Keep talking all about shipping and customs paperwork. Explain the intricate details of ordering from other companies overseas. Just give him the details on all the most boring shit about your business. Tell him where to go find more information on those subjects and read everything.
My wife and I had looked into buying from China, selling on amazon. We dug into drop shipping in a few instances. We went to China to source vendors at the canton fair, which was fairly amazing.
My impression is that the vendors in China know what they are selling, know about amazon, etc. They were looking to us for information on how to do it better. One of the vendors was basically opening dozens of accounts, listing their items and having them removed for various violations from amazon. They had a specific team creating new accounts.
The real estate on amazon is owned by amazon. If you are selling an item from a drop shipper, build the listing up to hundreds of sales and reviews, the vendor or another shipper could take over your posting by offering the same product at a lower cost. You are literally competing with the vendors you are buying from, directly on pricing. They will very happily cut you out of the sales you built up for them.
The only way around this is to put your custom UPC code that you own on the products, incorporating the product into a package of goods where they would have to be sourced individually, etc. You have to do something to make your product unique and protected. This means manual work and cost, which you will probably have to do yourself in the beginning.
It’s possible, but not so easy as “Just get a vendor in china, list stuff in the USA, then have China ship it.”
When I do see these shiny new products people are advertising heavily, I just go buy them on alibaba.com
Keep talking all about shipping and customs paperwork. Explain the intricate details of ordering from other companies overseas. Just give him the details on all the most boring shit about your business. Tell him where to go find more information on those subjects and read everything.