Just Checking in to see how everyone is.

[RobertH]

Hello Hello Hello.... Hope everyone has been doing well, sorry I have not checked in sooner but I HAVE NO TIME....OR LIFE. Or so it seem, but it is a self imposed punishment I guess...

 

As some of you know the wife and I started a small business selling little speaker we bring in from China. Things are going well for us in it recently I decided to take us to LA in search of some USA based wholesale suppliers for us to buy some of our goods from. I did this because I was pissed off at the factories we use in China, after the new years break in China most all of our suppliers were not making the models I needed for 4-6 weeks and I need them NOW!.... So thus the trip to LA.

 

OK here is the fun part of the whole trip...Butting heads with the wife!!! Sometimes it's like beating your head against the wall. "Don't buy that...It will never sell ...no one want!" Oh you pay to much for this... never sell...why someone want that!" What money you use to buy that?...Huh...You know my money is my money, your money is my money!.... I say No then you can no buy!" You are stupid the man!...Most Stupid!" And that was repeated in each of the wholesale stores we went to ....

 

Now Im not saying this in a mean way at all, just sharing a conversation I know most of you have had with your wife's at some time or another( I'm betting in the last 24 hours.)

 

So we mostly look around at all the wholesale places on the 1st day, checking prices, seeing who has what goods and checking quality lvls. On the second day we buy many of the Car shaped speakers that have been selling well as of late, Mp-4 players, Headphones, cables, and a few odds and ends. We come to the 3rd day and we are about to leave for Phoenix when I stop by one of the wholesalers and he tells me about some Android based tablets he has got in. After looking at the tablets I buy 5 to do a test sale at our store.I take the tablets out the the car where Hui was waiting and she ask me "what you buy now I thought we finish all buying." I tell her I what I bought and she say "How much?" I tell her how much and then I get the angry eyes and the silent treatment 1/2 way back to Phoenix.....LOL!

 

 

OK fast forward to Saturday or 1st day we are open for sales at the swap meet. Hui is giving me a little bit of angry eyes while I am moving things around to setup the tablets for sale. I hear grumbles of "Stupid man we will lose money." I'm not worried because I know I can sell them dirt cheap and still make a little money if I needed to. So we open for business and things are slow the 1st 1/2 of the day, but then we get allot of interest in the tablets and we sell out of the 7" tablets that day, the next day we sell out of the 9" ones. I priced the tablets so we make about $65.00-$75.00 each tablet for profit. The wife is very happy and thinks...."maybe you not so stupid man"...Lol

 

I talk with the wife on Sunday night after we get home from the Swap meet and we decide since I have a sick day I can use at work that I will get up Monday morning at 5:00 Am and drive to LA to buy more tablets. To show you how much the wife liked the idea of selling more Tablet once it is decided I will go for sure she comes out with $3500.00 in cash she had hidden someplace from our profits on previous sales and tells me I better not buy any stupid things!

 

Lol.... So Jump to 12:00Pm in LA I'm tired from driving and I'm walking around checking more carefully on tablets prices and models, well I hunt around until 1:45 and I'm just about to buy when I get a call back from a man I had been trying to get a meeting with so I could check out the company he works for. I tell him I am unexpectedly back in LA on a tablet buying trip and he asks me to come see him before I buy anything. If he had called 10 minutes later I would have spent all my money already so it must have been fate!

 

It turns out his warehouse is just 20 minutes from where I am. The company is called QFX and the buy over 700 different goods from Chinese factories and brand them to the QFX name. They have all the goods I sell and more so I'm in a candy store! I like the guy and I really like the showroom they have. I end up spending almost $8,000.00 on goods from QFX right there.I get tablets, Bluetooth headphones, speakers and other stuff. Then the sales man shows me this kick ass portable sound system made for taking to the park or river or anyplace you want to play REALLY loud music, this thing is cool it has 2 10" woofers and 2 2" tweeter in it, it looks like a big rolling suitcase and has a car battery built in to it so it can play for 5-6 hours on a single charge. The sales man tell me this thing has 2 things Mexicans can not resist....1 Loud music and 2 Flashing lights!!!! then he cracks me up and says "Trust me I'm Mexican and this thing gives me a Stiffy every time I see it." OK I buy one..... ( uh oh is this the stupid thing I was told not to buy?) it cost almost $140.00 so it was the single most expensive thing I bought.

 

OK I drive home and get back about 2:00 AM and the wife is waiting up for me to get home, her and my son come out to help me unload and the wife sees the giant speaker... " What is that you buy?" I tell her..... "How much?" I tell her..... ANGRY EYES!! "STOOOOOOPID MAN!!!" ....LOL

 

Wednesday night is my night to be vindicated!!! We setup shop and I put the Big speaker right up front. The man was right I turn this thing on and people crowd around to see it... I demo it 10 time in the 1st hour..... the wife keeps saying " see I told you to expensive no one can buy!" then WHAM I sell it for a 90.00 profit...YAAA ME! So the wife is happy but she says "You No buy again You are lucky to sell it"........Lol....... Ok wait for it........ not 3 minutes after she says this 3 men show up at the same time with $230.00 each to buy it........... I just smiled at the wife and said..... WHaaaa you say? We took $100 deposits from each of the men and I will be going to LA in the next few days to buy 40 more tablets and 10-15 of the large speakers. Now the wife loves the speakers because 3 more people came and asked about them today.

 

So things are going well now, I will get the rights to wholesale QFX in the Phoenix/North Arizona market and our sales have more then doubled since going to QFX. You should check out there website it is QFXUSA.COM now you can't order from them they are wholesale only but you can see the cool speakers!

 

Ok I'll quit boring you all to death with the business talk.

 

Hui and I are doing fine, still waiting on the 10 year card we filed in the 1st week of October, next week marks 3 years she has been here. We have our ups and downs like everyone, more ups then downs I would say.

 

One thing I have learned at least with my wife is she dose not want a man who will coddle her every behavior and whim she has, she actually likes it when I tell her to knock it off and quit acting stupid sometimes. ( I use nicer words trust me Im not stupid she swings a mean mop) but sometimes she can get a bit out there and needs to be reeled in...

 

Anyhoo howis everyone doing?

 

RobertH

[dan1984]

Haha, that all sounds great Robert! You had me cracking up： "Trust me I'm Mexican and this thing gives me a Stiffy every time I see it." Haha.

 

After you buy all these products, where do you setup shop to sell them?

 

Good luck on getting the 10 year GC sometime soon!

 

dan

[warpedbored]

Good to see you again. Sounds like you and Hui are living the good life. Don't get too used to being right. You'll always be "stoopid de man"

[Randy W]

I've id before - You hve gret hed for tht tuff. Thi prove it!

 

Gret job!

 

(orry my keybord' broken)

[Mick]

Great to hear from you, Robert. Glad to hear things are going well for the two of you. Stay in touch, you are missed around here.

[Randy W]

There is some real value in Chinese audio systems, as I've found out - especially the professional karaoke and P/A systems. You may have a good thing there.

[tsap seui]

Really happy to see things going so good for you guys, Roberto. Great and funny story. It's hilarious, many Chinese wives have to call their husbands "stoopid da man"....before they hug them and tell them how smart they are. They jes can't help it.

 

Tell us more...I love yer stories. YOu can feel your excitement as you talk about growing your business.

 

tsap seui

[RobertH]

Haha, that all sounds great Robert! You had me cracking up： "Trust me I'm Mexican and this thing gives me a Stiffy every time I see it." Haha.

 

After you buy all these products, where do you setup shop to sell them?

 

Good luck on getting the 10 year GC sometime soon!

 

dan

We setup at swap meets in the PHX area. My Favoriteone to go to is in in down town Phx, it is 95% Hispanic customers not so rich a crowd but they are loyal customers once you sell to them. The other place we setup is in Apache Junction at a HUGE swap meet but it is a much older show bird type crowd and it is dead in the summer months. ( and those old farts have nothing better to do then nit pick everything since they have all that time on their hands.

[dan1984]

 

Haha, that all sounds great Robert! You had me cracking up： "Trust me I'm Mexican and this thing gives me a Stiffy every time I see it." Haha.

 

After you buy all these products, where do you setup shop to sell them?

 

Good luck on getting the 10 year GC sometime soon!

 

dan

We setup at swap meets in the PHX area. My Favoriteone to go to is in in down town Phx, it is 95% Hispanic customers not so rich a crowd but they are loyal customers once you sell to them. The other place we setup is in Apache Junction at a HUGE swap meet but it is a much older show bird type crowd and it is dead in the summer months. ( and those old farts have nothing better to do then nit pick everything since they have all that time on their hands.

Interesting, got it! Thanks Robert, and, good luck with it!!

[Mick]

Your talk of Phoenix reminds me of the old days of late 1969, when I spent what was most likely the craziest months of my life. Just out of the Army in early summer. Went to Atlanta Pop Festival, then up to D.C. briefly, then moved out to Phoenix. In those days, Central Avenue was a hippie haven and the drugs flowed freely there, and in Encanto Park, which I hear has really gone down. Back in '69, Encanto Park was great. I was thrown out of there, however. After ingesting a large quantity of Peyote buttons (nasty tasting things), we thought it would be great to rent one of those pedal boats they had back in those days. We managed to run into a fountain chasing a duck, put a large hole in one pontoon, and sink the thing. They had to come rescue us off the fountain. Put us in a golf cart and drove us to the entrance of the park and said "Don't come back." Can't say as I blame them. About an hour later we got thrown out of a Woolworth's as well, but that's another story. Like I said, it was a crazy time. It wasn't too long after that I ended up with the Zen monks out in the desert, which for me, was a life saver.