Whenever a brand new concept for connecting buyers and sellers is in the preparation stages, understanding the needs of those stakeholders is a key priority for understanding the shape and size of the new endeavor. During the development stages of the Nearshoring America EXPO, Dallas Market Center surveyed industry principals from gift, home furnishings and fashion importers and wholesalers to determine which categories they were most interested in sourcing at the EXPO.
It was also important to know how many companies were already working with resources in Latin America and how open they would be to expanding their sourcing efforts in Mexico and Central and South America. Surveyed companies represented more than 70 individual product categories from fashion, apparel accessories, home, gift, furniture, toys, stationery and jewelry.
The results from the survey, the first of several planned to help format the show, confirmed the need for such an event and the level of interest in attending it. More than eight of ten respondents – 86% -- said they wanted to start sourcing from Latin America, either from facilities they set-up or working with existing suppliers in those countries.
The same percentage of respondents confirmed they did not currently import any of their products from Latin American resources. Just about half of the survey group, 48%, said they were currently bringing in the overwhelming percentage of their SKUs – at least 80% -- from Asia.
Different importers said they had varying needs in potentially working with new vendors in Latin America. About 60% said they would be looking to use these new resources to manufacture their existing original product designs. But 40% said they would look for resources in these new areas to help them search for new products they weren’t currently bringing in from Asia or elsewhere.
Whatever the specifics on the products, four out of ten survey respondents – which focused on wholesalers and specialty importers – said they would look to nearshoring as an addition to the current sourcing models and would not seek to shift all of their products from Asia. This blended strategy seemed to be the choice, especially at the start of these nearshoring efforts as exporters and importers alike learned how to work with each other.