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Startup Profile: FBC Worldwide

22-24 Year Olds Running an International Import Company: FBC Worldwide

| February 2, 2010 | 10 Comments
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Startup Profile: FBC Worldwide

Year founded:

May 2008

Founders:

FBC was co-founded by Nathan Yap, Farid Aliji (friend from college), and Imtiaz Khanji (Farid’s cousin)

URL:

http://www.fbctrust.com, www.pinakuratusa.com

About the company:

We import a variety of food food products from Southeast Asia into the US. Additionally, we will all be leaving in April for the Philippines to work on a copper project, exporting raw copper ore to China. A mining project was what we initially came together to form a company for, but the recession and resulting commodities dive pretty much killed our margins and made it unfeasible to continue. The food project was a side project that we randomly took on after mining went under. It has since grown to where we are importing 2 containers (40 tons worth of food products – soy sauces, vinegars, dried fruit) a month and supplying 450 stores in the US. Sales for this year are on track to break the $1M mark in revenue.
Our business is just basic international trade; we don’t limit ourselves to a certain product line, market, or country. If there’s an exciting opportunity to pursue in a random country, we go for it.

What makes FBC unique?

Traditionally, the import/export industry is a very aged industry, so we are very unique in the sense that we’re straight out of college. Our ages range from 22-24, so you can imagine the reactions we tend to get when almost all the people we meet with are over 50. To get over that hurdle, we try to have a respected contact that can vouch for us to make the initial introductions when possible. Other than that, I try dive straight into technical discussions (logistics, letters of credit and other international financing methods, customs regulations etc) to show to them that we know what we’re doing. Then again, there have been plenty of times that we have gone in over our heads knowing absolutely nothing about an industry! For the most part, we’ve just learned by trial and error, and have come out ok.

Future plans for FBC?

There are a lot of opportunities for international trade because there are so many barriers to entry. You need to build a solid base of contacts, get through a lot of beaurocratic red tape (FDA, export restrictions, customs laws, etc), and find out a lot of things on your own. The import/export industry by its nature is very secretive (people don’t want to share suppliers, buyers, best practices etc), so its not as easy as doing a Google search. Our future plans are to work on and expand the mining project, as well as start an outsourcing/virtual assistant company (based in the Philippines) for small business owners.

What was your start-up budget?

$60,000 (funded by family) for the intial order of inventory and FDA consulting fees. We’ve been fortunate to be able to roll the sales from that initial order of inventory to where we have not had to put any other cash in.

How can people contact FBC? Twitter, facebook, email etc…

Our general e-mail, contact@fbctrust.com will forward e-mails to all 3 of us. I’ve just started to use Twitter (@nathanyap), but I’m very bad at updating.

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Category: Entrepreneur Interviews

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  • RRiley

    It would be interesting to know the educational backgrounds of the founders. I was an international business major but switched to finance. Did the founders start off in an international background? How exactly did they end up doing import/export?

  • http://Under30CEO.com Jared O'Toole

    Great question. Hopefully we can get an answer from Nathan. It is really interesting to see young people in this industry. I thought that made this company interesting and unique as soon as I saw it.

  • http://under30ceo.com MattWilsontv

    I had the pleasure of meeting Nathan at Summit Series–awesome conference, even more amazing young entrepreneurs.Awesome to see people from the summit on Under30CEO!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=82500286 facebook-82500286

    Riley, two of the founders (Myself and Farid) double majored in both business and finance. The other founder majored in finance with a minor in accounting.

    Your finance background should definitely serve you well should you pursue something in this industry. Dealing with letters of credit, evaluating and minimizing exchange rate risk, and using options/forward contracts to hedge market exposure are just a few examples where a finance background would give you an advantage.

    With regards to how we started off in import/export, we chose this field because it was where we thought we would be able to best utilize the contact base we had. My family has businesses and contacts in the Philippines/China, and my two partners have contacts in India/Pakistan. It was then just a matter of brainstorming, networking (I cannot stress this enough), and doing the market research to see what the leading imports/exports were between two countries (and whether the respective margins warranted us pursuing that particular commodity/market)

    Should you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at nathan (at) fbctrust.com or get in touch with me on Twitter (@nathanyap)

    -Nathan

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=82500286 facebook-82500286

    Likewise Matt, we'll be doing our best to make the next one in May! We've actually got several potential projects to work on with other Summit Series attendees that we'll be launching soon. It was truly a very inspiring event getting to know fellow young entrepreneurs that are doing some amazing things!

  • RRiley

    Wow! Thank you very much for detailed answers to my questions. It is nice to see people my age with a similar educational background as me doing great things with their lives. I've always had an interest in import/export. I might have to dig around a bit and see what information I can find on the subject.

    Networking is definitely the key ingredient to many people's successes. Thankfully, with sites like linkedin and brazen careerist it is easier than every before.

    Thanks again and good luck to you!

  • http://www.worthycauseapparel.com/ Richard Riley

    Wow! Thank you very much for detailed answers to my questions. It is nice to see people my age with a similar educational background as me doing great things with their lives. I've always had an interest in import/export. I might have to dig around a bit and see what information I can find on the subject.

    Networking is definitely the key ingredient to many people's successes. Thankfully, with sites like linkedin and brazen careerist it is easier than every before.

    Thanks again and good luck to you!

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  • Elizabeth S. Crawford

    I think it is a blessing in disguise that your copper mining project did not materialize. You will just be contributing more to the environmental deterioration in the Philippines where there is no environmental compliance that is in place and if there is, those that are monitoring the compliance can be bought. This food project is more advantageous for the country and more importantly to the local people giving them jobs and a source of their livelihood. I hope that you won’t think of going back to the copper mining project again.

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