Lik Sang’s sales of Sony PSP Consoles illegal
Lik-sang.com, one of the most famous video games online retailer, has obtained a judgment in the High Court of London ruling PSP sales of the popular web store to the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA) unlawful.
The court hearing took place on October 9 at the High Court of London, without Lik-Sang’s legal representatives attending or arguing at the hearing. It is unclear at this point if this ruling will also affect exports of PlayStation 3 and other PlayStation-branded items. Furthermore, Sony intends to obtain an UK injunction against Lik-Sang’s sales to the EEA.
The legal battle with Sony over Lik-Sang’s legitimate exporting activities started during August 2005. Sony complained about the sales of PSP (PlayStation Portable) systems to Europe and launched a lawsuit in the High Court of Hong Kong, arguing that Lik-Sang advertises the Sony products “in a dishonest manner” and “unlawfully interferes with Sony’s economical interests”. They further launched a completely separate lawsuit against the Hong Kong based company in the courts of England for selling PSP consoles to customers in Europe and the UK, and also for mirroring the freely available PSP user guides on their servers alleging copyright infringement.
Hong Kong’s laws are clear when it comes to parallel trade, and the company has no ties whatsoever with the UK. While Lik-Sang vigorously contested the UK’s jurisdiction over the allegations, the judge apparently found that UK law should also apply to Hong Kong exporters. Sony has also threatened Lik Sang recently to initiate yet another lawsuit to prevent the sales of PlayStation 3 consoles to Europe.
How this decision will affect Lik-Sang’s business is not entirely known at this time. The retailer is currently exploring its legal options and analyzing the consequences of this ruling.
“Fighting multiple lawsuits in different countries at the same time and paying high premiums to expensive lawyers is an overwhelming situation for a small company like Lik Sang. Launching separate court actions with separate claims and different judges is completely unnecessary, except for the fact that it helps reaching one single target: outspend Lik-Sang to death. Pay beyond”, said Pascal Clarysse, Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com, clearly annoyed by the unfair situation. “And contrary to their claim, I don’t believe they are suffering ‘losses and damages’ through Lik-Sang’s activity”.
EBay CEO sees no pullback from business in China
EBay has stated definitely that the online auction company has no plans to exit the China market in the face of mounting competition. Some analysts have written of a possible pullback.
President and Chief Executive Meg Whitman told investors on a conference call following eBay’s quarterly report, ‘We are committed to China for the long term.’
She allowed eBay faces tough competition from rivals who offer free auction listings from rivals such as Yahoo-backed Alibaba and others. She said the company’s strategy is to combine the operations of eBay, PayPal and Skype far more closely in China than in other markets
Source: Reuters
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Low cost isn’t everything
Benjamin Shobert, the managing director of Teleos Inc has just released an article “Low cost isn’t everything”. He pointed out that many Chinese companies do not spend time on investigating how to penetrate into the export markets. Instead, they spend all the time on lowering the costs. He said those companies have to wake up and have a balance on lowering the costs and providing the necessary features to the foreign users.
Benjamin has pointed out the weakness of many of the Chinese manufacturers nowadays. About a few years ago, when I went to China to purchase different kinds of consumer electronics and computer products, I had met a few manufacturer owners. I asked one of them why they would still produce the USB 1.1 thumb drive while the USB 2.0 was so prevalent. His answer made me terrifying. He said the production cost of making it USB 2.0 was just RMB $3.0 (About USD $0.4) more expensive than the USB 1.1. The reason of doing that was because he thought that mere price difference would make his products more competitive. Actually the inverse was true!
How to import goods from China successfully and securely?
China has been thriving in recent years and has been named as the “World’s factory” because of its high production and low labor cost. It seems to be a trend now to import goods from China directly since there will be middleman in between and hence one can get the latest and cheapest products.
“But how? I don’t speak Chinese and China is thousand miles away from my home”, you may wonder. This is still valid for a few years ago.
Things have changed and now you just need a few clicks online and you will have the latest qualified products to your home/office directly from China, thanks to the appearance of online wholesale shops in China in recent years.
Though it is much easier to order goods from China, a few things you should still need to be noted:
1. Products Quality
Products quality is always the primary concern of an importer. Many of the wholesalers claim that they will do some quality-checks before the products are sent out. This is a good service but I’d suggest you, to be safe, to find a site that offers samples so that you can have a check on the product yourself.
2. Delivery
Delivery time is another concern for an importer. Sometimes a product would become useless if it takes 2 months to be shipped. Try to find a company that locates in a large city, like Hong Kong, and at the same time they offer express courier service like UPS, EMS, etc.
3. Payment Gateway
Bank-wire was the only option before the internet times. Now different payment gateways based on transferring money through credit card have appeared. Paypal is one of the examples. Make sure the wholesale company offers Paypal-like payment gateway and charge-back and buyer protection are available.
4. Tax
Import tax can make your cost significantly increase. Almost most of the overseas online-shop will not be responsible for the import tax. But some of the better ones will try to lower the tax as much as possible for the customers. They will try to separate the goods into smaller packages, state the goods as gifts and a lower nominal value in the custom form so that the charges would be minimized.
5. MOQ
Many ebayers and small local shops would care much about the minimum order quantity. Only a few online wholesale shops (like http://www.asia-product.com) would offer no MOQ limit to the customers.
6. Drop-shipping
Drop shipping is a type of retailing in which the retailer does not keep goods/product in stock, but instead passes customer orders and shipment details to wholesalers, who then dispatch the goods to the customer directly. The retailer makes their profit on the difference