at this.
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We just made a quick little pit stop
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and we can see some of our live orders that are actually going to customers.
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So you can see here, this is direct from one of the factories.
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Bloom build stickers all over it man it's
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so cool to be able to see this sort of stuff come to life I think this is also
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Yeah these are also ours Essentially what happens is you saw from the warehouse on order
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which this one I know is just placed today by a
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customer We come out of the warehouse into here into our
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consolidation facility We check the quality as well to make sure everything's perfect
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So it either happened at the warehouse you just saw
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or it happens here
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And then as a final step the tile what's in here it gets put into pallets
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that we custom make The protection when it ends up in Australia is very good
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and the chance of a tile being broken is very low.
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So that's why we go to these lengths to be able to make sure that things are done perfectly.
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And so this all happened today.
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The team here will put it in this boxing
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and then it literally would be picked up by the freight forwarder
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and then we'll be on a ship into Australia by the end of next week.
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You can see how being in China, we can just be so efficient with what we do.
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Everything happens literally same day.
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And now if we hadn't built the systems and processes that we have over the last couple of months, none of this would be possible.
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We are a business that is trying to revolutionise the way that China does business.
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Because in China, when an order comes through, everyone's WeChatting each other, trying to see what stock is available.
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Oh, can we do this?
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Can we do that?
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None of that is going to help us do 100 orders, 1 ,000 orders a day and provide the quality that Australians deserve.
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And so that's why we've streamlined it.
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We've tried to take as many people out of the equation, where literally, if you go to our website, you place a tile order, tile ordered, it will then be fulfilled at the factory,
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so picked up automatically by a truck driver.
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We send them a WeChat notification.
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They pick it up.
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They then deliver it here to our warehouse.
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They put it in.
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We put it in the pallet, and then it gets shipped out.
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My point is, there is no human interaction.
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Our computer system manages the entire process, which means that there is no human sitting there going like this and going, oh my God.
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The only human in the loop is a QC person to check the quality of the tile.
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That's it.
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And so I say all this because how we are going to win here in China is through automation, is through making sure that our quality is second to none.
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And so it means that we can deliver prices that no one else in the industry to compete with.
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It's why like even the retailer, National Tiles, that we showed you, National Tiles could not do what we're doing because they have been in the industry for so long.
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They have been doing things the way
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that they have been doing for decades now and there's nothing wrong with
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that The only thing that's wrong is the prices that they charge
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And so what we want to fix is the price
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and the fact that we can fix the price and in my opinion at least give a better quality tile
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I Mean like you know what else what else could we possibly ask for
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and so on You can kind of take a lot of this away for your own business as well
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Because it is always about looking at how you can innovate
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and find those like little mini rights to win and I think that a right to win for us is price, it's the quality, but it's also our efficiency and our efficiency on the ground here in China.
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And that is really what we are trying to drive and that is really where we are trying to innovate.
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And so on that note, let's keep moving.
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Now for the best part.
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You're probably wondering how much do these tiles actually cost?
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First we have the tile from National Tiles.
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These tiles are between 45 to 65 dollars a square meter.
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How much do we get told that we could get it for from our supplier before?
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This one is 5 .55 Five and a half US dollars.
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So we're talking, in Australia, you're getting charged 50 bucks a square meter when really they're buying it for just under 10.
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Now, the problem is this is buying it out of China.
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And so when we buy it, we then have to ship it in.
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There's all these other costs and things associated with being able to sell it.
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So how much can we really sell it for? answer 26 bucks a square meter
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and so we do all of this
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because we're the first in the industry to actually do transparent pricing we show customers
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that 26 bucks how's it broken down it is the shipping the logistics the staff costs the warehousing cost everything
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that we have all that go in with our 20 margin put on top
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and so we're the first to actually show really what these materials should properly be priced at. And yeah, I mean, I think this just proves the fact
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that we can sustainably sell a tile for half the price shows
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that bringing down the cost of building materials in Australia is possible.
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And now none of this is to throw shade on our competitors, because to be honest, a lot of their costs are in things like all the middlemen that they buy through,
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all the staff they have here in Australia, all the big warehousing fees they have because they to buy all this stock up front.
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So there's reasons to why they have to actually price their product this way.
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And so instead of trying to throw shade on them, we are just trying to provide an alternative, an actual solution for Australia, and then eventually the world, to actually be able to bring material prices down.
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And you can see the benefits of actually being transparent in how you price and how that speaks to the consumer.
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I know that if I was buying building materials tomorrow, I'd much prefer to buy from a retailer that really shows me what their costs are versus some arbitrary figure,
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and I've got no idea whether I'm actually getting a good deal or not.
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And so whilst this might just be one tile,
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our goal and our dream here in China is to be able to supply every tile for every Australian's home renovation,
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new build, development, whatever it is.
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We want to be the ones.
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We're trying to cut out all the middlemen.
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We're trying to deliver the best quality tile we possibly can for the very best price.
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And that is the challenge that we have ahead of us
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because we just need to continue to grow
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and scale this business as fast as humanly possible
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Because there are still so many people that don't know
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that we exist We still have an entire market to win
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and I'm gonna stop at nothing here in China to be able to make sure
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that we do And so if I can ask subscribe
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because every week we do these videos
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and We just want to show you what it's like really building a business here on the ground in China
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and what it's really like trying to change a market and really put the power back in the people's hands.
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And that's what I believe that we can do here in China by connecting the factory with the source.
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And that is our mission.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Everything You Own Was Bought for 10x Less”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: tile, China, price, Australia, quality. This video has 296 sentences and 3615 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:06. The speaker talks fast, about 200 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 89% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| tile noun | /ˈtaɪ.əl/ | A regularly-shaped slab of clay or other material, affixed to cover or decorate a surface, as in a roof-tile, glazed tile, stove tile, carpet tile, etc. |
| warehouse noun | /ˈwɛə(ɹ)haʊs/ | A facility for storing large amounts of merchandise or products. |
| retailer noun | /ˈɹiteɪlɚ/ | A retail sales company or salesman. |
| showroom noun | /ˈʃoʊˌɹum/ | A room in a business set aside for the display of the company's products. |
| middleman noun | [ˈmɪdɫ̩ˌmæn] | An intermediary, agent between two (or more) parties. |
| metre noun | /ˈmiːtəɹ/ | The basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International d'Unités), equal to the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in… |
| supplier noun | /səˈplaɪə/ | One who supplies; a provider. |
| porcelain noun | /ˈpɔɹs(ə)lɪn/ | A hard white translucent ceramic, originally made by firing kaolin, quartz, and feldspar at high temperatures but now also inclusive of similar artificial… |
| batch noun | /bæt͡ʃ/ | The quantity of bread or other baked goods baked at one time. |
| buck noun | /ˈbʌk/ | A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, salmonid, shad, skunk and kangaroo. |
| innovate verb | /ˈɪn.ə.veɪt/ | To introduce something new to a particular environment; to do something new. |
| pallet noun | /ˈpælɪt/ | A bed of loose straw. |
| renovation noun | /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/ | An act, or the process, of renovating. |
| ceramic noun | /səˈɹæmɪk/ | A hard, brittle, inorganic, nonmetallic material, made by firing a material such as clay at a high temperature. |
| fulfill verb | /fʊlˈfɪl/ | To satisfy, carry out, bring to completion (an obligation, a requirement, etc.). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| cut out verb | To refrain from (doing something, using something etc.), to stop or cease (doing something). |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| walk around verb | To walk with no planned destination; to meander. |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. |
| bring down verb | To make (a ruler or government) lose their position of power. |
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| come through verb | To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway. |
| fall over verb | To fall from an upright or standing position to a horizontal or prone position. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- We're building a billion dollar business on one idea.
- It's not just us that wins.
- We're here to give customers an alternative.
- Where is our example tile?
- You're probably wondering how much do these tiles actually cost?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been doing |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if this is something that we would actually |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being forced · been taken · is focused |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've moved · have bought · have made |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 79 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: showroom /ˈʃoʊˌɹum/, renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, shade /ʃeɪd/, reshape /ɹiːˈʃeɪ̯p/, revolutionize /ˌɹɛv.əˈl(j)u.ʃəˌnaɪz/
- Long words — get the stress right: renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, competitively /kəmˈpɛtɪtɪvli/, revolutionize /ˌɹɛv.əˈl(j)u.ʃəˌnaɪz/, sustainably /səˈsteɪ.nə.bli/, transformative /tɹænsˈfɔɹmətɪv/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like tile, warehouse, retailer.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.