Since the advent of online business and shopping in the early 2000’s, there have been many inspiring success stories of people starting their businesses and transforming them into money making machines. The story of Mr. Syed Muhammad Safwan and his company, named Syed and Sons is among such amazing stories.
Safwan recalls the days he started to work on his online business through Alibaba.
Recalling how he started out, he says that he was introduced to Alibaba.com by a friend and had no prior experience in E-commerce. He only did it because it was free and registered his bank account with it and at random chose Textile and Leather products, even though he did not have experience at exporting products.
In addition to following competitor websites on their products to update his own products, he also kept a log book which contained relevant information.
After working hard every night for 3 months, he finally received an order from an Australian buyer. Even though it was just a small order which consisted of 50 Cordura Jackets which cost around USD $1800, it was a source of major encouragement for him. The jackets were then locally produced and delivered to the buyer in Australia
After meeting his first order, Safwan started to receive more orders from foreign and local buyers but still he had to continue his teaching job due to financial issues. He provided his potential buyers with photos and price rates along with rates of other competitive manufacturers. This provided the buyer a good comparison and a detailed overview of his products.
Soon another Australian buyer inquired and asked for samples of jackets, gloves and bags. After finding Safwan’s according to his requirement, the Australian buyer placed an order worth over $22,800! this was the biggest order received by Syed and Sons. After meeting this order, Safwan left his teaching job and focused completely on his online business through Alibaba.
Safwan opened his first factory in 2005. This factory had its own stitching machines and workforce. Till 2006, Safwan was a free member of the Alibaba platform. With his growing business, he upgraded to Gold membership that started to give him the complete benefits of the online business platform.
Safwan said that after upgrading to gold membership he has posted more than 2000 products on the website. He realizes that the more products he has listed on the website, the higher the number of queries he will receive for his products. At the time he was getting around 18 queries per day from people around the world.
Now, Mr.Safwan has Gold memberships for his companies These companies separately produce textile garments, leather garments and surgical instruments. Collectively, these companies constitute a group called Syed Group of industries. These companies are presently doing business in 21 countries across the world
Safwan and his business success show that if you identify the proper area of business according to your strengths and work hard persistently, then internet and online business have the potential for establishing a profitable business.
via Alibaba
