Thanks again for the comments, particularly the brands and how you rank them.
I'm not going to say what brands we're looking at, but we might go with a different brand for motorcycles than for cars. We've ranked them all through testing and analysis, and we think one company has much superior auto blends while another has the better racing motorcycle oil. Again, we'd be distributing to the race market and high-end amateur racers and car builders. We won't be stocking consumer grade. The large companies (Mobil 1, etc.) have their own distribution, but they're not strong competitors in the market here. The product isn't considered top-tier in the racing world, but has brand awareness in the consumer market, which is not our target
One of the companies we're looking at is difficult to work with and that may end up being a deal breaker. The US$ is so devalued (when I came to Japan it was 240 yen to the $, now it's 78 yen to the $) that US manufacturing companies should be booming with exports. That's why I'm contacting them to buy product, it's so cheap for us right now.
I'm going to pay up front for
containers of product (that's a lot of cash) and they act like they don't want or need any more business. I've filled out less paperwork for a loan application, just to have the
privilege of buying from them. They won't even send samples (that we'll pay for) that are needed to get customs clearances. Some other companies act like selling outside the US is akin to sending product to aliens living on Mars. Not all companies, of course, but there are enough out there to make you wonder if that's not a prime reason for the US trade deficit. You can't complain about the decline of manufacturing, yet on the other hand refuse to sell the products you do make overseas. That's just crazy, in my opinion.
So, we may have to go with what we think is not the best product because they seem to being doing everything they can to not sell their product. It happens a lot. Founders of companies seem to be smarter than later generations of managers and non-founding executives.
