From Employee to Owner: Jessica’s China Sourcing Story

Yesterday, Jessica from Spain sent me a New Year message.

We’ve known each other for years, and she still says the same thing every time: thank you for what you did for me. I always answer the same way—I was only a guide. What she has today came from her own effort. If I played any role, it was simply showing her where to start at a moment when she had no direction.

And that moment mattered.

Because when Jessica and I first met, she wasn’t running a business. She was working a regular job, carrying the pressure many people feel now: rising costs, unstable income, and the quiet fear that no matter how hard you work, your paycheck will always be one step behind life.

I met Jessica by chance in 2019.

At the time, she worked in sales for a small cosmetics company in Spain. Her company was importing lip balm from a factory in China—and my company happened to be handling the customs and import/export work for that factory.

Her sales performance wasn’t always stable, and you could tell she was under pressure. She told me prices in Spain were rising fast, and her income wasn’t keeping up. You know how it is—when you trade time for money, it often never feels like enough.

During one of our conversations, she said something that stuck with me:

She wanted to source women’s clothing from China and sell it locally.

Not because she believed in overnight success. She just wanted a real opportunity—something she could build beside her job. She knew China’s apparel industry was strong, and she could see the price gap clearly. She also loved fashion and styling, so the idea wasn’t random. It felt natural.

But she had two big problems.

First, she didn’t speak Chinese.
Second, she had absolutely no idea where to begin.

She didn’t know where to find suppliers, how to tell a real factory from a middleman, what questions to ask, how shipping and customs really work, or how to avoid the nightmare so many beginners face: the sample looks great, and then the bulk order arrives… and everything is different.

So she asked me.

Here’s something most beginners don’t realize at first:

Sourcing from China isn’t hard because the suppliers don’t exist.
It’s hard because you don’t have a map.

Without a map, every step feels like gambling. You don’t know who to trust, what to ask, what matters, or what can go wrong until it goes wrong.

Jessica didn’t need motivation. She already had motivation.
What she needed was direction.

So instead of throwing random names at her, I told her there are three things you must learn first—before you spend serious money:

If you can’t describe your product clearly, you can’t compare suppliers fairly.

Factory vs trading company matters more than most people think.

If you don’t control the conditions, “cheap” and “expensive” are meaningless.

That was the beginning.

No hype. No fantasy. Just a simple roadmap—and the confidence that she could take the next step without guessing.

Jessica didn’t become a business owner overnight. But after that conversation, she finally had something she didn’t have before: a clear path.

That was the turning point.

Today, her women’s apparel business on TikTok is doing incredibly well. And whenever she thanks me, I remind her: I didn’t build it—she did.

Jessica is not the only one.

Many of the people I’ve worked with started exactly the same way—curious, motivated, but blocked by language, distance, and a lack of trusted guidance.

In Part 2, I’ll share what happened next: how Jessica found her first suppliers, how we verified who was real and who wasn’t, and the first mistake she almost made—and how she avoided it.

If you’ve ever thought about sourcing from China but didn’t know where to start, you’ll want to read the next one.