253 | Manufacturing Overseas with Emily Chiang, Emii Creations
Have you weighed the pros and cons of sending your manufacturing overseas? While recently on the trade show floor, Emily Chiang of Emii Creations joined me for a quick conversation about her experiences with trade shows, but ended up diving into a rich conversation about manufacturing overseas. Listen in as her business model has evolved over the last two years and the role that her parents are playing in the manufacturing side of her business.
Today’s episode is brought to you by LABS, our 12-month group coaching program that was built for product based business owners who want to streamline their systems and streamline their revenue. If you’re ready to join this program, make sure you’re on the waitlist for when we open enrollment!
Preparing for Tradeshows as a New Wholesaler
Emily Chiang entered the wholesale market in 2020 with her first trade show happening just before the pandemic hit. Ironically, entering wholesale saved her business that same year. Emily had relied on in-person direct to consumer markets for 95 of her sales, with roughly 5% of her sales happening in her online retail store.
After her first tradeshow, she jumped on Faire, which opened the doors to more connections for wholesalers during the pandemic and grew the wholesale side of her business while in-person events were canceled across the world.
Now, Emily is re-entering the tradeshow world with in-person events and loving that she’s able to connect with and build relationships with her potential retailers. Being in person does allow you to create a personal touch with your brand and make better connections than online wholesale platforms.
Growing on Social Media
As she’s focused on building these connections in-person, Emily has also spent a good amount of time working on improving her online presence with TikTok. She’s utilizing her TikTok account to grow both her direct to consumer and wholesale branches of the business by posting for her consumers, yet highlighting her retailers!
Retailers are excited to connect with you and follow your brand online, especially when you can connect with them and allow them to create content off of your posts. These posts are growing meaningful relationships across the board for brands with their consumers and retailers.
Managing Overseas Manufacturing
Along with growth in both sides of the business, manufacturing proves to pose a few challenges based on your price points and products. At Emii Creations, they have a large product line with many skus. Emily easily falls in love with new products, styles, and options!
In doing this, Emily knows how important her manufacturing is, which is why she’s built a really strong relationship with her manufacturing companies, based in Taiwan. There are a variety of reasons you would either keep your manufacturing local or move it overseas, but Emily chose Taiwan because her parents live there and are able to handle some of the responsibilities for her.
In Taiwan, there are small businesses who specialize in manufacturing for other small businesses, rather than mass production. Most of the mass production work is moving to China. With her parents being local, they’re able to walk the factories, quality check her products, and build relationships with the manufacturers. In addition, the manufacturers are managing the shipping aspect of her business as well.
While most of her manufacturing is done in Taiwan, Emily has realized that she has to be picky about which products she can sell retail versus wholesale due to price points. It’s important to note that you can have products that are just on the retail side of things if the margins don't work for wholesale, and or you could tell people that it will be a higher price point.
Today’s episode is brought to you by LABS, our 12-month group coaching program that was built for product based business owners who want to streamline their systems and streamline their revenue. If you’re ready to join this program, make sure you’re on the waitlist for when we open enrollment!
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MEET EMILY:
Emily Chiang is an illustrator based in Orange County. She has worked in the VFX and gaming industry for several years before pursuing the amazing dream of sharing her own art with the world. Her long hours and opportunities working alongside passionate, hard-working people made her understand the need for an outlet from the stressful work hours now common in society.
CONNECT WITH Emily
WEBSITE: emiicreations.com | INSTAGRAM: @emiicreations | FACEBOOK: @emiicreations | TIKTOK: @emiicreations
Connect with Katie Hunt
Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.
Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct
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