ebay and international shipment

i live in western asia and want to ship products to states as if they were sent from somewhere in the US.

if i can't do this, i want at least my location to be invisible/impossible to track.

doing all this i don't want my package to arrive too late or come off as i'm a shady/irresponsible seller.

i have never sent a package internationally so i want to ask your opinion on this. can i do this? what's your advice?

edit: i got that buyer will understand it from shipping time but can i at least hide my shipping location?

you can try dropshipping

I dont care about it cause your buyer knows about shipping time and there are thousands of int shipping sellers.

busybee4 said:

you can try dropshipping

Click to expand...

Clearly the OP stated they want to ship products from asia to the US...

This is what a LOT of Asian sellers are doing at the moment with 3rd party logistics.

I know someone who does millions a year in sales on eBay alone and he uses a company called ES3. I've been looking into this for the past 6 months in the U.S. and U.K. and am about to set up a 3rd party distribution myself as I recently got to a level of sales where I think it's appropriate, I used to use 4PX in Hong Kong when I first started but made a deal with a business owner that had extra warehouse space in Shenzhen.

Heres some advice:

A lot of companies out there operate solely on the uneducated business owner and will squeeze, nickel and dime you with tiny little fees until you have 0 profit. This is kind of what Amazons Fullfillment does, it nickels and dimes you where they make a higher profit from warehousing your items rather than them buying those same items and selling them.

Do flat rates, even if it isn't always in your favor. For example:

0.06 labor cost per package
0.25 material cost per package
2.00 per box
1.00 a month per item per month of storage

is relatively flat rate. With these rates, I know my profit has to be higher than $3.31 so I can afford the have the item warehoused and sent out, excluding the cost of inbounding it and outbounding it.

A not so simple cost structure is like this:

$200/mo compensation agreement
LxWxH = 0.82 cents per cubic foot.
Cubic volume 100% of cost first month, 10% depreciation every month after that.
$2.00 handling and processing fee outbound
$0.39 handling and processing fee inbound
18% additional charge for cost of shipping
$240 for inventory returns + cost of materials.

stay away from those companies, because they are out to get you and make a profit from you not being able to profit from your inventory and knowing you will have lost your profit they will resell your items after you stop paying them for their own profit, unless you pay a lot of money to get your items back. This is because a LOT of Chinese companies set up U.S. 3rd party distribution with small low profit items, such as cell phone cases. So if they tell you "Oh, only a small percentage after a couple of fees" it doesn't sound as costly as someone who has already laid out prices.

@scallen is right, i hadn't thought about that,

You can't send things without a stamp with the originating country appearing. Plus if there is a problem, you will never be able to prove your tracking details if you don't use your own. When i used to ship international, i just made sure that people knew in advance where it was coming from. Most of the time buyers care only about your reputation, and how long is it going to take.

scallen37 said:

This is what a LOT of Asian sellers are doing at the moment with 3rd party logistics.
...

Click to expand...

scallen knows all tricks...

Thanks Man!

I do a lot of international shipping from the States and find most customers are okay with the wait, they know up front my location. We do try and ship the most expedited method available and it gets there fairly fast.

Hmmmm....upon reading this again...not sure what the purpose of this is?

Now why would someone want to ship from the one part of the US to another...originating from China?

The solution to your problem is pretty simple - just use a third party mailer, like a company that you ship items to (in the US) and then ships the items to your end customer. I believe they're called fulfillment services (google this, lots of companies do this).

This should get the customer to think that you're sending from the United States, and not Malaysia, thus increasing the perceived value of your product.