Most companies have a short list of things they buy over and over. Cutting discs, filters, bearings, gloves, packaging, the same spare part for the same machine. Nobody thinks much about them until someone in the office finds the same item on a Chinese supplier’s page for about half what the dealer in town charges. Then the question comes up at the next meeting: why are we not importing this ourselves?

Sometimes you should. But we’ve seen plenty of companies make that switch and quietly go back to the local dealer a year later, a bit poorer and a lot more tired. The price on the supplier’s page wasn’t lying. It just wasn’t the whole story.

That price stops at their port

What a factory quotes you is the cost of the goods, maybe packed and taken to their port. From there, it’s your money. Freight. Insurance. Duty and levies at this end. Clearing agent, terminal charges, documentation, and a truck from Apapa or Tin Can to your premises. Your bank takes something on the transfer, and the naira can move between the day you pay and the day the goods land.

Your local dealer has already paid all of that. It’s in his price. Yours isn’t yet. So when you compare, compare what the item costs you sitting in your store, not what the supplier charges. Half price abroad very often turns into ten or fifteen percent cheaper once it’s here. Sometimes it comes out the same. Occasionally it comes out worse.

The wait costs you too

Buy locally and you can have it this week. Import it and you’re waiting for production, then the ship, then clearing, then delivery. On a good run that’s two to three months. Runs aren’t always good. The vessel gets rolled over to the next sailing, customs queries a document, the container sits at the terminal while demurrage adds up.

All that time, your money is already gone. And if stock runs out before the shipment lands, what do you do? You go to the local dealer and buy at full price to keep the factory running. Now you’ve paid twice for the same need.

This is where the regret comes from. It’s rarely that importing was a bad idea. It’s that the gap was too small to be worth what you went through. Saving five percent does not pay for three months of tied-up cash, running after a clearing agent, and an emergency purchase you didn’t plan for.

One question settles most of this: if this shipment came a month late, would I still be glad I imported it? If you’d hesitate, buy local.

Small orders eat the saving

This is the mistake we see most. A company decides to test importing with a small order. The numbers don’t work, and they conclude importing doesn’t pay.

The reason is that a good part of importing costs barely changes with quantity. The clearing agent charges roughly the same. So does the paperwork, the minimum port charges, the truck. Bring in ten cartons and those costs sit on ten cartons. Bring in a full container and they’re spread thin.

A rough example with round numbers. The local dealer sells an item for ₦50,000. Imported, each unit costs you about ₦32,000 including freight and duty. On top of that, every shipment carries around ₦1.5 million in fixed costs: clearing, documents, port charges and haulage.

100 units: ₦3.2m for the goods plus ₦1.5m fixed is ₦4.7m. That’s ₦47,000 a unit. You saved ₦3,000 on each one and waited three months for it.
1,000 units: ₦32m plus the same ₦1.5m is ₦33.5m, or ₦33,500 a unit. Now you’re saving ₦16,500 on every unit, about a third.

Same item, same supplier, same wait. Only the quantity changed. At 100 units you’d have been better off calling the dealer. At 1,000 the import is clearly worth it.

So if you import, order enough that the fixed costs disappear into the unit price. If you can’t store that much, or can’t afford to have that much money sitting on the sea, stay local for now and look at it again when you can.

Before you move a product to import

Get the full landed cost per unit, not just the supplier’s price.
Put it next to the local price and ask honestly if the gap is worth two or three months.
Work out the quantity where the fixed costs stop hurting.
Check you can afford to have that cash tied up until delivery.
Time your orders so the next shipment lands before stock runs out.
Keep your local supplier. You’ll need them the day a shipment is late.

A low price overseas is a reason to do the sums. It isn’t a reason to place the order. If the numbers only work on paper, the local dealer is still your best supplier.

If you want a second pair of eyes on the landed cost of something your company buys regularly, that’s the kind of work we do at Venocipal.