Starting out
Scaling up.
A first container runs on attention: you check everything yourself. At ten containers you cannot, and the informal arrangements that worked become the things that fail.
What breaks first.
Working capital. You are funding the next shipment while waiting to be paid for the last, and the gap grows with volume rather than shrinking.
Your own attention. The checks you did personally on the first order do not scale, and the first thing to lapse is usually inspection.
Supplier capacity. A workshop that made one container comfortably makes the fourth one badly, and they will not tell you where the limit is.
Informal terms. A relationship that ran on messages needs a contract once the amounts get serious.
Storage. Ten containers arriving on a schedule is a warehousing problem you did not have before.
What to put in place.
Written specifications and a standing inspection arrangement, so quality does not depend on you looking.
A second supplier, qualified before you need one. At volume a single source is the largest risk you carry.
A forecast to your supplier, because at this size they need to plan raw material and you benefit from them doing it.
Proper contracts covering failure, delay and dispute, which nobody needs on a first order and everybody needs on a programme.
A receiving process somebody else can run, with a checklist and records.
What gets better.
Price, modestly, and less than you expect at workshop scale where labour rather than machinery is the constraint.
Payment terms, which improve with a trading history and are worth more than the price movement.
Attention from the supplier, because you become a customer worth keeping.
Freight, once you are shipping regularly enough for a forwarder relationship to mean something.
The mistake to avoid.
Scaling volume with one supplier because it is easier than qualifying a second. It works until the season they have a problem, and then it is your problem entirely.
Dropping inspection because nothing has gone wrong. Nothing going wrong is what inspection produces rather than evidence it is unnecessary.
Growing faster than your working capital. This is how profitable importing businesses run out of money, and it is arithmetic rather than bad luck.
Questions buyers ask.
When should I add a second supplier?
Before you need one, which in practice means around the point where a supply gap would genuinely hurt. Qualifying takes months and it cannot be done in the week the first supplier fails.
Does the price drop much with volume?
Less than buyers hope at workshop scale, where the constraint is skilled people rather than machine time. Payment terms and reliability usually improve more than the unit price does.
What is the most common failure at this stage?
Working capital. The gap between paying suppliers and being paid grows with volume, and a business can be genuinely profitable and still unable to fund the next shipment.
Read next.
Managing a supplier over years
Quality drifts slowly and nobody announces it. What to measure and when to add a second source.
What it takes to start
Not a figure, a structure. Which costs come before revenue and how long money is tied up.
Trade finance, in plain terms
The gap between paying a producer and being paid by your customer is where importers run out of money.
Buying before the harvest
Committing to a crop that does not exist yet. What it protects and what it exposes.
Sourcing from Indonesia?
Tell us the product, the quantity and the destination. We come back with what it involves before anyone talks about money.