Is purchasing from China getting more expensive?
My supplier in China is telling me that because RMB has fallen against the dollar that they need to increase my price or I need to purchase more stock to achieve the same price.
I have checked the RMB to USD ratio on google and it doesn’t seem to have moved that much.
Do you think my supplier is just trying to increase the price on me or is this happening for other people too?
Is purchasing from China getting more expensive?
My supplier in China is telling me that because RMB has fallen against the dollar that they need to increase my price or I need to purchase more stock to achieve the same price.
I have checked the RMB to USD ratio on google and it doesn’t seem to have moved that much.
Do you think my supplier is just trying to increase the price on me or is this happening for other people too?
44 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
It’ll be that plus the shipping costs which are extortionate compared to 3 years ago
Seller_3yhYGU61cigbH
If I remember correctly it used to be about a grand to ship a container and it’s now around 4 grand.
Seller_Mw5QFPAFy4kHS
We get all of our products made in China.
We bring in 40 foot containers at atime.
The shipping has come down significantly. We were paying 15k for a container to be shipped which is now £1800.
Overall, yes the RMB is a little worse but overall, i would say it is at its cheapest in a long time.
Seller_b5LDA3tnfaBEG
Shipping costs from China has risen immensely over the last year, and the pound is weak still, manufacturing costs have also risen in China itself. We are hoping that the wholesale is coming back, as the Chinese have beaten us left right and centre, gradually we have stop selling cheap items that we sold for feedback/ratings. Competition is to much for us to just swallow anymore. Years ago the Chinese mainly sold wholesale only, and as online shopping grew so did they lol. How they do it mystifies me to be honest. Over the last few months though I have seen many price increases in our field (electronics) as I guess even they can not swallow the cost of shipping anymore. Happy days for us UK sellers 
Seller_zKEt2RiaID5EU
I believe our shipping prices have started to drop recently (still alot higher than pre 2019), manufacturing has constantly increased but i have not found that it has increased an unusual amount unless you are ordering raw material items like Aluminium Foil.
Seller_mPemhG9cHWctM
Like businesses in China they get greedy as well and demand higher MOQ, so really you are at their mercy unless you can shop around or make it clear they won’t getting any more orders from you, worked for me as I have a long term supplier I work quite well with now finally.
Seller_VJFloi7Cs0iaR
To the OP - It really depends what you are buying and selling, and how good you are at it.
If you are selling things for the same price they were 3 years ago, then yes, you’re going to have problems.
For context, we control our own brand and products, and have been slowly increasing prices over the past year on most of our products, to the point where yes, the costs of importing almost everything has increased, but our margins are higher than they ever have been, and the volume is increasing MOM too on the vast majority of lines.
If you are selling things that every mug and his dog can get hold of, you’re always going to be in the race to the bottom for pennies.
Everything in business is numbers, the COG is just one part of it. Amazon more than any other area is so highly driven by numbers, you either make them work or move on to something else.
I’m going to assume you are using Alibaba or the like, the best advice there is that for every good product, there’s a hundred or more suppliers that will make it cheaper for you, just pass around the best quotes until they stop beating each other for the business, but yes, quantity is king, if you’re buying 100 units at a time then you’re going to be paying over the odds, you want to be asking for minimum 1000pcs when you get quotes as you’ll find many more suppliers willing to offer better rates.
Seller_fpHJMMwn649ll
First thing, have you looked at whether paying in RMB might be beneficial to you?
Secondly, all my suppliers in China periodically bemoan their rising costs to justify raising their prices or push higher order quantities. I’ve generally understood this to be a cultural thing though. If you show no appetite for a robust negotiation then it will happen more frequently.
You just play along with the pantomime, never disclose the max you’re prepared to pay, and keep the discussion going as long as it takes for you to be sure you’ve got to the best price reasonably possible.
If your Chinese supplier is shipping it for you then there will often be cost savings if you change the Incoterms and use your own freight forwarder instead.
On the subject of sea freight, the cost of this started to skyrocket in Spring 2020, if I remember right, and it got so bad it made me feel ill just thinking about shipping anything. Globally, the demand for shipping containers during Covid was unquenchable which drove costs up exponentially, compounded by hundreds of thousands of empty containers being stranded in various choke points around the world during the pandemic (see Felixstowe Port as an example. If you Google something like ‘shipping container mountain Suffolk’ there was a lot of news about it at the time).
Most of the time I ship LCL (less than a container load) and I’ve seen costs coming back down considerably recently which is good news. I’m shipping some stuff next week and it’s the best rate I’ve had since Feb’ 2020.
My view is that we will never return to 2019 cost levels ever again, it will just stabilise for a bit… until the next global crisis!
Seller_RSaktJ3KqN82w
I’ve just recently started seeking materials from overseas. Shipping costs for relatively low weight packages are crazy. I’ve been quoted 160 USD from China.
