Asian & Tribal Antique admirers, please check out my webstore and give me feedback.

[OregonBlue]

I travel so much I seldom have much time to devote to changing/upgrading my site. Our son designed it to be simple, easy to surf. Any suggestions, comments would be appreciated.

http://sawannakhet.com

[Vinca]

1. That's a great site - I'm impressed. It was very smart to offer

free shipping within the U.S. and the grid with the description and price on every item is excellent. Nothing drives me crazier than to browse an antique site than doesn't list prices. "On request." Drives me crazy. It's definitely a good format. Do you do well with it?

[OregonBlue]

3. Thank you. Our son worked very hard on it. We insisted on it being as simple

to use as possible. Yeah, shipping can be a killer so we felt that including it would be a good incentive for people and eliminates a lot of hassle. We wanted to avoid being a snooty "on request" site. We actually travel all the time, spend months in small villages all over SE Asia. We wanted the site to reflect that we are real, not phony antiques people. Hope we achieved it. Thanks again for the feedback.

[grasswire]

2. very nice

Do you have a brick and mortar store?

I'm interested in knowing more about importing items for resale. Is there a web site that explains the import laws?

Best of luck to you!

[OregonBlue]

4. Sorry, I wish there was a site. We have to use the U.S. government customs site. It is very

complicated and you have to make sure to put in key words for EVERY single item you are bringing in because there are many, many categories. When you actually get to customs, they often choose which ones they want to use and it's no good arguing with them. In general though, we have found the Customs people to be very professional and nice to deal with.

We don't have brick and mortar but I do wholesale textile sales. I actually have lots of friends in the business who have brick and mortar stores so I import much of what I get for them. They have referred us to many other customers. Problem is, with textiles you have to show them in-person and with the cost of gas, that's getting prohibitively expensive.

Good luck, it's a tough time to get into this business. Airline tickets have skyrocked, shipping has skyrocketed, gas has skyrocketed. Mail rates keep going up. We're hoping to develop more internet business since our costs are getting so high.

Good luck though. I don't mean to sound negative, just caution people to think it all through very carefully and figure out ways to get your prices way, way down.

[grasswire]

5. well, my cost would be very, very low.

I have an agent in country for the item I want to import. It's something that's handmade, will cost me fifty cents each and would bring an estimated $50 each in this country, selling on eBay and locally at Saturday Market or some similar venue. What I need to learn is the import regulations. It's a back burner item, though. The item is made by itinerants and is seasonal, and this isn't the season.

[truedelphi]

6. Mail rates are an abomination

The average small business owner is seeing their package costs go through the roof. The US Post office rates were finangled by the bought out Congress on behalf of the big boys. New mail rates of last year were set up to offset a discount price to the big timers like TimeLife.

And this year of course, there are the soaring energy costs.

[truedelphi]

7. Very gorgeous items you have. n/t