Electronics and electrical products for import from china
Answers
The first step would be finding your products. I’d suggest going for the obvious and trying Alibaba to start looking; this is because it’s both easy to navigate and use safely and there’s a lot of variety in manufacturers and products.
If you go down the Alibaba route, I’d recommend taking a read of this to ensure that you use the platform safely and avoid any spammy sellers: Is Alibaba A Scam?
Once you’ve found your product, you then want to start doing some quality control. This is essential for electronics because, if your goods aren’t up to scratch and UK Customs checks them, UK Customs will destroy them. There a lot of ways that you can go about your quality control - it depends on how much time you’re willing to spend and whether you’re willing to pay for third-party analysis. We’ve written a post about controlling quality issues that may be helpful here: Controlling Quality Issues When Importing From China
Remember, if you’re importing to the UK there are specific safety tests and certification that electronics need to attain - such as CE certificates - so you’ll need to ensure that the products have been manufactured to that standard and that your supplier has all the necessary documentation to clear customs.
From there, you then need to figure out how to get your goods to the UK. There are 3 methods of international shipping - courier, air freight and sea freight. Freight is much cheaper than a courier service and and is what people use a majority of the time.