I got to the point that I had a nice brick and mortar store, a good clip of web sales, and a couple of employees. I was working full time and doing this as a side operation. Another company kept making me job offers until the offer reached the point where it was worthwhile. However, I had to relocate and do a bit of travel, so it was going to be too difficult to maintain the other operation so I spun it down.
90% of my sales were in the US, so all the inventory was in the US (it got to the point that I had about $500,000-$900,000K in inventory on hand (home automation, home audio, home theater stuff)).
I paid taxes/duties/etc on anything I imported and on anything exported made sure that fell to the buyer.
The majority of the stuff came from US manufacturers or distributors and was re-sold in the US to dealers or end-users.
I'm a little unclear about one area: When you say to "make it clear than any VAT, import duties, taxes, etc. are the responsibility of the buyer", to what kind of buyer were you referring? If you were stocking inventory before selling to American consumers (assuming that you're an American), wouldn't you be the "intermediate" buyer responsible for import duties, etc?
It sounds like, in some instances, you were providing the goods directly to another distributor or end-consumer. If you imported from China and exported to the UK, would you actually keep inventory in the US? I'm not sure I see many advantages to that approach, except perhaps that you could get your goods to the UK slightly faster and maybe you already had inventory being distributed locally in the US (but shipping twice seems expensive).
I already have a corporation and a friendly attorney, so in terms of the regulations, it sounds as if I just need to dig in and start reading and asking my attorney questions.
Thanks for the info about UPS and pre-ordering, that's a clever trick I hadn't thought of. The idea about starting by sourcing locally to get a feel for volume is also interesting.
It sounds like you quit. May I ask why?