Meet International Logistics Expert Jimmy Tran

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Hey, product launchers. Welcome to another office hours expert interview. And today we have Jimmy Tran of Worldcraft Logistics. And we're going to define logistics in a moment because I'm sure you're going to need that. But I want to introduce you to Jimmy. I met him at a meetup for Amazon sellers and I just really enjoyed, I've referred him to a few clients and really enjoyed the way that he works, which is why he's on this platform. Because we want people who really know how to service, know how to answer questions. Because you have a lot of questions and if you get prepared ahead of time, if you know this information or if you get the information, you have someone you can trust to go to and get it, then it makes your flow, your process, your launching faster, easier, safer and more likely to be successful. So that's why Jimmy is here. So thanks for joining us, Jimmy, hello.

Thank you for having me here. And then I just want to say that earlier you point out something that you want to work with a fake forwarder that answer detailed questions. So yes, I'm very detailed. I even make videos if they need me to, sort of.

Yes, you do. And I've seen your emails, so I know exactly how detailed you are, which is why I enjoy working with you. So Jimmy, tell me a little bit about you and your company.

So my company, I've been doing this for 10 years, right. But I started my company about five years ago. Just like any Amazon seller, we start our bedroom. So I start out in my bedroom and right now we are at 78,000 square foot warehouse. So we from a bedroom to 38,000 square foot. And we're going to continue to grow because there's a lot of referrals because in the forwarding industry is mainly referrals. Right. And so we do a good job with you and your client. That's why I'm here. Yeah, I've been learning from you guys as well. Amazon seller are great marketing people.

They are, they're great at marketing. But the logistics side, and let's define, because you're more than just freight forwarding, there's like a lot more to it. So what, what's, what's Logistics. What does that mean?

Okay, logistic is basically when you pick a freight forwarder, right? I'll tell you right now, any freight forwarder can move the cargo for you. Okay. Any faith forwarder could just get your package from the factory to Amazon. But you need to find a freight forwarder that's going to cater to you, right? So what we do is I answer very detailed questions. You know that I make videos so that people could follow the instruction and maybe share this video with their factory. Recently we make a video how to do packaging labels, right? And we're going to start making video on how many piece should be in a box. Like 150 PS can't go over more than that. You can't go over more than £50, things like that, right?

So like that's just great information right there. Because you know a lot of your decisions that you're making early on in the product design process is like well how many should I put in a case? And you're like well how many will fit? But to know that there's a limit if you pack too many and then all of a sudden you find out oh this, there was a limit and you already packed it all and then called a freight forwarder, you're gonna be in trouble when it gets Amazon warehouse.

So what we're doing is we're gonna make video and we're gonna put Chinese subtitle into it so you can share this with your factory. So like for example, if you were to work with a factory that never done Amazon shipment before and you say hey, you don't know how to do it. There's language barrier between you and the factory. English speaking, Chinese speaking. But, but here's a video and he's like oh, okay, thanks for the great instruction.

We can do this.

Yeah, so pretty much. And they will show this to their 5,100 staff in Chinese and then everybody's on the same page. There's no English barrier between you and the factory. And then the manager to the production manager to the staff, this is just a video, right? So that's what I wanted to do. So what we do here is we do the fate forwarding, we do the custom clearance as well. So that's a normal typical fake folder. But once it gets to our warehouse, what we do differently from the rest of the freight forwarder is that other fake forwarder. We just move your cargo to Amazon. Not very detailed. Or just move it to a warehouse. Because traditional fake forwarder work with traditional company, we move away from Traditional style. Because we know that Amazon seller you get depend on Amazon to sell your product. So you depend on us as a fake forwarder, as a checkpoint. So once your cargo hit our warehouse in China, we also check on it lightly to make sure that it have made in China to clear custom in.

The US So there's going to be no problems because that hangs people up because the communication back can be very bad. So you don't know why it's held up.

Yes, that's right. And then once it hit our warehouse here in the US we also open up your shipment only if you ask like for example if you were to sell frigid spinner. That's a good example, right? I can't give other example. Let's just say you sell a giant frigid spinner, right? So we're gonna open it up and we're gonna make sure that have the fnsku it's gonna meet Amazon requirement. And then if it use a plastic bag, it has suffocation warning. Pretty much we are your final checkpoint before it gets to Amazon. We take picture of your product and then we email it to you and you say, hey, this is your product that we did the final check for you. Here's the photo. Is it good enough? And the customer says it's good enough. Then we send to Amazon. If it's not good enough then we go further. Like you say, hey, I need you to fix it. I need you to put in pamphlet. I guess some people put in coupon code or whatever they need to put in or some people buy product in the US and they merge it. Made in the US merge the things together. But it's. Some people market it that way because now your product could be made in the U.S. right. So we do a lot of things here. And then if your cargo go to Amazon and then labeling is wrong like this, the MSKU is wrong.

It happens. Yeah.

Yes, it happened. That happened a lot. And we take care of that for you too. You ship the cargo back to us and we do the relabel.

Otherwise the mess is your freight forwarder delivers it to you. You have to do all of it, then you have to get it back out. It's. Yeah, it's a nightmare and a lot of time lost. And you're cutting that off by taking care of that for people.

Yes, that's right. And then also our storage, how we work here is that we want to make sure that all our Amazon seller Survive for Q4.

I like that. Survive for Q4.

Survive for Q4. Right. So a lot of the Amazon seller complained that their factory tried to compete with them during Q4. But the thing is, the factory, what they don't know is that as Amazon seller or as American, we are the best marketing country in the world. So believe that you are the best. Right. And then unlike the factory, the factory just ship their cargo straight to Amazon and lower the price. But during Q4, when each pallet that Amazon store for you is $200 per pallet. Right?

Right here. Here.

Let's just say you bring a whole container here, right? A whole 40 foot container is about 30 pallets, right. We charge $21 for the first 30 days and after 30 days we charge $31 per pallet.

So I'm just gonna stop you right there because Tom and I have not heard of pricing like this. Like when we know we have a client who's like, sometimes just the manufacturing process or the timing, some runs that we have to do with certain factories have to be done when they're making that run of a certain material or a certain thing. And that means you have to hold on to inventory. So whenever we hear a client like that, we're like, oh, you got to go to Jimmy. Because we know that it's going to have to sit for a while until it gets to Q4, until it gets to the timing on which they can actually sell it. And that is. You have one of the best pricings that help people hold out.

Yes. So I mean, like I said, like a 40 foot container, 30 pallets, you store it at Amazon, it costs you $6,000. Right. A month. You store 40 foot container, 30 pallets here times 30, that's $900. Do you want to pay $900 or you want to pay $6,000 in storage?

Right.

I mean, this is where it kills people in Q4. And a lot of people, Q4 is great. I mean, for retail in Q4, it's pretty much, I would say, half of their year sales, right?

Yeah.

Or one part of it. Right.

It should at least be a third, but for most people it's half. You do what you do for the whole rest of the two thirds of the year you do in that final.

Yes, that's right. So pretty much what we do is we want to work around the client. Because the thing is, that's how you're supposed to build your business. Right. I mean, same thing like your service, right. You have to ask the client what they need and then you build your service around them or else they'll just Go somewhere else.

And that's a big difference because you've built your service for this purpose for what is essentially sometimes load a bigger run, right? So you go from smaller, you go to bigger runs as you get bigger and bigger over time. And what happens with it is that if you were at a traditional freight forwarder, someone came out of it, they just adopted their existing services and said, hey, we'll make that available to you, Amazon seller or new inventor. So it's just more of like you're gonna now have to adapt to their process and their cost and their systems.

Well, the problem with the traditional freight forwarding is that because I used to work for a traditional freight forwarding company. Traditional freight forwarding company work with company that just bring in the cargo to their warehouse, right? Like, are they gonna sell on ebay? They're gonna.

They're gonna sell everywhere, whatever.

But what Amazon did was that Amazon destroyed those company. Toys R Us is going out of business. All the company now is struggling against Amazon is because when you go to Walmart, right, let's just say you want to buy the screwdriver, right? It's red, right. But now what happened? You make this pink, yellow and blue as an option. Well, guess what? I might want a bunch of pink screwdriver. So Amazon, what Amazon did was that Amazon allowed people to be creative, have choices, right? Yes, that's right. And we have to work around very creative people. Since you were creative, we have to be creative with you.

That's right. No, I love it. I love it. So logistics, it involves freight forwarding, customs clearance. There's lots of documentation all along the way of all sorts of things that you have to do. Warehousing, distribution, and perhaps I'm going to call it light assembly or reassembly as you insert things and do them. Storage and sometimes labeling. So, like, there's a lot that it encompasses. Am I missing anything?

Yes, about the importation, the document. Right. So I just want to say that if anyone want to. Let's just say if you want to import a product and you have question about the duties or you have question about fda, anything like that, they are welcome to contact me. It's 100% free. I don't ask what he calls it up.

Let me remind everybody that you can reach Jimmy through his expert profile. He's got his email and all his company information is right there in his expert profile. So you can reach him right from there. So you don't have to go finding him on the Internet. So just go right into the membership area and go to the expert's profiles and you'll find Jimmy there and all the details. But you know, this is important because sometimes in the early planning process, when we're deciding whether or not a product is profitable enough to continue and move forward, like, like we're making that decision not knowing what import category it goes into, what its duty costs are gonna be. If we don't run with accurate information and we just run with generalized information, we may turn down a good product. And so we have to have the right information to make that decision. And you offering access to that is very valuable for those planning.

Yes, picking a fit forward and picking the right product is like picking the factory.

I feel a lot of Amazon seller also make the mistake with picking the factory, right? Like some. You know how when you go on Alibaba, you see the factory minimum production in a week is like 10,000 unit, right? Let's just say 200 units, right? So they will work with the lowest price factory and the factory will produce 100 unit per week. And they sell 100 units per week. Next month when you sell 200 unit per week, the factory is able to cater 200 unit per week. But when you move to a thousand unit per week, the factory can't handle it. So when you pick the factory just like you pick a fake forwarder, you have to say, okay, I'm okay to work with your company when it's small. But the thing is, when I expand to be bigger factory, can you produce this much unit per month? Because I'm planning to be like one.

I'm planning to be big, right?

I'm planning to think, right, Jimmy, you accept a container. Now I want to know two years from now when I'm doing a container every single month, not every five months can you handle a container? Can you handle three containers? Can you handle five containers during Q4 for me? So you have to interview the stakeholder.

For that and the factory as well. You know that you're so right about that. I'm sure that because you touch so many different types of products and different types of factories, you see a different view of them. Like Tom and I do, like we do on our end. Because the way we go in and work on the development side of things, so we see the sort of engineering and development capabilities and the early pre production side of companies, we don't really see them when they go out the door, you see that part of the organization, right? But when you do, what you start to realize is that so many have bad Communication or they just don't have the kind of systems in place that they should. They're kind of like there's a guy who does it and you call him up and he gets it done. But there's no like, system or process in place. And when you start to get big, bigger, that becomes problematic.

Scaling is always an issue for people. Money is an issue. Right. When you scale. But then also as any company, when you scale, there's a shortage of staff, Right?

Yes. I'm sure you know that. Yeah. As you scaled up very quickly in.

Five years, struggle through that as well. There's a shortage of staff. And then there's the sop. Like, do they have an sop? Right.

Staff Standard Operating for procedure for those of you who are not in the lingo and you really should get one if you don't have one.

Yes, that's right. So. So pretty much there is a process. And what I try to do here with my company is that I want to make sure I outgrow my client. Right. Because with any business, I feel you should pick someone that like a. Pick a partner. Right. I'm pretty sure every viewer here might have a partner. So my advice is when you pick your partner, you have to pick a partner to outpace you.

Yeah. So that they're always a little bit ahead of you.

It will push you. Right. Because the thing is, like, let's just say you work with me in a 5,000 square foot warehouse and then you decide to do five container next year, you're going to ask Jimmy, are you going to move out or are you going to stay? If I say, you know what, I'm a slow partner, I want to stay. Well, too bad, right?

Yeah. You want someone who's gonna be able to keep up or be ahead of you. And I agree. That's so, so smart. So let's talk a little bit because this is product launch hazards. Let's talk about some of the things you've seen really go wrong for people that are kind of common that you see one or two things that you've seen go wrong again and again and reasons maybe things don't pass customs or they get in and you have to unbox them all and do some work. What's gone wrong for people?

Okay, so number one thing is made in China that things forgot to label it. Yes. They forgot to label it or pretty much a miscommunication with the factory. You tell the factory, don't put any label. And you know, China is very good about following instruction.

Yes. To the letter to the letter, right?

Like they say.

So we have this character, this book here in the U.S. amelia Bedelia, right? You've heard Amelia Bedelia before? I don't know, when you were young or whatever, but Amelia Bedelia does this stuff where she follows exactly what it is. And she's like, if you hang the drapes, it means that you like literally put a noose around them and you hang them outside, right? She takes everything to the literal sense. And that's the way I always think about that. I think about like, what is my daughter's gonna say? Like I said to my daughters the other day, I'm gonna jump in the shower. You guys sit here and be concerned and do your thing. And they looked at me and they go, mom, if you jump, you'll slip. And I was like, okay, I'm not jumping in the shower. I'm going to step into the shower. But it's like our words, we have to be careful with that. It's the same thing when you have a translation issue. You have to be careful with the that you use and make sure that you're being clear in that communication. So you get what you want.

Yes, that's right. So Made in China. But for the made in China, our team in China will always make sure the product half made in China before it leave.

So that's one thing.

And then in terms of you picking your product, lately I seen there's a surge of people picking product that's fda. Yes. The product is not. Okay, so let's, let's talk about FDA product, right? So when people order small quantity from the factory, they will ship a DHL, Air, FedEx and UPS, right? Yeah, the DHL channel. And they would declare it wrong, right? And they would get in and then the Amazon account start growing, right? It starts selling product. But after a while when they say, okay, well I want to move big shipment now. And they found out that the factory have no paperwork and they also have no paperwork. And now they spend so much time building this product and it end up nowhere because you can't import legally now, right? So it's always good to review with your faith forwarder.

So now why is that is that? So you're talking fda, not fba, right? FDA is Food and Drug Administration, which means that it's regulated. So like supplements, food products. I'm trying to think of other things that some beauty products.

Let me give you a random example. Right? So my parents, Asian, right? Like five years ago, they were buying like this thick make out of like rocks, right? So what you do is you massage your head and then it's supposed to release stress and stuff like that. Well, the thing is when you import product in, you have to be careful what you put on the packaging, right?

Oh, because what it's regulated and able to do like making claims.

Yes, making claim. You, you pretty much like to say you import in a rock, right? It's a rock. Well, don't put it on the package. Making claims saying that it's gonna release stress when you, when you put it next to your bed or you rub it against your body. Right. It reduce pain. Don't do that.

Health and wellness claims are the biggest area, right?

Yeah, that's right. But the thing is like people see other people put this product on Amazon, right? And people see them making this claim on Amazon and they always ask me about it, like, wait, you telling me I cannot put this stuff on my packaging, but I see this on Amazon all the time, right. So what I tell them is because when they import rocks in, they don't put anything on the rocks, it just rocks. Right. But when you put it on Amazon, you could put your listing any way you want.

Yeah. The listings are not as regulated. They should be, but they're not. And thank goodness for people who want to sell that stuff. But the box, because when you're saying the difference between air freighting stuff and how that you do that because you're doing a box at a time or a DHL at a time, it has a different set of like categories and the rules that it goes through than it does when you bring a big container load worth pretty much if you.

Were to bring something in by DHL and it doesn't really meet the standard US Custom for the Air Express side, they will let it go. But once you bring something in like over a thousand pieces by air freight or ocean freight, what happened is that now the custom officer going to question and say, well, this thing is going to go into regulation among the people a thousand piece going to be out there. So no, this cannot go out.

But so yeah, so you have to pay attention to what I'm going to call warning labels, compliance claims. Right. So they kind of all fall under there. And you were mentioning suffocation warnings earlier about that on the packaging and most, I found that most factories, it's kind of automatically in the bags that they use because they know everybody needs it. But you should check and if it's not in your specifications, you better make sure that it is.

Yes, that's right. I Mean, I would say you can't trust the factory.

Yeah, it's on you. It's always on you. That's our rules. It's on you. If you didn't specify it, if you didn't put it in your quotation, you didn't add all these things in, if you didn't check it before it came in, you know, getting a sample that's completed in your box with your stuff, then you have problems.

Yes. I mean, another thing is we have to compare ourselves with a big company, Right? So even big company like Johnson Johnson or Victoria Secret, when they make production overseas, guess what? There's quality control for every batch. Even company that exists for that long do that much quality control. You being a small company working with a small factory, you have to do quality check every shipment, Right. So I was just go out of business. I mean, even Johnson Johnson have problems where they have to, you know, pull everything back. They do, right?

They do. And this is the thing, is that what we think, that, oh, we're so small that it's not going to matter, you know, that it's not going to be a big deal, whatever. But the reality is that when somebody comes in and there is a problem and everything gets recalled or something happens like that, it's not just on you because Amazon is going to push all that onto you. It's going to be your problem. But the factory is not going to be held liable for that. It's on you. And you will have paid for inventory that you can't move, maybe can't correct because you didn't do a cursory check. But more importantly, if it's egregious enough, meaning if it's a bad enough violation of some safety rule or compliance rule, you can be held liable because you didn't make a concerted effort to track it, document it, follow it, do any of those things. So those things matter that you have a process and a system or a partner who can help, say, illuminate what you don't know, right?

Yes. And then when it goes wrong, of course we fix, we end up be the one fixing it.

There you go. So you're like Mr. Fix it for us. That's wonderful too. So now on the other side of things, let's talk about the positive instead of the hazards, the problems. Let's talk about some of the positive things. So really the streamlined way that you work is in and of itself a positive for early business. Because it means that I don't have to think or early product launch. Right? So even if I'm in a business that has tons of products already for sale, I'm bringing in a new product. I've got lots to worry about to keep stuff selling. I don't have time to worry about how everything's happening and what's happening. You cut, you'll, you're willing to do it, sort of, I'm going to call it blind to me. Meaning I can get an email once a week if I want. I don't have to see every little conversation if I don't want to. And if I want to, I can.

Yes. So pretty much like you say, we streamline everything for you. We want to make sure, like there's a lot of back office work, like how we do with our clients, that after a while our client would just tell us, hey, my product is ready, please contact the factory. And we would reach out to the factory, we will collect the data and we would get all the information and we give our client the rate. The client accepts. Then we just contact the factory again. And then now the client doesn't have to stay up late at night, deal with the factory and stuff because we collect all the data for you and we just reach out to the factory and we say, hey, we're here to collect the shipment and it's ready to move. And then once it's moved and we tell the client the schedule, say here's your schedule once the shipment is going to arrive in the US and then about seven days or three days before it gets here, we notify the client again. And then once it touch out, 24 hours before it touched our warehouse, we asked the client, how do you want to get this to Amazon? Do you want to store some, do you want to UPS some or you want LTL some?

So we, because you know what, this is kind of important, the fact that you, you don't make people decide that at the beginning because a lot of companies, it's locked in. That's something that I don't think you.

Oh yes, that's right.

It's locked in. And based on the time of year when it finally gets through port or that happens to be a port strike or something like that. And some things happen and now all of a sudden you're like, I gotta have them all sent to Amazon. Like, and so it changes on you and some companies flip out and don't let you make changes.

Oh yes, that's right. That's right. That is correct. When you work with, I do realize client work with other fake forwarder pretty much the other fake forwarder will say, okay, well, this is my process that I quote you, right? And then that's it.

That's it. You're done. You're stuck, you said.

Because we built it that way in China already, that process. Right. So. But for us, we understand that once your cargo get to our warehouse, let's just say it was ocean Freight, right? It's gonna take 25 days. Right. Within those 25 days, a lot of things could happen. You could do so well. You market so well and you sell out a product. Right. Or like, oh, you have too much product at Amazon, you say, hey, you know what? Don't send to Amazon, because right now you send it in those four pallets, gonna cost me $800 a month. Why don't you hold it back at your warehouse for 80 bucks a month?

Yeah, right. So it gives you a lot of flexibility, and I think that's really key. So easy communication, lots of flexibility. Those are some definite positives and willingness to answer questions. Which brings me to why you're here on this platform. So let's talk about some things that you might discuss in future office hours. I think timing, like when should they get you involved, is kind of a great idea for you to do a whole office hours on. So where you do like 10 or 15 minutes talking about what works best for you guys and what has worked for many Amazon sellers. And then they can just ask you a ton of questions.

They just schedule a time to talk with me.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

I'm here for them.

You're here for them. Right. And so you can get specific. I love that. I mean, I just think there's so many things that people have questions about. It's like this big. Like you're planning your launch and you're learning how to sell on Amazon, or you're already selling on Amazon and you're really concentrated on that. And now you're learning your product and you're getting your product ready and are you doing that? And to make the freight forwarding and all of that logistics side of things, an afterthought can sometimes hurt your profitability. It can also really hurt your ability to launch on the timing you expected.

Yes. Logistic is something you shouldn't learn to do. You just hire someone else.

Yeah. You should learn who to call.

Or email.

Yes. Like for us, for a staff to really understand logistics, like, let's say you work for Walmart, McDonald's or whatever. Three months is the normal time that you understand how to make a hamburger. Let's say. Right. But for logistic, it actually take about two years for a person to understand it and they work eight hour a day because every product is different, every client is different and then everybody buy from different location and ship to different location.

Yeah.

It's not like a hamburger where this is how you make a hamburger and you either order number one combo to number eight combo and like no, like every ship is going to be there.

Yeah. Oh so, so, so good. Well, Jimmy, I am so glad you are on the Product Launch Hazards platform and you have direct access to all of our members and they have access to you. So thank you so much for doing that and we'll look forward to your next office hours.

All right, thank you so much.

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