China-wise, There are many dangers associated with buying from China. China produces for so many countries around the world, that they struggle to get the standards and styles correct for each country. Its difficult enough for them to get the UK regs correct without constant guidance, design tweaks and multiple checks along the way.
Producing 30+ variants of a single product for worldwide production and complying with and monitoring the ever-evolving regulations of each country for updates and rule changes is where china constantly lets the UK down and why we see no china direct companies established in the UK.
I had over 100 non-compliant inflatables when I first started out that all need to be reworked & that was with heavy controls already in place, CNC design exchanges and quality control systems and my personally flying out to China to supervise and inspect. Most of the 40+ factories I visited claim to have been the original Air Inflatables, made for JB, Airquee and everyone else in between.
I even ended up at the same factory on 3 different occasions, with the representative I met claiming to be the factory owner. China really only has a limited number of factories and each factory has 30+ different brands and resellers claiming to be that factory or brand.
The pics are usually of the exact inflatables don't get me wrong but its never ever their factory lol. Copyright & plagiarism isn't illegal in China so they can tell you what they like and all roads usually lead to disaster.
Unless you can test, fly out and inspect, and design review as does EVERYONE who imports does your chucking money into the fresh air?
The $500USD castle you see ends up being $1,000 by the time you upgrade the safety, upgrade the material quality, add webbing, remove the airbag reject from inside, factory design, the flights, accommodation & travel in China and insurance.
You also need to budget for customs 1% in handling fees or anything up to 10% if its inspected. You need to pay around 2% insurance as 1 in 700 containers end up in the sea, There's then a shipping broker fee of 2-4%, Shipping costs of around £6,000 for a 40ft, Quality control 5%, Shipping line demurrage fees of up to 2% and UK freight forwarding fees for container processing through customs and road haulage to the end destination of £450+.
You are legally required to pay up to 8% import duty on inflatables and associated goods and pay the 20% VAT at customs on the docks. Then there's the increased liability if you don't get the design right & HMRC can reject them at the docs if they don't have the required design reviews and test certificated BEFORE they arrive. Delays cost £450 per day on the docks so don't think its as easy as it looks.
I'll be straight up, I got a 12% discount for spending £126,000 on my last order & on the last batch, I made a 15.6% margin which is fantastic, but soon gets eaten up by Uk costs such as storage, warehouse rent, rates, staffing costs, admin cost ect. On top of all that you have become the legal owner and registered importer of the product for the rest of its life, You can't hire it out without a design review, en14960 conformity certificate and inspection certificate. Even after the sale of the product, you hold the liability of the product for the subsequent owners and it can come back to haunt you for years to come.
Unless you have the skills to deal with design, design review, testing, and materials & are willing to travel you've no chance.
My advice is unless you have 20k to blow on R&D and then funds to £60k order a 20ft container load it's more expensive than buying from the UK. Especially when you get zero warranty and then leave it to the pros.
If not, you may get lucky but who knows...
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