#52 Q and A Tuesday no. 5
Q1 : ANILA: For products coming from China to UK, how do you work out the duty value to put on the boxes to estimate for the taxes? Not a VATable product
MICHAEL:  Basis for duty is Commercial invoice value = Manufacture cost plus freight (if your supplier is handling freight, it will probably be on the same document). AKA Total Landed Cost (TLC). Then put that value into the dutycalculator website. 
Any freight experts here, please feel free to correct and or refine this statement.
If you are using a Freight Forwarder or even just a Customs broker, obviously ask them how it works and check any nuances for your own product.
Q2: BEN: Hi gang! Thanks for your help with my previous question. Here’s another one. I’ll shortly be sending my first delivery to Amazon. I haven’t finished the ‘send/replenish inventory’ section on seller central yet (as I’m not ready to send yet), but when i am, I presume I’ll end up on a page that tells me how to organise delivery with one of Amazon’s preferred carriers?
Otherwise…the Amazon help pages aren’t very helpful in detailing how I actually get my stuff from my house to their warehouse! I understand that amazon’s preferred carriers offer discounts for going to amazon…which I presume I book through seller central, rather than parceforce.com, for example.
MICHAEL:  Yes that’s right. Amazon’s preferred carrier is just the one, UPS. They give Amazon amazing shipping rates. Something like £1 a kg or less. Get a quote at the Post office or from a courier yourself and you’ll realise how cheap they are.
STUART: Unless, I have missed something but my experience of using Amazon’s preffered carrier, UPS, only applies when shipping from within a particular country.
For example, rates are fantastic when shipping from UK to FBA in the UK. However, when shipping from UK to FBA in the US, there are no special rates. I have found using Transglobalexpress to be very competitive, and they use UPS as well as other carriers.
MICHAEL:  Thanks for the hint, Stuart. May I ask why you’re shipping UK to US in the first place? Is it sending stock from UK you already have here in order to test the market for that product in the US?
STUART: That’s correct. I merchant fulfill in UK, and have sent stock to US FBA to test market.
Q. 3 BEN: Guys, I’d be interested in your take on this idea. Especially MICHAEL:  after the last two podcasts… I have heard some stories of people sending off their branding to suppliers to get branded samples, and then when they choose another supplier, the un successful suppliers have gone and made stuff with heir branding and sold it on to other people, or just gone ahead and stuck it on Amazon themselves.
What are your thoughts on getting samples made with ‘test’ branding. e.g. my branding with watermarks over the top. That way I can still see the quality of the printing/branding process and can still see roughly what my branding looks like, but I’m protected…
MICHAEL:  thanks for raising this point. A few thoughts:
yes that is a danger. It does happen.
Firstly, short-term, nobody really cares about your brand yet. So I wouldn’t over worry about it yet.
However, I like your idea in that you are testing the quality of printing but protecting your brand.
For that matter, if all you want to see is the quality of printing, you could use a different brand altogether!
But The only thing I would say is that by doing this, if you decide to go ahead with a supplier, you probably should get another sample done with your actual logo. Which will delay the process.
You could just trust them to do it well and get it done, I guess.
Overall,