This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
In more than 1,700 episodes, we have never looked at the topic that I'm going to bring you here today, nor did I know what this topic was all about. It is rain barrels, okay? So if you know a thing or two about rain barrels, you know a thing or two more than I do. And if you don't, well, you're learning along with me. It reminds me a little bit of Bat Houses, which we featured in a story a couple of years ago, then completely unrelated.
We got another story from a different Bat House brand a couple of weeks later. So basically you never know what you're going to get here, Bat Houses, rain barrels. Today we're focusing on rain barrels. Let's see if we can help out a listener who's wondering about importing them. I believe she wants to bring them from the Netherlands, but we'll hear her question after this quick message from our sponsor.
Hi, this is Katie from Omaha, Nebraska. I'm thinking about starting a side hustle involving rain barrels. I found a rain barrel that I love, but it's made in the Netherlands and they told me that they don't sell in the United States. Should I try to find a way to partner with this company to distribute these rain barrels or would it be better to find a manufacturer myself and distribute it? Thank you.
Hey, Katie, thank you for introducing me, first of all, to the world of rain barrels. And second, these are two very different paths. So if you're thinking about importing and being a distributor versus manufacturing your own, let's look at why you might choose one over the other. So pros and cons, if you are a distributor, you don't have to worry about making the product. You just have to get it to the US in this case, which might not be easy.
It might be expensive. It might take a while, especially these days with all of the supply chain complexity. But eventually it just shows up and then you sell it. Okay, now if you're manufacturing the product, speaking of complexity, there's a lot more of that. You need at least one vendor who will produce the item, possibly more depending on what's involved.
And then you still have the shipping issue unless you're making it locally. So making your own potentially comes with a higher profit, but also a lot more work. What I would do in this situation is I would just briefly explore both options to get more data and then make a better decision. So in terms of the company in the Netherlands, you could always check with them about the possibility of being a distributor, see if they'd be open to it, ask what the minimum order would be and how the shipping process would work and all that. And while you're checking on that stuff, you can also be researching a bit more about manufacturing options.
And most likely from this information that you gather, the choice will become clear. Most likely, if you're like, I'm definitely going to sell rain barrels, I'm just trying to figure out if I'm going to sell them from this company, if I can get them here or make my own, almost certainly that information will guide you down one of the paths. And you might make the easier choice. You might make the more profitable choice in an ideal world. Those would be the same, but you won't know until you do that research.
So that's what I would start with. Ask some questions, get more data and go from there. Katie, good luck. And listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Let me know what you're working on, your ideas, what you're trying to figure out, successes, failures, et cetera.
I love to feature these stories to our listeners along with updates as listeners launch their projects. All right. That's it for today. This is Side Hustle School.
