On the show today, our resident Importing & China expert Dave Bryant shares what he learned from his experience working in an Amazon warehouse. After selling his business, he wanted to get an inside look at how Amazon works – and he came away with some fascinating takeaways about their business and his own.

Dave kicks off the episode by talking about the recent sale of his business, which opened up the chance for him to do a temporary stint at an Amazon warehouse for oversize products. We talk about what it looks like on the floor, how they track productivity, and potential problems Amazon may have with staffing as they continue to grow. Dave also talks about what he’ll do differently in his next business now that he has insight into how Amazon’s facilities work on a day-to-day level.

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(With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and David Bryant of Chinese Importing)

Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. The show dedicated to helping high six and seven figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I’m your host and fellow e-commerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian.

Hey, guys, Andrew here and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for joining me on the episode today. And I have a fun one for you. I’m joined by Dave Bryant, who apart from being an experienced eCommerce entrepreneur, is also the importing in China expert in our community, in eCommerceFuel Private Community. And in between selling his business and starting a new one, this last year, he worked at Amazon in a fulfillment center on the floor picking, packing orders.

Not necessarily to like, you know, make a long term career out of it, but because he was interested in seeing how it worked like getting inside the machine and understanding it, which I think is really cool. So he’s got some interesting insights in terms of how Amazon operates, misconceptions he had that were, you know, that were changed after he actually worked there for a while, things he’s doing differently in his business as a result of his time there. It’s a really, really interesting episode. So with having said, let’s go ahead and dive into my chat.

Dave, so congratulations on the sale of your business, sir.

Dave: Thank you. And like I think I mentioned to you before, it’s kinda funny and this has kinda come full circle. So when I was first thinking about selling my company and I think around 2014, the only source of information that I could find was that article that you wrote up about the selling trollingmotors.net, and that was kinda my inspiration and backbone for selling my company, and so now I’m here talking about that business sale, and kind of ironic.

Andrew: Oh, very cool. I didn’t know that. That’s awesome. You didn’t do the reverse auction, though. Did you think about doing that?

Dave: I was gonna try, but I didn’t have the email list to do it.

Andrew: Hey, I would have helped you out, man. I would have happily done another one for you.

Dave: Yeah, but your commission would have been too high.

Dave’s Recently Sold Business

Andrew: No commission. I wouldn’t have charged you anything. So I know you’re probably not gonna…maybe as to the buyers you mentioned that getting into too nitty-gritty, but can you give us a sense of like what was the business, and in a general sense, the niche industry, and how long did you run it for?

Dave: Yeah. So we were selling boating products and we had about 200 different boating products, mostly private labeled. All are coming from China. And at the time of sale, we were doing about $2 million a year in revenue.

Andrew: And how long did you run it for? Did you start it yourself or did you buy it from someone else?

Dave: So I started it in in about 2008 when I was finishing up university. And when I started it, it was just kinda something that get a little bit of beer money on the side. And once I graduated, I kinda have had taken it a little bit more seriously and solely grew from there. So, yeah, since 2008 is when I started it.

Reasons Behind Selling the Business

Andrew: Very cool. And apart from, you know, the bigger reason, which was to fulfill your dream of working at Amazon warehouse, as we’re gonna go to a minute, with that primary driver of the sale, were there any secondary reasons you sold the business?

Dave: I mean I think the biggest motivation was I have a new family. We have a two-year-old daughter at home. Just taking a little bit of money off the table. So I think, like, all you covers entrepreneurs, thought of Amazon all of the sudden, switched off one day and cutting off your business or something else happening scared the crap out of me. So obviously, even the fact of losing the company, but losing all the money I had invested in the company.

So that kinda just scared me, and there’s no reason to have that fear, but entrepreneurs kinda fear that. So that was a nice feeling to take a little bit of money off the table. Also kinda from a Canadian-only perspective, the Canadian dollars is taking quite a beating lately against the U.S. dollar. Normally the dollar is about par, and lately it’s been about…U.S. dollars has been about 40% more, so I got a 40% bonus for selling, so that was obviously a nice little icing on the cake.

So, yeah, that was the big motivation is to take a little bit of money off the table.

Going From Store Owner To…

Andrew: Nice. And do you…I mean as we get tuned in at the end of this episode, you’ve got something else in the works. But you had a bit of time because you sold this, I think it was right like ECF live when you told me you were selling, and that was back in October. And, you know, so like six, seven months later. Was it an odd transition time for you? Like was it not sure what to do it yourself? Were you jubilant, excited, feeling a bit lost? What was it like?

Dave: Well, it’s kinda funny. I mean I’ve read a lot of stories about people selling their businesses, and, like, they feel everything by jubilation. And I’ve heard the stories about, like, that regret and that depression you had that people would have, so I was kinda surprised. Actually, when I didn’t get that feeling for the first two months, and earlier this year I think kind of the regret and, you know, “Oh, man. Did I make the right decision?” Those feelings started to kick in. It’s slowly starting to subside, but I think you always have a little bit of seller’s remorse almost, but definitely when I sold it I was pretty jubilant. And that kinda the regret, I guess, started to kick in earlier. But overall, I think I’m still very happy with the decision to sell, and I think I walked away in a pretty good decision.

Andrew: Nice. Well, congratulations. And I’m excited to dive into the Amazon portion. You did this amazing write up in our community, you know, “What I learned from working at Amazon’s warehouse for a week or two weeks.” And I thought it was one of the coolest posts we’ve had all year. We’ll link up to that in the show notes of your community member. But you literally, you know, were…How did this come about? Maybe you can just start with that.

I was joking, of course, about you selling your business just take a work for there, but what made you wanna go work at their warehouse? What’s the genesis?

Why Dave Applied for a Warehouse Job

Dave: I mean I’ve always kind of taken the perspective. The best way to kinda learn a business is to go work for it, and that’s what I did with my boating company, I worked for West Marine, which is the largest boating company in the US and Canada. So I worked for them for a few months during the summer and that just gave me a really good hands-on experience for how the boating world worked. And, obviously, Amazon has been a big part of…my previous business will be a big part of my next business, so I thought, “Hey, what a better way to kinda learn the way Amazon works than to go work at Amazon.”

I mean in Raman one day, and I pulled the paper and I see that they’re hiring in the Vancouver warehouse, so I sent them my resume and pretty much got hired on the spot.

Andrew: That’s awesome. When you went in for it, did they look at your resume and say, “Hey, you’ve got a fairly savvy background. You just sold a business. Like not probably our typical warehouse worker.” Did they ask you any questions about that, or was it pretty much like, “Hey, you look great. You’re hired.”

Dave: I don’t think they looked at the resume for one second. You have to submit it as a formality, but I think pretty much if you showed up and you’re capable of working, they hired you on the spot. I mean that was kind of my biggest revelations of working at Amazon is how desperate they are for employees at these warehouses. So, yeah, they were not scrutinizing resumes at all.

Dave, The Picker

Andrew: So what was your role? Were you coming as an entry level warehouse picker, packer? What position did you have right off the gates?

Dave: So Amazon warehouse, they normally have three positions. There is a picker, there is a packer, and then there is inbound, so stuff coming in. And so my role as with most people starting off at an Amazon warehouse was a picker. So I was the guy walking around the warehouse, picking all different items that people had ordered throughout the day.

Andrew: Yeah. And I’m guessing you stuck in there for your entire one week tenure at Amazon.

Dave: Hey, you know what? I actually only made up four days. My daughter ended up getting sick, so I figured, “Okay, I cut it a little bit short.”

Andrew: Oh, man. And so I mean I think of Amazon, and I think most people think of Amazon, you hear so much stuff in the news about they’re being a robotic companies, they’re so high-tech and streamlined. You envision robots everywhere, drones overhead, and monitoring your productivity. Was it as high-tech as you expected it?

Inside the Warehouse

Dave: I was shocked at how little technology to what’s going on like there were no drones or robots, no holograms of Jeff Bezos is kinda guiding the way. It was strictly manual labor. I think that might have been the fact that I was working at an oversized warehouse as opposed to their standard sized warehouse. So just a little bit of background, Amazon normally in each city that they’re in. They have a standard sized warehouse for the smaller items, and they have an oversized warehouse for the really big bulky items. And I was working at the oversized warehouse.

So, strictly, the way it operated was you’re given the list of items to pick for the day, and you’d walk around, and you pick those items just with your own two hands, and walk them over to the packers with your own two feet. There is very, very little automation.

Andrew: Interesting. And which warehouse…you were out of the Vancouver warehouse, right?

Dave: Yeah. And apparently, that’s the largest I guess warehouse they have right now in North America. So I don’t know if the technology is a little bit slow at catching up, but I do think Amazon warehouse is still are operated the same way pretty much every warehouse across the world is. People walking around picking items and packing items.

A Well-Oiled Machine

Andrew: Interesting. How well-run was it, you know, just in general. I mean you can get a lot of…you kinda hear just kind of that whole attitude. You can tell a lot about a company-based on how clean the restroom is, these little signals that you see, right? Metaphorically, how clean were the restrooms at the Amazon? Like was it as well-run and well-managed as you expected?

Dave: It was, I mean from two perspectives, I guess. First off, the other bathrooms were spotless. And it was, I mean they took definitely security very seriously, so there was no way to enter or leave the Amazon warehouse without being, you know, like patted town, emptying your pockets, that type of thing that are very well-oiled machine for making sure that people showed up that they did their job correctly, that they picked these many packages as they were supposed to.

From a loss perspective, and this is one of the things that really I think took me by surprise. Any Amazon sellers probably notice that like a lot of your stuff goes missing. And I’ve read like conspiracy theories that Amazon is taking these items and purposely losing them and reselling them on the gray market, that’s not true. Like, they are losing stuff left and right in these warehouses just because they’re growing so fast, and these warehouses are so big, and they’re just losing items left and right.

So I mean through the course of the day, I’d be picking 100 items and probably 10 of those items, I could just not find because somebody placed them in the wrong spot.

Tracking Productivity

Andrew: What did they do to track your productivity? Is it you just check in and it’s an hourly thing? Is it a unit-based thing? I’m guessing they probably have something in place to track those metrics closely.

Dave: So you’re…I mean kinda your lifeline when you’re working at Amazon is this bar code reader that they have. And it basically gives you a list like I mentioned of all the items that you need to pick in a particular unit of time. And normally, it’s an hour unit of time that you’re judged by. So normally, at the oversized warehouse, that means about 50 items per hour, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but I mean you could be picking huge 50 pound items up, and that obviously takes a little bit more time than picking up a garlic press.

So that bar code reader was kind of your lifeline and that measured your whole productivity throughout the day. And if you ever did kind of take longer than normal picking an item, you were pretty quick to hear about it from your supervisor.

Andrew: Interesting. What level of effort would you have to put in to meet this? Was this something more like, as you long as you kept a fairly decent pace and you weren’t lollygagging, you could get it, or were you having to hustle to hit the metrics?

Do Your Job Right, Take a Dog Nap

Dave: I mean I think the kind of the running story of the oversized warehouse was that, it was a lot more laid-back than a standard sized warehouse. So I talked to people who had worked at both this standard sized warehouse and the oversized warehouse, and people picking the small items, they sound like they were working like crazy. But at the oversized warehouse that I was at, it was a little bit more laid-back. I mean you have to keep a little bit of hustle, but you weren’t timed, all of that is aggressively as you would be in some of the other warehouses.

And the story I always tell people that I was working with a guy and he had been working there for a few weeks. And he had realized that if you just really hustled for the first half and hour or so of the shift, that he could basically take a nap for half an hour and nobody would ever say anything. So he had found some guy that had sent in this dog bed, an FBA seller. He took this dog bed and he put in the corner of the warehouse. And every day for about half an hour, he would go take a nap on this dog bed, and nobody ever said a word to him.

Andrew: That is awesome, or at least they will until someone hears this episode inside the warehouse and go searching for it. You know, what’s like the starting wage for a picker or a packer where you were working?

Wages at the Warehouse

Dave: So in Vancouver it was 13.75, and that was another one of the big revelations that I kinda had was that I think all that Amazon sellers kinda realize that during the holiday time, your cost go up enormously. And the big part of that reason is because like mentioned, Amazon is having a really hard time hiring people for the warehouses. So what they have to do is during what they call peak, Black Friday until the end of December, every employee at an Amazon warehouse has to work 6 days a week, 10 hours a day.

So everybody’s working 60-hour a weeks, which in Vancouver, that means that you’re paying a lot of overtime, and that’s time and a half. And I assume it’s pretty similar all throughout America and North America, where overtime is billed at a considerably higher rate. So that was one of the big challenges that they have is just keeping enough people employed, and basically what they’re having to do is really overpay people.

Andrew: So that $13 an hour plus, was that the holiday rate that you got paid, or is that their standard rate?

Dave: That was their standard rate, so with overtime and everything, it works more or less are around $20 an hour.

The Amazon Culture

Andrew: Wow, okay. Crazy. Did you see any kind of cultural or values based stuff that they were really trying to heavily push? You know, I don’t know why it comes to mind, but I see visions of like motivational posters on the wall, or, “The customer is always right,” like with a huge bubblehead of Jeff Bezos staring into your soul, something like that. Like was that stuff…is that just something that make up my mind and…I mean I’ve seen memes on the internet, or is that something is actually in the warehouses?

Dave: That’s what I was completely looking forward to and there is absolute none of it. And that was my biggest disappointment that even during like the one day of training, they kind of fused their culture in you, there was not one mention of Jeff Bezos, and very little mention of the customer. I mean it was really pretty much beating potatoes, this is how you pick an item, this is how you lift off an item, and this is how you take it to the packer.

So there really wasn’t a lot of that whole Amazon culture being infused in you, which I guess that’s good and bad for me. I guess I’m still not totally agreeing with the Amazon culture, and I think a lot of the Amazon employees as well.

Lessons as a Future Amazon Seller

Andrew: What are you gonna do differently? I mean you’ve got a new venture that’s gonna be using Amazon heavily as a lot of e-commerce stores are going to, now that you’ve been on the floor and worked there, and seen the, you know, inside the beast, so to speak, what are you gonna do differently in terms of your interactions with Amazon as a seller, as like an eCommerce store owner?

Dave: The biggest thing I learned from working at the warehouse was just like the randomness of products that people are selling on the FBA, like people were sending in kayaks without a box, just a plain 12-foot kayak with a bar code on it, replicas of the statue of Michael Angelo statue. There was absolutely everything from every spectrum of the whole product possibility.

So I mean I think that’s a huge opportunity. These oversized items which people are totally ignoring, like, you can ship anything into an Amazon warehouse and they’re gonna figure out a way to pick it, and pack it, and ship it.

Andrew: Any thoughts on…it doesn’t make interesting opportunity, but they also charge the arm and the leg for oversize it seems. So any thoughts on being able to tap an opportunity without having to just get eaten alive on the fee size of things?

Dave: I still the fees compared to like if you’re to fulfill it on your own is still a lot lower. I mean for something like a bedroom mattress, it’s still relatively cheap even when you take into account the oversize fees. So I still do think that they actually are pretty competitive on the oversized items.

Alibaba Vs. Amazon

Andrew: So after all these experience going there and your four days of working at Amazon, it’s so funny to say that, do you own stock after? Like did you come away thinking like this company, this is the future, obviously, you know, all the hype is true. Did you come down and, you know, invest so much money in stock? Do you use own stock in Amazon?

Dave: No, I’ve always been kind of embarrassed of Amazon. I put my money in Alibaba stock as opposed to Amazon stock.

Andrew: Because I have the same discussion Bill D’Alessandro two years ago.

Dave: I heard it, yes. And you lost…I believe you lost very miserably.

Andrew: I didn’t lose, it crashed. I mean I don’t know Alibaba is at now, but I know that Amazon has quadrupled since we talked, and I’m pretty sure Alibaba has been nowhere near those results. But you still are long Alibaba versus Amazon.

Dave: I still think there is more meat on the bones with Alibaba than Amazon. Like I mentioned, I think shareholders have kinda given Amazon a free pass. I think that they’re gonna have huge problems especially with their warehouses. I don’t think that they can…they’re gonna have a real hard time plugging up people and paying them a reasonable wage, but I do think, ultimately, I was gonna really put a lot of downward pressure on them.

A Problem with Staffing

Andrew: Interesting. I’m not thinking of that just for a minute. So what is it you say huge pounds at warehouse, is it purely labor-based? And why do you think…what do you see the big problem being down the road that isn’t baked in right now, or people don’t appreciate right now?

Dave: Well, I think the problem is, if they’re having problems hiring people right down the warehouses, and they’re doing whatever million, or whatever billion in revenue, if they double that growth in, you know, two years from now, they’re gonna have to hire theoretically twice as many people, which is gonna be even more of a problem for them. So either they’re gonna have to…I mean I think the only conclusion is that they’re gonna have to pay more to these people.

Andrew: Why can’t they have people? Is it just that purely they’re not paying enough or is that the big reason?

Dave: I mean I think it ultimately comes down to that. I mean $14 an hour, regular time is still pretty low wage for most people.

Andrew: Yeah, interesting. It’d be interesting to see…it’d be interesting to get a sense of how fast they’re growing and also what percent of their cost structure is labor versus all the other stuff, you know, like warehouse labor, that would be interesting. Cool. Dave, any other big takeaways, can I enclosing at least on this part for your time in Amazon?

Think Outside the Amazon Box

Dave: Yeah, I think those are the big ones. Like I said, I mean I guess any advice I would give to people is, you know, kind of think outside the box with what you can send to Amazon. just think of the nice small item in a box. Really, anything that you can find, you can send to Amazon, they’re gonna figure out a way to ship it.

Andrew: That’s amazing. One last thing I just thought of on the fly here, a lot of people kind of have the argument about whether you should send in, you know, unless you’re importing somewhere from China, sending it directly to Amazon, of course, is easier for the person who’s importing it, the business owner because it’s cheaper, it does an intermediate stop. You have some quality control, potential issues, you can’t look over your stuff and make sure it’s in good shape.

But also there’s a sense of, you know, you’re more likely to be able to get it labeled properly and get the logistics, all your docs, you know, logistically to send it in to get it filed away in FBA nicely. Any thoughts on that from your side of things as you saw things coming in? Could you notice the things that came straight from China, and versus, you know, having a stopover in the U.S. before they came into the warehouses? Any thoughts on how well-prepackaged the thing that came straight from overseas or versus domestic?

Dave: I mean I was in the picking team, so not the inbound team. And the inbound team is the one…but still I mean I had definitely I would see the items as they went from inbound being basically place it on the shelves. And I mean Amazon, it seems to be their mantra that any that comes in there, like, it has to be a pretty severe problem for them not to accept it. Like they’re not receiving a pallet of goods and, like, one bar good is off, and they’re reject the whole thing.

Like they go through a lot of effort to make sure that things get received in and get put into stock. So I mean I think that’s also one of the takeaways I’d have is I’m not gonna worry so much about sending items from China directly into Amazon. I think they are pretty diligent and make sure that those items, you get accepted into stock.

Changes In Exporting Over the Past Few Years

Andrew: And you just got back from China, too, you know, you were over there on a sourcing trip for a new venture you are working on. And you are, of course, as I mentioned, at the very top, are importing/China expert in the community, which first off, thank you for that and for all the advice you’ve given from one inside. And I’d like to get your take on, you know, what’s changed…we could probably do an entire episode on this, but maybe just in a nutshell, what’s changed by exporting over the last few years?

And maybe specifically, how much room is left in the pure arbitrage play of reselling existing goods from China? Like has that ship completely sailed? You either have to have a proprietary product or something that has been tweaked that no one else is selling, or do you still feel like with some good leg work, and finding great products, and unique quality items in China, you can still pretty much run a business on quality sourcing and quality listing on Amazon?

Dave: I definitely think there’s still a lot of opportunity there. The most popular items which you can sell a thousand units of a day, those are probably being taken, but there’s still a lot of niches which are available for the taking. And like I mentioned, oversized items, I think a lot of people are still ignoring. People want the small items that you can order free from China. So, you know, oversized item has still a lot of opportunity for.

And overall, I think all products. I mean while, yes, people are…more and more sellers are bringing out a ton of product from China. They’re still not giving that value add. I mean they’re not going through the quality inspections that they should. I think the vast majority of people selling at Amazon have already been doing a simply third-party inspection for $300. A vast majority of people aren’t taking instructions and how-to manuals from a product and actually, like, making them into a readable English.

They are improving the packaging, and most of all, I mean they’re not…99% of people aren’t actually improving the product. And even aside from improving the product though, you can just make those small changes on packaging, and instruction and how-to manuals, and quality control. And I think that’s still a huge opportunity for people, especially compared to the Chinese sellers, too, where the Chinese sellers are coming more and more in Amazon, but them, as well, they’re not doing any of that quality assurance and any of that value add for packaging.

Definitely I still think there’s a huge opportunity for people sourcing from China. Maybe not as lucrative as it was, say, two or three years ago, but still a lot of opportunity.

Global Sources Summit

Andrew: And on your trip over there, you also took the Global Sources Summit, this event I’ve heard about and this has kinda piqued my interest. Was that worth going to? How was it?

Dave: So the second year, or the second session, I guess, doing it. So it’s definitely I think improving year by…or session by session. And it was great to be in Hong Kong and meet all the people actually sourcing in China, and that’s one of the things you don’t get in the North American shows, where North American conferences, not everybody there is sourcing from China. So it was a great opportunity to network with almost everybody there that was importing from China.

So in that perspective, it was great. A lot of the speakers were fantastic as well. And, yeah, I think it’s only gonna get better and better.

Follow Dave’s Blog!

Andrew: And can you talk a little bit about, you’ve got a blog where you write a lot about, you know, a lot of what you’re doing, but specifically importing to chineseimporting.com. Can you just talk about quickly kind of the stuff that people would expect to be able to read and learn about if they went over there?

Dave: Chineseimporting, what I really try to just kind blog about and teach a little bit is how to get those real quality products from China, not so much on the selling side, a lot of blogs are doing a great job of that. So on my blog, I really, you know, focus on how to do quality checks, how to make sure that the products that you get are great quality, how to do a little value add, just like I mentioned before, doing packaging instructions, manuals, that type of thing, how to build relationships with these suppliers, so you don’t run into problems down the road. So more definitely on the product side and the supplier side.

The Lightning Round

Andrew: That is very cool. Yeah, and that’s great articles over there, so chineseimporting.com. Make sure to check it out if that’s something that you’re interested in. So Dave, kind of closing here, I wanna jump into the lighting round that we usually do. As I think, you know, ask these questions that same questions to all the guests that come on, feel free to be just short and punch with your answers. And if that sounds good, we’ll dive in.

So how much money is enough? What would be your number? And this is where you don’t have to…enough money in the bank. You, of course, can work if you want because I think most of us enjoy it at a lot of levels, but, you know, if you couldn’t for perpetuity, you’d have enough to be content.

Dave: Well, I’d say 10 million just for the fact that in Vancouver, a two-bedroom town home is about 2 million on its own.

Andrew: Oh, my goodness. I was teasing you there, Dave. We’re gonna get you out to Montana here.

Dave: I know. I’m thinking about it. I’m working on my immigration papers so as we speak.

Andrew: Great. I’ll send you some houses that you guys can sound like it. How many hours a week do you work?

Dave: Productive hours, I would say about 30 hours a week, sitting in front of the computer and killing time, probably double that, but 30 hours of productive work.

Andrew: If there’s one thing that was gonna bring upon the fall of civilization in the next 25 years, what would it be?

Dave: Probably, some nuclear war between two super powers or maybe one super power that is elected a little bit of an inexperienced leader.

Andrew: I have no idea who you could be alluding to here. You have to fill me in on that once we’ve stopped recording. If you had to leave your current job, or business to work for any company, what company would it be? You can’t be an entrepreneur, but you can work for any business in the world.

Dave: Maybe go back to the Amazon warehouse.

Andrew: Really?

Dave: Actually, I would love to work at Amazon in a more higher upper role though.

Andrew: That’s cool. I like it. What do you spend the most of your discretionary money on?

Dave: I would say traveling to crazy places, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine, that type of thing.

Andrew: You went to North Korea?

Dave: That was always a dream of mine and it’s convenient I have a…I’m passionate about China, and North Korea and China share a border, so it was pretty convenient.

Andrew: That’s amazing. We may ask you a follow-up episode just on that.

Dave: We can do a podcast from there.

Andrew: You did a podcast from North Korea?

Dave: We could do a podcast from there.

Andrew: Oh, I’m not sure if right now is the best time to roll the dice on the North Korea border crossing as a…at least for me, a U.S. citizen. And finally, if you could live anywhere in the world, you know, and cost, practicality, and your current community weren’t an issue, let’s assume let’s say I’d pay for everything and we transplant all your family and friends, apart from North Korea, which I know will probably be your number on choice, where would you live?

Dave: You didn’t add the stipulation and that you would clean the air, so if you’re gonna clean the air as well, definitely somewhere in China. I’m kind of student of speaking Mandarin and a Chinese is still pretty forest, so I’d love to live in China for a couple of years, and then language also. My daughter learn the language a little bit better, but right now, I think China is for the most part pretty unlovable due to the pollution problem.

Andrew: What if let’s assume you got to live with the air, so the air is polluted, then would you still pick China, or would you go somewhere else?

Dave: I would pick Tibet in China which has great air.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Nice. Dave, well, this has been awesome. It was cool to hear about, obviously, you’re still on your business, but the deep dive on Amazon, working in the warehouse, so cool. I think it’s gutsy and really creative and impressive you went into that, and I appreciate you coming on and sharing. And also, again, if you’re into importing, you wanna get into importing, chineseimporting.com. That’s where Dave shares all of his experience.

And if you remember the private community or you join in the future, Dave, like I mentioned earlier, is also our importing in China expert. He has a ton of experiences he can tell and he’s been kind enough to lend his expertise to all of us inside the forum. So, Dave, thanks for coming on. Thanks for everything you’ve done for the community, man. I really appreciate it.

Dave: Thanks a lot, Andrew. It was fun being here.

Andrew: Want to connect with and learn from other proven eCommerce entrepreneurs? Join us in the eCommerceFuel Private Community. It’s our tight-knit, vetted group for store owners with at least a quarter million dollars in annual sales. You can learn more and apply for membership at eCommerceFuel.com.

Thanks so much for listening, and I’m looking forward to seeing you again next time.

What Was Mentioned

Photo:Flickr/Scott Lewis



Andrew Youderian
Post by Andrew Youderian
Andrew is the founder of eCommerceFuel and has been building eCommerce businesses ever since gleefully leaving the corporate world in 2008.  Join him and 1,000+ vetted 7- and 8-figure store owners inside the eCommerceFuel Community.

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Learn from the thousands of case studies, stories, and lessons our private community members have shared, plus what we’ve learned in 12+ years of studying eCommerce stores
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