If you’ve been brought up in the West then you’ll probably be shocked by this: there’s quite a bit of money to be made in the trade of cat and dog fur. Upto 2 million cats and dogs are killed each year for their fur.

Apparently some Chinese manufacturers have been passing such fur off as either synthetic or as coming from other animals. And using them to line clothing, in rugs and in children’s toys.

Look out for labels such as “Gae wolf”, “Asian jackal” or “Corsac fox” when you’re doing your Christmas shopping this year!!

Those manufacturers must know it wouldn’t go down too well or they’d be more open about it. Anyway the European Commission has been swayed by Lady McCartney (Heather Mills) and other celebrities and will soon pass a law that requires importers to prove any fur is not from a dog or cat.

Just to be sure we’ve made a quick search of the trade leads in our portal and fortunately none of those names come up

Why are there always people who think the best way to increase their sales is by spamming the board?

You know, the sort that act like they don’t know where to post their trade leads - posting Sell Leads on the Buy pages, filling their posts with urls to their sites, putting their site urls in the subject field.

Well the first is a waste of time on our trade portal (because Buy and Partner trade leads have to be approved) and the other spamming techniques will only scare potential buyers off. Why? Because Buyers will only do business with those they can trust.

If you want to start building that trust you’ll have to put away the spam and:

• Behave in a responsible and professional manner
• Be ready to produce references
• Show you have a reputable business
• Show evidence of your time in business
• Show you have high quality products to sell
• Show you have the processes in place for dealing with international markets

Prompted by that image of a pot of honey that’s being rotated on the trade lead pages (so tempting isn’t it!) I’ve been reading up on honey.

How is honey formed? - Bees collect the nectar of flowering plants and after regurgitating it a few times (yuk!) it is stored in the honeycomb for use as a food source during the winter months.

Honey is sweeter than sugar and comes in a variety of flavours (generally the flavour of the main flower that it’s made from).

Since flowers are found all over the world you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that honey is produced all around the world as well. 

Many countries both import and export honey.  This is because of the many different flavours – people like variety.

Major exporting countries include China, Argentina, Mexico and Canada. 

Where do they export to?  Middle Eastern countries -  Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen; European countries, United States and Canada to name a few.

A search on the portal for honey brings up two Sell Leads.  One from Turkey and another from Brazil.

The Turkish lead does a very good job in selling its product - “Selected honey from wild mountains in Turkey for healthy and good life”, it also mentions the different flavours and includes that image of a honey pot.  Well done freedsel, that’s what a good Sell Lead should look like.

We’ve been looking at some of the statistics from November.  They make interesting reading, here are some of the facts concerning the Sell Leads:

Countries

Traders from 30 countries across all continents submitted Sell Leads in November. The Asian countries dominated - Chinese traders being especially active with 52% of the trade leads.

Categories

The categories were well distributed: Chemicals, Metals and Minerals category taking the largest chunk with 14% of the trade leads.

Messages

Sell leads in the Construction category received the most messages but, as a proportion of the number of Sell leads in each category, the Food and Beverages category performed best. 

So you were more likely to receive enquiries about your trade lead if it concerned Food and Beverages - hardly surprising we humans like our food!

What is the best way of writing your trade leads so that you gain the respect of Buyers and other Sellers?

None of this should come as a surprise:

• Use an informative subject
• Give useful information about the type, quality and range of your products
• Give truthful information about your products - no hype or exaggeration
• Remember your audience come from all around the world, keep your language clear, simple and respectful
• Don’t post a trade lead multiple times in a short space of time - people might see you as a spammer