Ok, so to give you a run-through of the project, we are being asked to participate in a joint venture which requires us to source a particular style of winter jacket for sale in our partners given market. We are assured that the distribution and post-sourcing sales of the units will be taken care of, assuming we can source the product at less than $50 per piece, delivered and included any taxes that may be charged.

The goal will be to balance quality and uniqueness with price to achieve a greater than $7 profit per item. I know that 14% may not seem like a feasible return on investment to chase, but seeing as our partners are quite confident in distributing tens of thousands of pieces through their distribution channels, the numbers are starting to appear attractive seeing as we’re only handling the research, sourcing and possibly design side of things and not the investment capital or distributions side.

One of the first things we’ve looked at as we investigate the feasibility of this project is the current market environment in which we will sell the goods. We conduct thorough research into the sale of similar items across various markets on and offline to gauge whether the items at that price have a true potential to profit. Our partners will be distributing these items through retail stores, so there is a bit of leeway when it comes to the prices we find online, but we want to err on the conservative side to maximize our potential to profit. Markets researched include:

• eBay – locally and global
• Online e-commerce stores
• Large retail stores
• Lesser-known retail stores
• Specialty apparel stores

Brand names play a large part in the way people make their decisions, so it’s always important to take this into account when you do your research. Just because you are selling a style of jacket similar to those released by big names like Calvin Klein, Guess or Helly Hansen it doesn’t mean you can charge the same price. A large part of this initial research has thus been to compare only similar products available on market at this particular time.

We’ve concluded that most similarly style jackets with low brand power are selling in a variety of stores for at least double the price – and this is extremely positive for us. Time now to find suppliers that will offer competitive prices with the option to place our brand on the garments.

In locating suppliers online, we have checked through their online inventories for styles of jackets we liked and contacted them all via a standard email we’ve created asking them for more information about their product line and their pricing structures depending on the quantities ordered. We’ve also found several manufacturers all over the world and even China – the current manufacturing capital of the world. Included in our email is also a request for sample prices and how much these samples would cost us should we choose express air freight delivery.

After what seems like contacting hundreds of potential suppliers via email we now wait and will hopefully get a bite soon.

Fingers crossed!