Container Door cuts out the middlemen

Container Door (Dan Satherley/Newshub.)
Container Door (Dan Satherley/Newshub.)

Buying things in bulk is a known cost-saver, and so is cutting out the middlemen between the factory and your wallet.

Now a Kiwi entrepreneur has combined the two with Container Door, a website which only imports things lots of people want.

Ben Nathan has been importing goods for about 20 years, and saw a disparity between what wholesalers wanted for their goods, and how much consumers were paying.

"Often these factories have agents… it'll then come through a wholesaler in New Zealand, and then sold to a retailer, and the retailer sells to the consumer," he told Paul Henry on Wednesday morning.

"If you're in the marine industry [the markup] might be a bit over double; if you're in the apparel industry it can be three or four times."

Container Door works like this: you go to the site, find the item you want and register your interest. Once enough people have, Container Door orders the product in bulk, shipping it to New Zealand literally in a container.

At the moment Mr Nathan and his team choose the products on offer, but want more input from their customers.

"You can tell us you want a fish tank, and the next time we're travelling we will look for a fish tank. Essentially if we find one, we might upload and send it out to our social media audience, 'is anyone else interested in fish tanks?' Just to get a feel for it," he explains.

"As we get bigger and bigger, we're going to use our community to tell us what they want, rather than us trying to find out and choose and think what people may want."

The company is about to launch in Australia, and Mr Nathan hopes it'll go global.

"Container Door is a game-changer, because it's giving consumers the power to buy from the factory, directly from the manufacturer. We're cutting everyone out."

And like any good entrepreneur, he hopes it makes him a multi-billionaire.

"We'd like to think that would happen, of course."

Newshub.