Business has a few factors that contributes to its success.

  • Firstly is clientele.
  • Secondly its goods and services supplied and rendered
  • Thirdly support and warrantee/guarantee if applicable.

Now your supplier determines the second and third aspect of your business. The first aspect however is based on research. Fact is your business is a dead duck if no one needs what you are selling. Another factor is competitiveness... This is directly link to expansion, service provided and quality of goods and services.

Then you have overhead, running cost and taxation to deal with.

But your biggest risk in my opinion is your supplier.

In my case as my supplier grew bigger their demands became more and more unreasonable. Unfortunately they did retain the right to change the parameters of the agreement when you signed there none negotiable contract.

Thus I was no longer cost effective... Factually I was “Working for my supplier” because they wanted larger and larger orders then it just became impossible. I opted to import directly but even with massive funding behind me I couldn’t pull it off. Why? Because of contracts between fabricators and existing suppliers. So basically they own import rights.

So the biggest challenges;

  • Find trustworthy supplier
  • Keep overhead low
  • Location