₦airaland Forum

Tohsynetita1:
I don’t know if I can meet you, their are some goods am observing that are demanding here in Nigeria. These aren’t something like wig, jewelry that most people don’t use. But good that might be as cheap as #500 and those goods are not weighty, those are the disadvantages of buying using aircargo. Me, I buy from Chinese people here in Nigeria and not from online because stuffs like this can be fraudulent.

Something of this features
Very less in weight
Very cheap there
A bit expensive here
Affordable for even commoner
Something that almost everyone use
Something that deplete, worn out, slack, finishes or
expires.

I'm game bro, you can DM me

Blazebond:
Sell them and get whatever you can get from their sales and move on,never stop moving and striving, don't allow one disappointment to kill your drive,your determination to succeed will make this disappointment become a testimony to others in the future when you tell them the stories of your "struggling beginnings".

Omo stories of struggling beginnings don reach to write 10 books but regardless we move. Thanks sir.

Bazztadewu:
U got clearance sales.all those jeans are meant for summer...any alight movement like this,dem go tear. When aliexpress is there. U sef wan buga boys with price.eyes don clear na.heya kpele

They are not clearance sale bro, I saw clearance sales and the price is around 1 to 8 RMB which I avoided. Moreover for clearance sales you can't purchase more than 1 or 2 pieces per account, I've studied that site for years baba, as for AliExpress I've been shopping there since 2012 you can't get any reasonable jeans for resale now the exchange rate has made it too expensive

Tokskob2008:
Damn!!!!!

This is just too painful and sad to read. Abeg take heart op, if there's a way you can get back at those vendors maybe by reporting or flagging them as scammers please do.

Funny thing is these people are always fast to term all Nigerians scammers but in actual reality they are worse than the average yahoo boys we have here or who do you think produces all the "tools" yahoo boys uses from time to time

I've chatted up the agent to drop negative reviews on their respective stores since the appeal period has elapsed.

What I got

What I ordered

I've been struggling to make ends meet since I graduated over 3 years ago, it's been from one poor paying job to the other. Early this year I managed to convince my father to sell his land and give me a million naira from the money. He wanted me to travel out but I had to inform him that travelling even to an African country is now very expensive which 1 or even 2 million won't be able to process.

I decided to invest the money into mini importation from a Chinese site 1688 which I learnt here on Nairaland. I tasted the waters by importing cheap necklaces but they weren't of good quality so I decided to try again. I imported wigs and they were better because I was able to realize at least 6k profit on each of them but then sales was a bit slow since I didn't really have the customer base for wigs.

After the wigs I imported boyfriend jeans since I was already into jeans business before and it is a trendy stuff that I won't have much problem selling. Before I ordered I checked reviews, longevity of the seller on the site and other checks. After due diligence I ordered 200 pairs of jeans from 3 different vendors. An agent that I met on Nairaland helped me to make payments while I took care of the shipping myself.

I waited apprehensively for about two months for the goods to arrive because unlike the first two orders which I used air freight I used sea cargo due to the weight of the shipment. During the wait I reached out to prospective buyers with the samples and videos that I got from the vendors. The goods finally arrived Nigeria early this month and spent over a week under customs clearance. Within this period my parents had been checking in occasionally to know the progress of the business.

The goods arrived the shipping company's warehouse on Friday and I had plead with my dad to borrow me a refundable 235,0000 to clear the goods which will be paid immediately I start making sales. I sent my brother who's a dispatcher in Lagos to help me pick up the stuff. He called me on video call when he got home and what I saw shattered my heart into a thousand pieces. My phone fell off my hand while I gasped for breath with my heart racing.

The 3 vendors sent identical goods which were as good as rags, in fact it was below okirika 3rd grade standard. Even skirts, bum shorts and plain trousers were found among the rubbish they sent, some were torn. Without mincing words, they sent damaged, old and worn out goods to me. They weren't even packaged in nylons. It was as if there was a conspiracy between the vendors.

I just watched the great hope and expectations that I had fizzle out with tears rolling down my cheeks, I wished I was dreaming but it was reality. I broke the news to my dad who was beyond disappointed in me, he regretted giving me the money and wished he had invested the money in his building project like my mom advised him when he wanted to give me the money.

On my part I'm just downcast, confused and depressed with no idea on what to do with my life. At 32 I thought I was finally up to something that will lift me out of poverty but just like several times that I've tried, I come crashing down to the ground. I feel like I'm cursed to die in suffering but anyhow it is giving up is not an option. I will still stand up and continue the struggle till I make it legitimately one way or the other.

I had to put this up here so that others can learn from my mistakes and bear in mind that those Chinese are dubious and should tread carefully when dealing with them.

A combination of Enya and Yanni's songs in an air conditioned room can unlock most babes legs

I used to be like you before, my babe will offend me and I will still be the one to call a truce because I couldn't bear the silent treatment. I got tired of the manipulative attitude and started giving her a dose of her own medicine, I became a malice king myself. Before she would start her malice I would active the silence mode and go about my activities like she's a piece of furniture na she go dey beg me to talk to her self. Since then she has dropped that nonsense attitude.

Nice2023:
This story is the true story of almost every igbo man in Nigeria except for the few who deviated into bad business.

I like to be associated with them,they are fantastic men and women with great and unbelievable energy.

Keep it up my brother.

Let me ask u,what other thing are u planning to do aside employment?

I can see that the energy is still there,and u are not doing bad at all except for the fact that u have been unemployed and doing nothing at the moment.

I've got some business ideas but raising capital has been a herculean task.

1000Capacity:
You were running illegal deals so you can't blame customs. That aside, if you graduated 3 years ago that means you must have finished your NYSC recently and must have saved enough money during NYSC.

31 is not a big deal, you can always start a businesses even at 37years of age. It's never too late to start again. That's the beauty business have and a difference from white collar Job

I didn't go for NYSC, wrote my final paper at 29, results came out 2years later so I'm not eligible.

It's been over 10 years that I had that unpleasant experience with Nigerian Customs and my life has never remained the same.
A little background story on how it all started:
As a fresh faced High school graduate in 2010, I was given two options by my family, either to further my education or go into business. I choose the later, I went to stay with my uncle who sent me to main market Onitsha to learn a trade which encompassed dealing on jeans though on wholesale level. I was done within 3 months and was given #150k to start my own business, a shop was already provided for me.

During this period I think there was a problem with Nigerian ports so most of the big importers were bringing in their goods through Cotonou port. The Naira had value then so most people that didn't have the financial means to import from China would go to Cotonou to buy goods too. Since my capital wasn't much, I would give my neighbor in the shop money to get goods for me, business was slow at first but improved when I got connected to my landlord who was a big importer of jeans through my uncle.

The man had the money but lacked the scope of the business which was what I brought to the table, he would go to China and import random designs which he would later dump in his warehouses to rot. I got close to him and started teaching him the rudiments of the business, I taught him what to import and when to import putting into consideration the time the cargo spends on sea. He trusted me and started giving me goods on credit.

I started going to Cotonou myself with the man's money, I would sell his goods, make a swift trip, turnover the money and make profits before returning the money to him. I could remember that #250k then was worth 1m cefa. With this method I made over 1m within a year, I was between 19-20 then and by far the youngest Oga plying that route, the other guys close to my age were all apprentices. I was making trips to Cotonou every blessed week and money was flowing in till tragedy struck.

I realized that the Cotonou route was risky when I started making the trip myself. Firstly the jeans were smuggled into Nigeria in order to evade import duties. After buying in Cotonou, the goods would be assembled in Seme border town where a crosser would then help to smuggle them into Nigeria. Now there were two ways of doing this, either through boot load which involved loading all your goods in a vehicle with a military escort, who would settle the custom officers or smuggling it in bits by sharing the goods to crossers like 4 bundles of jeans per person, the crossers would then disguise the jeans into many ways just to deceive the custom officers. Some ladies will make it look like they are carrying a baby and then cover it with hijab, while the men can wear 10 pairs if jeans at once. This method was safer than boot load because if anything goes wrong with boot load all the goods would be gone.

Everything was going well till a big man in our line called me and told me that he loved my hustling spirit and would like to take me to China on his next trip. Then between 2-3m could take someone to China for business, he asked me how much I had in total and I naively told him I had about 1.5m, he told me to round it up to 2m then he would personally help with my Visa stuff. Normally I don't go on trips with 100% of my capital, I had some reserve just in case but since I had a target to reach I had to go all in. A very wrong decision.

I went for the trip with all my capital and savings, the goods passed through all the custom checkpoints till it got to Alaba Alagun where the goods would be reassembled. We had an agent who was responsible of sending the goods to Onitsha.

I received the heart breaking call that customs had seized my goods in Benin, I was flabbergasted because jeans wasn't a contraband once it gets into Nigeria. We later discovered that my agent which happens to be my uncle sent the goods in a truck carrying used tires which was a serious contraband. It's noteworthy to mention that I had a fall out with my uncle because he deviated from our agreement and wanted me to serve him which was rebuffed by my family.

The remaining savings that I had was spent trying to secure the release of the goods. The goods were finally released over 8 months later with over 80% of them missing. One of the men that went on that trip with me that have goods worth over 10m nearly committed suicide because most of his capital was borrowed from exchangers. Some of us relocated to the village.

All attempts to get back on my feet over the years have proved abortive due to lack of substantial capital. I decided to go back to school after my other attempts at business failed but it wasn't easy either. I graduated over two years ago without a reasonable job and have been living from hand to mouth ever since, it's so bad that I can't even afford my school clearance 3 years after I graduated. My attempts at learning a digital skill couldn't blossom due to lack of a good PC and inability to afford steady data. At the age of 31 I've remained stagnant for over 12 years without a clear vision of where my life is headed. What once seemed like a promising life was truncated and became filled with unending struggle.

.

Send me a message on o8o3.8.7.8.1.2.7.9

Baba just open a shop and sell those your items.

What are you going to do if they come looking for you?

MrNovo:
D'accord

I don't understand sir

MrNovo:
- Hustle more, sell off most of furniture and stuff you won't be relocating with
- Convert any cash at hand to USD or XOF to avoid further loss of wealth from Naira depreciation
- Add 95k FCFA (1 bedroom flat) for 3 months accommodation. Add to previous estimate for Shop rental you already short of about 250k francs . So you have about 550k fcfa left from your N2m in today's rate.
- Feeding is always tricky. If you can adapt to the local food then 30k fcfa per month is okay. But if you go around like me looking for Egusi and Afang soup or Jollof and fried rice then 90k fcfa will be your minimum monthly.
- So plus minus you left with N1.2m to procure your goods. Set aside N200k for logistics bringing those stuff from Lagos to Bénin, settling customs. You will make good profit and the exchange rate will help triple it when you convert back to Naira to restock.
** That's the much I can think of. Those estimates, I have given is for Porto-Novo, Bénin, Cotonou is more expensive, just as Togo is more expensive than Cotonou and Cote d'Ivoire more expensive than Togo. They all use the same XOF currency which has its advantage if you are ready to think out of the box.
*** If you are a online/digital hustler, any of the XOF countries I listed above will boost your productivity as electricity is available 247

Thank you very much sir, I really appreciate your input. Seems you're in Cotonou please can I send you a DM?

Onekilo:
Just came back from Egypt. Ask any questions or documentation youn need to know.

What are the prospects of doing business over there and the cost of living?

MrNovo:
At 31 you don't have an international passport.
Well you are lucky the timeline is now shortened, so start by getting your international passport which you need for lots of stuff besides getting a visa.
Hope you have a valid Driving license and can drive a manual vehicle, you need this as part of some basic skills in your basket.
There are a host of french speaking West-African countries that will suit your purpose. The N2m you are talking about hope it's not from it you will take care of processing your int'l passport, travel costs and such sundry? That 2m right now is less than 800,000 fcfa. Renting a shop in Benin will require 150k to 200k fcfa 6 months down payment.
What business do you have in mind? Can you cook, are you a Science graduate, hopefully you can teach Mathematics and the salary can offset some monthly bills while your business is picking up.
Yes it's a smart idea starting your relocation plan from the neighbouring countries, it will prepare to hit overseas better equipped.

I intend selling used phones and accessories, I'm not sure I can for commercial purposes and the 2m is all I have at hand. I would appreciate if you can give me an estimate of how much I need to settle in any of the countries, I can hustle more to add to it. Thanks for your contribution sir.

SweetSauce:
I am not in the country.
Just want to know how much this person charges, so I can compare it to that of my agent.
The man who did mine charges too high, but he is legit, I am considering moving from here to another place.
Modified!
Aren't you the guy, I replied on the other thread?

No I'm not the guy, this is the first time I'm posting on the travel section.

SweetSauce:
How much please?

Do you intend travelling out too? I'm scared of being scammed off my hard earned money reason I am avoiding agents.

Babaken:
If you are good in French try Ivory Coast within two years if you know what you are doing people will think you do money ritual

I can start taking French lessons but I want to use the African country as a stepping stone, my main target is to move abroad within a year or two. I don't know if I can achieve that in Ivory Coast.

Onekilo:
Egypt. There are subsidized goods to trade in. If you can bring them, we can patropine you.

Don't I need visa to stay in Egypt?

Please which African country can I migrate to with the sum of 2 million naira, not to job hunt but for business solely. My plan is to do business for a while then move abroad from the country. I'm 31 and a graduate, I would have preferred an European or good Asian country but I know the cash won't be enough.

I checked the travel section but most of the posts seem outdated. I heard Benin Republic and Ivory Coast are nice destinations and business friendly but I have very little information about them in fact I don't even have an international passport so I need as much help as I can get.

My priority is to travel abroad as soon as possible so I would like a country that can make that easy. I am ready to learn a new language to that effect.

pansophist
Gerald
Tenzagatsau