₦airaland Forum

Great posts

Don't forget looking in the UK for laptop. My company, Stock Sourcing sells to laptops for import to Nigeria and West Africa.

Always happy to help with advice on the best laptop to buy, shipping and tax issues.

Thanks.

How to make money – Starting small.
Everyone wants to make money; it truly makes the modern world go round. Buying and selling has been the basis of businesses for thousands of years and continues to be one of the best places to start for new entrepreneurs in many developing nations.
Start small, look for a niche and use your size to your advantage
Unless you have found a new way to sell or market an existing product, it is likely there will already be larger businesses in the market space you wish to occupy. These established businesses will likely have a greater buying and marketing power along with longer established relationships with suppliers and customers, these factors are known as economies of scale; the advantages of being a larger company over a smaller one.
These barriers of entry to a market can be difficult to overcome, established businesses may spend more on marketing their products than a start-up has in total, so how can the little guy beat the big guy?
Dis-economies of scale – The advantages of being small vs being big
No all the consequences of being the little guy are negative; some actually give you an advantage over larger businesses. The ability to quickly react to a change in the demands of the market is one of the easiest to describe. Large companies hold larger quantities of products, when a change in market makes a product less desirable (and therefore worth less money) the larger company may be faced with a large amount of over-priced stock that will need to be written off. Worse still, it may take the large company many weeks or even months to realise the change. Smaller companies hold less stock and usually have a much shorter chain between the people selling the products and those buying them (they are the same person in many cases).
How this helps you
Use this advantage by always keeping your ear to the ground. Always listen to feedback from existing and prospective customers. Observe the larger players in the market and use this information along with customers feedback to identify the areas the large company may have missed.
Finding a good supplier is key to this, Stock Sourcing are the UK premier supplier of used laptops, mobile phones, digital cameras, televisions and more. Specialists in export for West African importers.

Here is some helpful information about the important aspects of buying used laptops for import.

Buying Used Laptops
The rise of the laptop computer in Africa has lead to an explosion of people looking to import good condition used laptops from the UK. But what makes one used laptop better than the next and which will be the most profitable?

Specifications
The first place to start should be a spreadsheet clearly laying out the specifications of the laptops you intend to buy. There is little point in continuing with a supplier if they are not able to produce an accurate sheet detailing the most important specifications.

CPU
The brains of the beast. The generation of the central processing unit is a great early, general indication of the age and likely re-sale value of a used laptop. Any processor older than an Intel Pentium 4 processor (or AMD equivalent) will struggle to operate in the modern environment. This is best illustrated by the recommended minimum requirements for Microsoft Windows XP. Any laptop incapable of running Windows XP should be considered obsolete in almost all markets and circumstances.

RAM
Random access memory helps your laptop's CPU by giving it somewhere to store information for a short period. It allows quick access to these small bits of information, freeing up the CPU to concentrate more of its power where its needed.

For modern use, a minimum of 512MB ram should be found in any laptop attempting to run Windows XP. It is possible to run XP on less than this but it is likely to affect the user experience. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have more demands on hardware and should be run on laptops with 1GB minimum

Hard Drive Capacity
How much stuff can the laptop store? The size of hard drives has been increasing steadily in line with other IT components. Current higher end laptops are being shipping with either a 1tb Sata 3 drive or a smaller (usually 120 - 320GB) Solid State Drive. When considering the size of a used laptop's hard drives it is important to consider the likely use of the laptop. For most business and basic home users 40 - 80GB hard drives match well with Pentium 4 or Pentium M and Windows XP operating system.

For higher processor types, such as Intel Core 2 Duo, it is likely that customers will desire a higher hard drive capacity along with a modern operating system. For these processors, one should expect an 80gb minimum but look for 120 - 320gb+ capacity as a preference. People are more likely to use these laptops to store music, films and other larger media.

Screen size / Form factor
Most Pentium M and Pentium 4 laptops will have a standard (square) 14" screen. These laptops were originally design for business use and usually have a matte finish with little or no major styling points. More modern laptops (Core 2 Duo processors, Windows Vista or Win 7 operating systems) will likely have a widescreen layout with a screen measuring around 15.4 or 15.6" diagonally.

Other Desirable Features
Modern laptops can be packed with a huge range of extra features and components, some more essential or helpful than others. Below I examine one of these features but I'll expand on this information in the future.

Webcam
integrated (in-built) camera positioned above the laptops screen and facing the user. Used for video calling and taking still images.

Webcams only began to be integrated within laptops relatively recently. Laptops of the Windows XP generation (Pentium M/ Pentium 4 processor laptops discussed above) were very rarely shipped with webcams as the miniaturization of the camera unit was not sufficient

Laptops shipped with Dual Core processors and Vista or 7 operating systems will often have inbuilt webcams, these cameras can range from a low 0.3 Mega pixel resolution to more quality resolutions of 1.3MP above.

And Finally
Its important to remember that nearly any laptop will have a value, the difficulty may come when the value a supplier attaches to a laptop differs greatly from the value you attach to it.

Many regions and markets of the world differ massively; what is considered a great wholesale laptop deal in Lagos may not be a great deal in Lahore. As a buyer, the most important information you can be armed with is the demand and likely resale price in your market. if you have this information and are able to work to a sensible margin buying from reputable supplier, business should be easy! (but rarely is!)

Stock Sourcing are a UK specialist in used laptops and used phones for export to Nigeria and West Africa.