TAS 082 : eCommerce & Amazon Fulfilment from Hong Kong – Steve Suh from Floship

This week I’m joined by the CEO and co-founder of Floship, a Hong Kong-based eCommerce and crowdfunding 3PL who I use for my eCommerce fulfillment. I thought it’d be useful to chat with Steve, especially if you’re an eCommerce seller, you source from China and you have global customers.

When I first started using Floship in 2015 – they basically offered an ability for you to import from China into Hong Kong, integrate your shopping cart (I use Shopify but they integrate directly with many others) and they’d handle everything from a logistics perspective. But now, they also work back the other way as China’s eCommerce market has exploded.

What this means is you can ship your Australian, Indian, American, UK goods to Floship and they can act as your 3PL into China. So if you have established marketing channels into China, this might be a cost-effective option to test your products in the Chinese market without serious shipping costs and China customs worries.

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Transcript

Chris Thomas 0:01
Hello everybody and welcome to the Australian seller podcast. My name is Chris Thomas and I’ll be your host and this is the show where we talk about all things Amazon and e commerce, whether it be private label wholesale drop shipping, and how you can generate a recurring income either on the side or as a full time gig.

g’day everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Australian seller podcast and thank you so much for tuning in and hanging out with me for about half an hour or so. So this week, I’m actually joined by the CEO and co founder of Floship which is a Hong Kong based ecommerce and crowdfunding three PL that I use for e commerce fulfillment through my for my website orders and I’ve also used it as well for merchant fulfilled shipping for some of my Amazon Australia listings as well with great effect. So I thought it’d be really useful to have a chat with Steve, especially if you’re an ecommerce seller. And if you source from China or even if you don’t source from China, but if you do have global customers, so when I first started using flagship in 2015, they basically offered an ability for you to, I guess import from China into Hong Kong. And with your integrated shopping cart, I mean, I use Shopify but they integrate directly with lots of other shopping carts. But basically, they’d handle everything from a logistics perspective once an order had been placed through the website. But now they work back the other way as well. So, so that you can take advantage of China’s ecommerce market, which is obviously exploding. So what this means is that effectively you can ship your Australian or your Indian, your American UK where basically your products from wherever you have them manufactured in the world, directly to flagship and they can act as your three pls into China directly from Hong Kong very, very quickly. So if you haven’t established marketing channel in China, or you’ve got one about to start, it might be in a cost effective option to sort of test your products out in the Chinese market without having to ship a lot of them riskily directly into Mainland China. So anyway, look at so I’ve had a really interesting conversation. I hope you do too. Now don’t forget to subscribe to Facebook. We are cycling. There were 25 members short of 1000. So please subscribe this week. It’d be great over Christmas to, in fact, before the new year if we can get 25. But before December 31 2019, that’d be brilliant. And we’ll make it to 1000. I’ll see if we can offer some kind of prize or something. Also, of course, don’t forget that the indie sourcing trip is our next year, April 2020. That’s between the 13th and the 20th of April. So please register before January 31. And save yourself $500 just head over to India sourcing trip com that’s India sourcing trip calm and megillah will look after you and she’ll answer any questions that you have about that extraordinary trip where I will be there as well as many other sellers and coaches and we’re all there to help you. Now, of course, if you’d like to save 50% off your first month or 2% off the lifetime access to helium 10 please visit the Australian seller calm forward slash helium 10. Anyway, let’s get on with this week’s show. And my conversation with Steve Suh

Today, I’m absolutely thrilled to welcome the co founder and CEO of Floship, Steve Suh, who comes to us all the way from Hong Kong, and I’d love to welcome you to the show today. Steve, thanks so much for coming on.

Steve Suh 3:25
Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Thomas 3:26
Now, can you give us a bit of an intro to my standard question a bit of your background and what got you into the fulfillment business? How did you end up co founding and becoming the CEO of logistics and e commerce threepio fulfillment business in Hong Kong?

Steve Suh 3:39
Yeah, sure. So, you know, obviously, I can’t really tell the long answer. But, you know, for, you know, getting involved in the fulfillment aspect of things. You know, actually, I’m originally from the States. Exactly, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and decided to venture out into China because, you know, really because of growth of the economy. And, you know, I just really wanted to kind of get the best of both worlds with US and China. So the time that I spent in China, I actually end up working for a company called four px, they happen to be arguably the largest e commerce fulfillment provider for cross border logistics and shipping. So, you know, you have a lot of eBay and sort of like Amazon sellers using for services. So during my time there, I was accountable for, like overseas, you know, business developments and really helping for PX to take their business, you know, to the world. And, you know, while I was there, while it was all a great experience for me really learning about cross border, you know, logistics and and understanding the pains of of shipping, you know, worldwide, I really felt that there was a gap in terms of the market that they were serving, mainly, were, you know, serving Chinese, so But I felt that for international sellers, you know, was they even had like a, an overseas sales team. That’s really where I saw the challenge where they they really couldn’t sell to the Western online seller. And the reason why is is really goes back to the quality of the of the service. You know, and, and being able to provide a software that can really work with with the UI UX experience, that that matches the western sort of, you know, ways of working. So, so that led me to say, Hey, you know, there’s there’s a huge, you know, sort of market like opportunity or demand here, where, you know, the western online retailer is, you know, I would say 50% plus in the world are actually manufactured in China. So, if you’re manufacturing in China, you know, why can’t you actually ship directly from the source so There’s really no company that was able to offer this. And that’s where I said, Hey, you know, I think this is a great business idea. Let’s do Floship. And really the focus around Floship was was based upon two main pillars. Number one, that’s that’s customer service, you know, sure that we have an English speaking sort of team that’s relatable to the Western seller and provides a Western level of customer service. Number two is its technology. You know, I felt that, you know, for PX and and many of these other sort of Chinese procurement providers, the very similar when it comes down to things. And I would even say the UI UX experience is very Chinese. And so we want to provide technology where you have like, once again, that’s very easy to understand, and helps automate a lot of the work. You know, that the western all the retailers are normally accustomed to.

Chris Thomas 6:53
Yeah, you know, I was living in Hong Kong between 2013 and 2015, and actually met QY, who I think at the time was An Account Manager for you and she got me on board with with Floship and at the time I was actually looking to basically get the three pillars of a lifestyle business I wanted to have location independence and I wanted to have scalability that was that was my sort of plan at the time and Floship definitely helped me do that because Previous to that sort of to your point, I had been shipping my products from China all the way to Australia, where I live obviously and then shipping out from Australia to the rest of the world from from my e commerce fulfillment. And so when I stumbled across flagship I think through Michael michelini and introduced me that was that was that was the moment when I just went Oh, hang on this is this could actually basically breach that last little that gap and enable me to return to Australia and not have to deal with the military anymore and have had you know, pallets of things in my garage and whatnot. So yeah, it’s it’s a great service and at the time as well, I was looking at he was like saying from China, but again, to your point it was very tired. Focused I think the bench engine as a competitor of yours, I guess in a way but um, but when when I saw flagship in the in the dashboard and the way that you guys were set up and yeah, it was it was perfect. So yeah, it’s been a brilliant relationship ever since. All right, well let’s let’s change gears a little bit let’s talk about e commerce in general. So there’s been a, obviously a massive growth in Econ, we can see that with Amazon, eBay and a lot of other marketplaces together with a lot of e commerce. So what’s happening in China at the moment, from an e commerce perspective? How hard is it for Western companies to introduce their products into China? from you know, and so, a communist?

Steve Suh 8:40
Yeah, you know, so, Floship we’ve been focused on assisting Western sellers get into the China market, and I would say that it’s definitely hasn’t been. He’s his experience and I I’ll tell you why. As much as I really want to know Encourage you know what some sellers didn’t do them to the market. You know, when selling into China, first of all you need to have, you know, your products approved for selling. And you know, that process can take a while. And if you really want to, you know, so basically send your products into the China market, store your inventory in China. And so within, there’s some processes that you have to deal with. First of all, you have to serve a Chinese entity, you know, that which which can take some time. And that, you know, you need to make an investment. And, you know, usually rule of thumb as the top two more of these wouldn’t be like the China tech TPS basically assist, you know, overseas sellers with, you know, setting up, they’re setting themselves up on the marketplace, and helping them do the marketing. They may even help you with setting up your business entity. And yeah, I mean, just helped you. So your point into the Chinese, you know, marketplaces or even website building, etc. But what they tell you is that if you want to be successful in China, usually the upfront investment tends to be anywhere from around 100,000 to around 200,000 US dollars. Right. So Wow, no, yeah, you know, small investments. And, you know, I can’t say that, you know, just because you don’t have 100,000 US dollars doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be successful in China. But the when you’re marketing to the Chinese people, of course, it’s going to be very different when, you know, marketing to a US customer or an Australian customer. You know, Instagram or Facebook, you know, these are some, you know, some some popular channels that you can sell, or mark on Market to online. But in China, you don’t have Instagram, you don’t have Facebook, because they’re both blocks, right. So, now you had to think about, you know which which channel was Can I really used to market to the Chinese customer and the Chinese customer is evolving every single day. Now it’s really becoming, you know, it comes down to trust, right, because you have a lot of the counterfeit counterfeit goods, you know, maybe selling on Taobao. And you know, the customer may may not trust the seller, you know, and then it may also come down to,

Steve Suh 11:22
you know, really, how can I trust whoever’s marketing to me? How can I trust this person even. So now, to have you know, your friends, even being being become ambassadors of certain products, and as a result, because they may be your friend, you know, you may be more inclined to purchase. So, even like the thought of like a key opinion leader, which used to be really popular, you know, in China, you know, that’s becoming, you know, less and less of, you know, a career like marketing. It’s like strategy. You know, for Chinese companies are just, you know, just regular people being ambassadors for brands and and being. And so that’s where the WeChat sort of, you know, platform is becoming a lot more popular and now even see huge you know, we chat stores becoming more alive. So before you had, you know, the like the end and the JT coms of the world really having by 80 to 85% market share, and the Chinese e commerce market. Now you have a lot more the sellers migrating to to WeChat, where you can have sort of your own sort of like online store, like a Shopify or Magento. com, or WooCommerce. And, you know, basically, you know, setting up your own store and using WeChat sort of as a platform, you know, to market market your products. So, yeah, I mean, I hope I provided some, yeah, some advice there in terms of tackling China. But you know, that this The second thing that you may have to worry about becomes logistics, right? So, um, you know, that’s where that’s where we, you know, come in, if any sort of no overseas brand wants to enter to the China market pretty much immediately, we can help you do that without exactly, you know, having to set up the Chinese entity, and they kind of ends up being a loophole where, you know, you can sell directly, you know, to the Chinese market because they’re selling more cross border. So, so obviously, when you have your goods into Hong Kong, that’s where be the fastest path to getting your product into China, when you’re just outside of the country. Hong Kong, you know, is a bit border since then, you know, I know. So, you know, you can see your shipping days ago, anywhere from about two days to around, you know, seven days. And, and you don’t even need, you know, product approvals, you know, to sell into China as well. So, so yeah,

Chris Thomas 14:03
yeah, so you’ve got speed and you’ve also got the ability to be able to import into Hong Kong and not have to worry about setting up a business in China itself as well. So you can, yeah, it’s a bit of a win win, isn’t it. And then the other thing I was going to say as well, I mean, just on that trust side of things we have here in Melbourne and throughout Australia, a lot of what we call Daigu sellers or Daegu, I think they’re called and what they do is they buy like Australia milk powder and they buy you know, the vitamins from blackmores and whoever you know that the domestic, you know, food and popular brands that are in China, Australia, and China that are trusted, what they do is actually take videos of themselves buying these products from our supermarkets and from our chemist chains or whatever. And and then bringing them into their little stores, you know, in the CBD of Melbourne which is very expensive to have a shopfront there and and then What they do is they Yeah, they take a video of the whole thing and they take a video packaging and up into the box and then sending from Australia all the way into China. And then a lot of that is all sort of evidence that it of the provenance of the of the items that they’re not counterfeit is is sent through WeChat to, you know, various customers that are expecting those goods. So it’s interesting, though, that it might be possible now for us to be able to send maybe smaller test orders rather than investing 100,000 US dollars or whatever, where much it costs. You know, by setting everything up in China, we might be able to send these these test orders into into safely ship in Hong Kong, and then start a marketing without sort of spending huge amount of money. Is that would that is that a method that could work?

Steve Suh 15:43
Absolutely. Chris, I think you just hit the nail on the head here. That’s basically the advice that I give for any new seller that wants to get into the China market. Use Hong Kong basically as the launch pad. You know, to test if your product is actually Something that the Chinese know consumer actually wants or needs right and you have to invest in you know setting up a Chinese entity spending money on that you know, you don’t have to set up you know maybe a marketplace that or set up on a marketplace which actually entails upfront costs as well. You can even use your own you know, Shopify site or your own shopping cart system and do a little bit of marketing you know, within China and and see if your conversion rate is high enough and it’s something that you really want to invest in and take take forward. So yes, that’s

Chris Thomas 16:35
Yeah, yeah, well that’s right and then you can basically you know, things are really starting to pan out and you’re shipping quite a few units back into China then you can potentially invest that hundred thousand dollars because you can obviously see, you know, the the future potential of the brand and the products. So because it’s interesting with you guys, the way that you originally structured as I understand things, when you know, back in sort of 2013 1415 was that it was more goods were coming across China, you know, it’s true into Hong Kong, the Chinese manufacturer is quite liked it because they got their export sort of commissions or whatever that sort of rephrase from the China government. Yeah, when they went across border into Hong Kong, and then that enabled us ecommerce sellers into, you know, as I was explaining earlier, rather than shipping to Arab countries and try to break out from there, you’d be able to ship directly out of out of Hong Kong, which was, you know, fantastic. So, but now, it looks like it’s heading back the other way. So, as I understand things, Western brands and product owners can send products to Hong Kong through through to you and then actually got back into China. So that’s a really interesting model.

Steve Suh 17:40
Yeah, I mean, you know, Hong Kong could could service service like dual purposes, right. I mean, you know, you can have, you know, your goods being shipped all over the world, you know, through through Hong Kong. And let’s say that you really want to, you know, test the China market as well. You can do that, you know, with your inventory basically in the same location, right. So, essentially, it’s Your inventory, and you don’t have to worry about these various movements of sending large amounts of working capital, you know, in various distribution centers all over the world. Just have it in Hong Kong and be very lean. And one of the clients that I was just talking to recently was just experiencing explosive growth and they’re like, Oh my goodness, like I used to see freight my goods, you know, into into the United States and not having to worry about inventory. Now I have to do air freight. And that costs so much more. And let me also have my international volume that I had to serve and, you know, it doesn’t make sense for me to you know, basically have all of my inventory in the US and then shipping all the way back internationally. Maybe I can send you know, my my demand, you know, for the US and I can have a set of inventory. You know, in Hong Kong, which is closer my manufacturer, even run smaller mo queue sizes. And you know if a need arise where maybe my demand is just so you know, soaring through the roof You know, I can have, you know, my inventory sent a lot faster basically same day, or next day after the manufacturing run is done, and and start selling, you know, within Yeah, let’s say three days at their math and manufacturing run is done.

Chris Thomas 19:14
So that’s how I do it. That’s how I do it. So yeah, so soon as the manufacturing around is done, I’ve got imagery that’s going Yeah, sometimes by see some most of the time by air into the us into Amazon in Europe. And then the balance is sent to Floship for e commerce. And yeah, like to your point rather than sending it you know, if writing to Australia for you know, website fulfillment, I can get it. Literally the cash flow is just sorted out straight away, like I’m selling immediately. So it’s a really, it’s a really good system. One of the things I was gonna say as well as it I’ve also used flesh up a little bit for my Amazon customers here in Australia, really just testing out products in the marketplace here as a manager as a merchant fulfilled and then you know, taking those orders from me Australian and having a fulfilled from flagship in Hong Kong. And yeah, it’s been really successful as well. So yeah, so it’s a good system. I don’t want to turn into a massive chat about a good flagship is but you guys are in fact better than pretty good here awesome. Now who else is using flagship service because you also offer a crowdfunding service to so why don’t we just raise funding and do you have any tips for crowdfunders in terms of like actually running a campaign or you know crowdfunding campaign either on Indiegogo, or obviously the big one is Kickstarter is probably the first and then in terms of logistics, obviously you’ve got a lot of pledges and rewards the people need to ship out. How do you handle that sort of volume?

Steve Suh 20:42
Yeah, sure. Sure. So yeah, not only do we handle like e commerce in overwhelming for, you know, online, like global online sellers that are, you know, custom to selling on their own website or you know, Shopify Magento WooCommerce or some of these shopping carts. We do help out with our You know, the crowdfunding community, where, you know, people are trying to come out with very novel products. And usually the challenge about crowdfunding fulfillment is that many and many of the crowdfunding sellers tend to be on the newer side, maybe they’ve never really done business before. Or let alone maybe they were just selling in their own like domestic market. So when you’re selling on Kickstarter, when you’re selling on Indiegogo, you’re basically opening up your, your market to the world. You The world is basically, you know, looking at, you know, Kickstarter, Indiegogo on a daily basis. No, and, you know, maybe let’s say you have like a 10,000 backer campaign, you know, 50 50% of that may be or 40 to 50%, maybe us and then maybe you have, you know, a 10 to 15% in Australia, and then you have, you know, 20 to 30% in Australia and then 10% versus the world, right. And, you know, when you’re thinking about shipping to all these different countries You know, let alone You’re going to shift, you know, let’s say within Australia, shipping internationally 200 plus countries is just a nightmare like where do you even start? So, that’s where you know Floship comes in and you know, when you have about you know, 10,000 orders that you have to ship you know, within within a few days, you know, Floship will basically take your goods from the manufacturer and most likely, you know, would be in China and then we will, you know, bring it into our warehouse and yeah, I mean, we basically we have been doing this for the past five to six years now. And you know, we have a basic science in terms of, you know, how we pick and pack orders in you know, in the various combinations for each country, making sure that the duties and taxes are all we consult you in advance in terms of, you know, how you should how you should manage that aspects. We make sure even the packaging is arranged, because sometimes you may have, you know, multiple combos, you know, some some customers may order, you know, five or six have have a certain product and as a result the packaging has to change is all things that you know, will will take care of you take care of for you, as long as we understand, you know what the product is, you know, that we’re distributing. So yeah, we even have something called a Floship certified logistics program. And so before we start your Kickstarter, Indiegogo campaign, we can do some free kinds of consultation for you, you will let it you let us know, you know, what is the product that you’re trying to distribute? What are the markets that you’re trying to sell them sell to? So for instance, if you have a battery products, you know, what, let you know what shipping methods are available to you to ship to the various markets and maybe even some safety documents they should be aware of that you should you know, prepare in advance. So, you you pass this, this consultation that we have for you will provide you a seal or service certification seal that you can print on to your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, which certifies legitimacy to your backers saying that hey, you know, followship has approved this product for distribution, so don’t worry about it, you know about receiving this product successfully into your hands. So we want to get it to been been very successful for our campaigners. You know, we’ve seen Sorry, I forgot the statistic, but usually people that have this, the seal will will actually, you know, experience more more sales of their Kickstarter Indiegogo campaigns. And, you know, it’s been proven so yeah, whenever you talk to someone on our on our Floship team, they’ll be able to provide a little more color in terms of really the legitimacy behind this seal.

Chris Thomas 24:49
What a bit sort of, let’s say that I was in a coma salad then or a crowdfunder, who had a fairly large product like what what does the economics look like is it sometimes benefit people actually shipped to their own country and fulfill that way or their reasonable shipping costs for, you know, oversized items, for example.

Steve Suh 25:09
Yeah, so that’s it? That’s a very good question when you said oversized because international shipping can get quite expensive once your product which is a certain size. So usually what we say is that the post the world, which is the most economical way to ship worldwide, two kilograms or less for your products, is, you know, consider like, like a good sort of e commerce weights. But once you hit over two kilograms, that’s when your shipping costs start start soaring. And you think about even your retail costs. So let’s say that you’re selling your product for like 30 US dollars, but your the weight of your product is over two kilograms, well, you know, your shipping costs, you know, to ship internationally, you know, maybe $30. So where is your mark? So think a little bit ahead. When when you choose Using your product and your e commerce business. But you know, here’s your question. When when I’m thinking about how to set up my, let’s say, my distribution centers and my supply chain strategy, I would first figure out where where’s my largest market? Where’s my target audience? Now is my target audience, you know, like 90% is based in Australia. I’d probably put my goods in Australia. Right. And, and then you know, the 10%, you know, International. Yeah, maybe you can ship you know, from Australia as well, right? It’s not big enough yet for you to maybe even consider someone like Floship to handle your international goods. But once you get to around like 30% of your volume, becoming more international. That’s where Yeah, I mean, you you’d want to consider someone like us because Australia may be quite limited in terms of international shipping options. You may have like Australia Post And you know, then you have the Express corners of the world, but you need that economical solution as well right that sort of you know postal solution and you know, flow ship we have we have many different sort of economical solution they can choose from for free even each market. So, you know, we have like Swiss Post, you know, for Europe, we have post Netherlands for Europe as well, we have Singapore post more for Asia, and you know, we even have like what we call that direct injection solutions now. So, this is becoming a very, very innovative way to ship to make major e commerce markets in the world. And so, basically what direct injection means is that, typically in post a world you have many handoffs, you can hand off and if so, if is using single proposed goods from Hong Kong into Singapore, consolidates there and then you know if the show is intended to ship to the UK, then it goes from Singapore to like a regional hub. In Europe, and then it gets into the UK, you know, distribution center and ship last mile with like Royal Mail, let’s say. Right, but that’s a lot of handoffs. And that’s why shipping times can be quite long for postal mail. But with direct injection what happens is you know, Floship will book you know, commercial airline, some space space on a commercial airline will ship direct from Hong Kong into the UK or maybe into Australia and do a special clearances, we will inject into a safer Australia Australia Post network and and then from there, it’s basically local delivery times. So shipping time for that ends up shortened by ally being seven to 14 days, but direct injection can be anywhere from about three days to around eight days. The customer so yeah, I mean, that’s that’s where, you know, international shipping can get quite creative and I don’t I think there’s really any other place in the world. That’s better to do international shipping than from Hong Kong, Hong Kong or or from China. And as really the rise of the Chinese seller, the Hong Kong seller, shipping internationally, you know, back, you know, in the 2005 2016, the eBay and Amazon days, you know, where, you know, you were basically the eBay seller would have a tough time trying to compete against Chinese sellers, because, first their their costs for the products are so low, and the shipping costs are low as well. Right.

Chris Thomas 29:34
Now, it sort of started to level up a little bit as well for for Yeah, the more domestic sort of sellers on those marketplaces.

Steve Suh 29:41
Exactly. Obviously,

Chris Thomas 29:42
a bit of an elephant. The room here is just around the protests that have been happening in Hong Kong, you happy to talk about your experiences that had any disruption at all to your business?

Steve Suh 29:53
Sure. Yeah. I’d love to talk about that. I’m sure there are a lot of people, you know, have their concerns once you hear about Hong Kong. Hong Kong probably the biggest news you are aware about are the protests. Well, you know, fortunately for Floship, you know, we haven’t really seen you know, too much destruction on our side. At the very least, our centers are more away from where the protests are centrally or where they’re really happening. If anything, the protesters are not even you know, they’re not going to attack the warehouses. You know, they’re there. They’re going to attack more of the government sort of offices or Chinese own company stores etc. Oh, yeah, we we’ve had very minor disruptions Chris I’m sure you’re aware as well as as a client yourself.

Steve Suh 30:44
You know, we’ve we’ve been like,

Chris Thomas 30:46
not just one I think there was a there was a small delay because the because of the airport, there was some issue around the airport and I think we just lost lost a day. I think that was about it. Nothing dramatic. Yeah, at all. There you go.

Steve Suh 30:59
Yeah. I was

Chris Thomas 31:02
understanding the other situation that was going on. Obviously, I’ve got friends that have come from Hong Kong and stayed with us just to get a rest to take a break from the protests. had a couple of friends now that have come over Hong Kong as and also Western Europe, just just taking a little rest. So yeah, it’s, it’s it’s obviously pretty dramatic. And what we see on the TV is pretty dramatic, but it does seem as though in spite of the fact that Hong Kong is, is moving into recession, if it’s not already. There is still a real sense of business as usual, people are still trying to get on and businesses are still trying to, you know, sort of survive and, and maintain some kind of resemblance of, of normality. So yes, it was I was surprised, actually, and I think you guys did a great job in maintaining their services that you were able to maintain during Yeah,

Steve Suh 31:51
I mean,

Chris Thomas 31:52
it’s totally during the height of the protests him.

Steve Suh 31:55
Thank you so much. I mean, for us, you know, we’ve definitely done our side of like contingency contingency planning as well as You know, if there’s an issue even given get into the office, and we made sure that the that the staff is trained to even work from home if that’s the case as well. But warehouse workers, you know, that hasn’t really been, you know, a challenge for us to to secure. And you know, the great news I think on a Hong Kong post that side, though is if you’re following if you’ve been following it is that the there there’s been a there’s been an election for like the local sort of district offices and be about about 80 90% was pro China in those offices. But now it’s been totally reversed to two bro Hong Kong, let’s say. I think that’s because that’s where there’s been more peace of mind for the protesters. And, you know, they’re going to see how things pan out, especially with, you know, the these Pro Hong Kong officials in place, and, yeah, we’ll see. I think there’s going to be a Good time period here, you know, for us to see what happens. But yeah, even even if if something does happen again, I think we’re going to be well prepared and as you’ve seen minor disruption, you know, on our side.

Chris Thomas 33:12
Fantastic. Couple last questions to wrap up here. Sure. China is flagship looking to potentially expand into China say Shenzhen or somewhere on the other side of the border.

Steve Suh 33:26
Great question. Yeah. So we are, we are just about to go live in since then. So yeah, I mean, really, the purpose of us setting up missions and and, you know, it’s really listened to our to our customers, is, it comes down to the cost base, right. When you compare warehousing and labor costs in China versus Hong Kong, you know, it’s significantly less than in Hong Kong. So, so, yeah, I mean, we’ve listened and, you know, we’re setting up the China warehouse. Go Live maybe tomorrow or sometime early next week? And yeah, I mean, our plan is to make sure that it mimics our operation in Hong Kong. You know, we I think we built a very reliable, reliable operation that has many different shipping options they can choose from. And that’s, that’s the same kind of model that we want to be able to offer an offer in China. I don’t think there’s really any sort of like Western fulfillment provider in China, that’s able to provide the technology and the customer service that’s required. So yeah, this is really exciting for us.

Chris Thomas 34:38
Yeah. That’s super exciting. And the bit i love about you guys, as well as the full integration into like, I use Shopify so any customer that comes in, you know, just basically just go straight through to you guys and then you just pick pack and ship and not only have to think about it, it’s got to pay the invoice. It’s a really good, it’s a really good system. All right. I think that’s actually my last question. Other than just offer maybe you could provide a shipping calculator or something as well. shocker, I could probably dig it out. But this is Episode 82 I think or possibly 83 I forgotten. But what we’ll do is I’ll put up a whole bunch of links into flesh it by the way, people flagship is spelled FL Oh, sh IP, not FL o w, not FL o w, without the w.com. So be sure to go and check them out. It’s a great service on this. I don’t have any affiliation to Floship. I’ve been using them for quite a few years now maybe five, five years, I think and been super grateful. I’m probably pretty small fry in the grand scheme of things for Floship, but grateful that you’ve managed to let me hang on to your service. So thanks, hate, Steve, for coming on. How do we get in touch with you? And you know, what’s the best way to do that?

Steve Suh 35:49
Sure. So yeah, if you’re interested in Floship services, I highly recommend that you go to Floship com FL Oh, sh IP. com. We do have a forum You can fill out at the bottom and we’ll make sure that on once you fill out the form that a salesperson will be in touch with you immediately. However, I don’t you know, shy away from customers that want to, you know, speak to me directly. You can find me on LinkedIn. Steve saw STV last name su H. And yeah, I’ll connect with you and you can you know, direct messaged me there. And yeah, happy to have a conversation with with anything really helping you scale your business for e commerce.

Chris Thomas 36:30
Thank you, Steve. I was just one last thing I want to just say before we sign off but I was just really impressed the other day as well when I just sent a message bizarrely through your Facebook page as well. And right away someone got back to me and attended to be you. So yeah, you have definitely got your finger on the pulse of your business and your customers and your inquiries as well as your team. So yeah, thanks again for that. Let me just a minute.

Steve Suh 36:55
Let me get that one Chris. Usually I don’t reply directly on the Facebook messages. However, I do see Facebook messages come through, right. But once I started named Chris, I had to reply directly, right? I mean, if you’re, if you’re if you’re if you’re a customer of Floship, especially, you know, long standing loyal, you know, customer Floship, I really do care. And I hope that shows through that effort. So, yep.

Chris Thomas 37:28
Great, great, straight to the top. So that’s awesome and wonderful to have a conversation and jump on the phone and then say, Hey, Steve, do you wanna come on the show? And he was you were just like, Yes, absolutely. I’d love to come on and spend a bit of time just chatting about Floship and also just barely commerce in general. And hopefully, people got a lot out of out of our conversation today. So yeah, thanks again for heaps for coming on the show.

Steve Suh 37:50
No worries at all. I really enjoyed the time and hopefully people will come away learning something and yeah, hopefully I helped you out, you know, through this talk.

Chris Thomas 37:58
Awesome stuff. Thanks again, you. links and Show Notes for this episode can be found over at the Australian seller.com forward slash podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast platform. Sign up to my email over at the Australian seller calm and I’ll send you a note each time I publish a new podcast episode. Thanks so much again for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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