How to get a few sample bottles of wine/beer into Thailand?

[badischer Barde]

Hello everybody :)

 

Short introduction: My name is Tobias, I sell wine and beer specialties from Germany and northern France to China, and am thinking about expanding to Thailand as well. I talked to a few potential customers, and there is a general interest in my portfolio. So the next step would be to bring.. maybe 10 to 20 bottles into Thailand for a tasting.

 

• Now I can bring 1 bottle with me by plane, which is not nearly enough.
• I could smuggle, I guess the chances are pretty good, but don't want to run the risk of not getting a visa anymore later on.
• I guess I could also get an importers licence. Seems excessive to get 10 bottles of wine in, but maybe it is actually much easier and faster than I expect. Does anyone here have any experience with that?
• I know that you can send up to 10 bottles for private consumption from the US into Thailand with very little hassle by UPS. Any Idea if the same rule applies to airport customs? I.e. less than 10 bottles for private consumption you just pay the tariffs and don't need an importers licence or anything?
  Or maybe just send it from China with the same paperwork...
• Talking about tariffs... I can't find a complete list of taxes and tariffs one would have to pay... the ones I find say it summs up to roughly 400%, but I only get to 200%, so 300% including the original costs of goods and transport. (It's actually less from China because of their ASEAN FTA)
• Also: What about this ominous "true-market-value"? Is that rigidly defined somewhere I can look at it, or just a concept allowing customs to charge whatever they feel like it?
• Is there a way to make sure customs (actually - tariff should be exempt due to FTA, so replace customs with Excise Department) use the actual price on the commercial invoice, or at least anything close to normal market prices?
  Might be not so terrible for the samples, but later on I need to know what taxes I have to calculate in..

 

Many thanks,

 

Tobias

[thedemon]

Can you not consign the samples to one of your prospective customers and have them arrange the customs clearance?

 

In this business trying to do things by following the rules isn't going to work. No one else does that.

 

You can't take advantage of FTA's unless your documentation is perfect including original copies of Certificate of Origin (certified in country of origin etc. etc.) so that isn't practical for a few samples.

 

From my experience, samples of wine (e.g. a few cases or less) and very high end wines are shipped to either Singapore or HKG and then hand carried by air to Bangkok. But you need connections for that.

 

You say that you can ship up to 10 bottles via UPS without formal documentation. I didn't know that. But if really true it sounds like a good option to me.

 

 

[badischer Barde]

4 minutes ago, thedemon said:

In this business trying to do things by following the rules isn't going to work. No one else does that.

True words. But I learned in China that quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. That, only because others ignore the rules, I can't, too. Not unless I understood what rules they ignore, and why. Usually because they know someone who knows someone...

Especially as a Laowai/Farang

So I try to play by the rules until I understand things like that. And, beeing new to BKK.. well

 

15 minutes ago, thedemon said:

unless your documentation is perfect including original copies of Certificate of Origin (certified in country of origin etc. etc.)

we just shipped a batch from Germany to China, so we still have the full set of documents. Still, even a Thai translation might be too much hassle for a few bottles.

 

17 minutes ago, thedemon said:

You say that you can ship up to 10 bottles via UPS without formal documentation

Oh, not without formal documentation. Just with no import licence, which we don't have. I think UPS counts that as B2C. So my chinese companie could do the B part, but for Thailand we would only have the C part. Receiving, paying, drinking..

Not sure it works from China, those are quotes from UPS for the USA.

 

20 minutes ago, thedemon said:

From my experience, samples of wine (e.g. a few cases or less) and very high end wines are shipped to either Singapore or HKG and then hand carried by air to Bangkok. But you need connections for that.

That sounds very expensive...

 

So, yes, looks like checking with local logistics might be my best bet. Unfortuntely Thailand and China don't share a border (yet), so there's probably no don't-worry-about-the-how-we'll-take-care-of-it-service.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience :)

[badischer Barde]

27 minutes ago, thedemon said:

Can you not consign the samples to one of your prospective customers and have them arrange the customs clearance?

That would be my plan B. Do you have any experience how the average Thai company/customer would react to such an request? Does this appear unprofessional, or just efficient?