Category Archives: Market Analysis

Market Analysis

Yiwu Agent Market — Products in Stock

Yiwu agent market is in Yiwu, China, which can easily be accessed from direct flights or bus. It located about 3 hours northwest of Shanghai by car. I went to the yiwu agent market last month and was pleasantly surprised by the range of products they offer and ease of doing business there. My expectations were to find a bunch of Chinese junk for sale.

The junk is there, but it is surrounded by lots of quality goods that just need a sharp eye to find them. The market is bigger than the canton fair and it is divided up into product categories including: hardware, plumbing, home decor, table ware, Christmas, jewelry, florals, electronics, apparel, fashion accessories, sporting goods, and so much more.

Yiwu is best suited to smaller retail and wholesale operations because you can buy goods by the case. The low minimum quantity means there is no need to buy thousands or even a hundred. All you have to do is fill out a PO and pay for your goods up front. Prices are in line with what you expect to pay for stock goods, generally about 10% higher than dealing with a factory directly. Goods are generally ready to ship from a manufacturers stock and can be in transit within 15 days. You’ll need a consolidating company to work with to bring your goods together for shipment, the cost here depends on the amount of service you require.

It is definitely an untapped product source for the US market. From what I gathered Yiwu is currently used most by customers from the Middle East and South America. The good thing is most products reflect western and European tastes.

The wait goes on. The free-agent market, once a bustling example of baseball prosperity, has done surprisingly little business in the two weeks since the bidding was supposed to begin.

There have been some scattered signings. Darryl Strawberry got a five-year deal from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Catcher Darren Daulton re-signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. Pitcher Bud Black got $10 million over four years from the San Francisco Giants. Yesterday, Tim Leary became only the fourth free agent to sign a multi-year contract when he got $5.95 million for three years to return to the New York Yankees.

That’s it. There are more than 80 free agents still unaccounted for, including Mickey Tettleton and at least a couple of dozen other front-line players. Though there were indications that business might pick up this week — and the Leary signing could be a sign of things to come — the market remains soft.

“I think there are a number of things going on,” said Tony Attanasio, who represents Tettleton and several other free agents. “Right now, you’ve got a lot of teams concentrating on re-signing their own players and wondering what’s going to happen with the new-look guys. Two general managers told me today that they have a strong interest in Mickey and Charlie Hough and Kevin Gross, but they have to wait and see what happens with their own guys.”

If that is the case, then Tettleton is caught in the middle, since the Orioles have made no attempt to improve on the one-year contract (believed to be worth about $1.3 million) they offered him in October. There has been no contact between Attanasio and the Orioles since the free-agent filing period ended Nov. 4.

In the meantime, the club’s interest in other free agents appeared to increase, and there was speculation that offers would be made to at least one starting pitcher and one run-producing outfielder. But as of late yesterday, the Orioles had not gotten back in touch with the agent for first baseman/outfielder Franklin Stubbs or made their intentions clear concerning several other players on their shopping list.

General manager Roland Hemond said yesterday that the team had put the free-agent situation on hold temporarily to work on the 40-man roster, which must be finalized by midnight.

The Orioles promoted pitcher Mike Linsky to the major-league roster yesterday, leaving two spots open. Hemond indicated that the club would fill the roster by this afternoon, but these are not decisions that the front office takes lightly. Players left unprotected can be claimed by other clubs in the Rule V draft in December.

The roster situation provides still another excuse for the tepid free yiwu agent activity, but the Orioles already have laid the groundwork for more serious free agent negotiations. The question is whether they will take the next step and spend the necessary millions to restructure the club for 1991.

Market Analysis

The Best Annuities For Your Profile Using The Open Market Option

When approaching retirement you will be thinking about the options you need to consider for your retirement income and finding the best annuities will be one of them. The open market option was introduced in the UK to allow everyone at retirement the chance to shop around to find the best annuities from the entire market and not just those offered by the pension company you saved with.

Those retiring will be well advised to seek the services of an independent financial adviser (IFA) so that you have access to the entire market, this is also because many of the annuity providers only sell through their products via financial advisers, so you could miss out on the best annuity rates because you as an individual would not be able to get a quote.

Once you have found a financial adviser then you need to let them know your ambitions for retirement so they can choose the best annuities from the many different types on the market. There is a vast range of different annuity products on the market from, guaranteed annuities to income drawdown and understanding each of these different products would take you weeks of research, this is why you should seek the services of an IFA.

An IFA will ask you questions about the income you will need in retirement and also ask about your lifestyle habits and medical conditions present and past. These questions are asked because there is a possibility that you might qualify for enhanced annuities which give much higher annuity rates than standard, of course depending on the severity of lifestyle habits or medical conditions. It is said there are over 5000 different medical conditions that on their own or in combination could qualify for enhanced annuity rates and give your retirement income a huge boost.

Using the open market option you can be sure to find the best annuities and using an IFA will ensure that the entire market can be research for your exact profile. Retirement income may have to last as much as 30 years so it is vital that you get the best possible rates you can.

Market Analysis

Solar Market Keeps Shining in 2011

According to the market research firm iSuppli Corp., despite extreme shifts in pricing, demand and governmental subsidies, the global photovoltaic market in 2011 will experience robust growth, with installations rising by 42.3 percent for the year.

iSuppli forecasts that worldwide solar installations will reach 20.2 Gigawatts (GW) next year, up from 14.2GW at the end of 2010. Germany, the world’s leading Photovoltaic (PV) market, will continue to play a key role and account for half of the total installations, at 9.5GW.

While an impressive growth total for the year, the expansion will be down significantly from the 97.9 percent increase in 2009.

“The strong results projected for 2011 come despite softening demand anticipated during the first quarter of next year,” said Stefan de Haan, Senior Analyst (Photovoltaic Materials & Systems) at iSuppli. “As a result, prices will weaken at the end of the first quarter. However, the feebleness of the pricing will be responsible for demand momentum building up in the second quarter. From then on, a significant demand rally can be expected, leading to a price rebound in the second half.”

Speculation is also rife about the possibility of a PV installation cap being imposed in Germany for 2011.

However, iSuppli believes that the German government will not dare to cut down PV subsidies, especially in the wake of a recent decision to extend the operation of nuclear power plants. With the nuclear extension passing despite popular opposition, the government is not likely to risk further alienating public opinion by implementing limits on photovoltaic solar energy.

“A severe action such as an installation cap on solar technology conceivably could cause a mutiny among regional German politicians who count PV companies as electoral constituencies, in the process drawing loud protestations from the industry, where precious jobs are at stake,” de Haan said. “And unlike in France—where an ad hoc action imposing PV caps succeeded—the solar industry in Germany has real influence on governmental decisions.”

In the near term, the nuclear reprieve in Germany will have no effect on the PV markets, even if passage might have sent the wrong signal to PV global markets for the time being, iSuppli maintains. And with German polls suggesting overwhelming support—80 percent by one count—among voters in favor of renewable energy generation, the forecasts for a strong German PV market in 2011 continue to hold and remain unchanged.

Market Analysis

Converting E-Commerce Online Store to Yahoo Store

Converting your e-commerce online store in to Yahoo Store will give complete and dynamic solutions for your online products selling across the globe.According to market analysis e-commerce stores developed in other storefronts are facing enough problems/issues at the same time while Yahoo Store owners are relaxed and tension free in all aspects.

Some Common issues arise for NON Yahoo Store owners:-

1.Downtime: Majority of e-commerce stores online or other storefronts owners experience excessive downtime of store. Ultimately, frequent downtime of store directly affects revenue.

  • Features: Lack of major features in other storefronts. This makes it tedious to maintain store and get lesser information about the store.
  • Design: On design features each and every storefront has its own technique. Many storefronts have limitation on creative design platform. This creates problem on customizing web pages according to needs.
  • Maintaining: A main issue of store owners is of maintaining online store. Maintaining the store is difficult and time consuming.
  • Traffic & Presentation Store Owners (Non Yahoo Store) – My Online Store doesn’t get enough traffic and also faces presentation crisis.
  • Security one of the major concerns of non Yahoo Store is “Security” of the online transactions.

Above mentioned issues are valid enough to switch over the existing storefront to “Yahoo Store”. Considering all the above issues Yahoo Store offers dynamic solutions for your Online Store. Yahoo Store has taken extensive care of all the above issues experienced by the Store Owners (Non Yahoo Store).

Yahoo Store Offers:-

  • Uptime: Yahoo Store gives maximum uptime and rarely it has any downtime (if any). This make your Yahoo Store will live 24 hours.
  • Yahoo Store Features: In yahoo store, all lacking features in other storefronts are merged with additional features which differentiate Yahoo Store from other online storefront platform. Yahoo Store also provides various reports (nearly 40) of store indicating sale, page view and many more.
  • Custom Design: Yahoo Store facilitates customization of your web pages according your requirement with the support of easy design tool, third-party tools or by professional designer or developer. In Yahoo Store, Search Engine Friendly pages can be created along with CSS based custom design. PHP, Perl and MYSQL programming languages can be used in Yahoo Store as per requirement.
  • Security: Concerning security, Yahoo is the best from all other storefronts. Transactions that take place on Yahoo Store are done on Secure Socket Layer (SSL) with 128 bit encryption to shield transactions, risks tools configurable to help flag fraudulent orders.
  • Maintaining: Yahoo Store is easy to maintain and use of its administrative back-end is simple.

Today Yahoo! Store is the fastest and most practical way to open your online store and one of the most popular and affordable e-commerce platforms for small and medium sized businesses. Anyone can set up a fully-functional online store without requiring HTML/ RTML programming skills, with help of very powerful backend management tools. It ensures greater visibility, more visitors, secured transactions, easy management of your store and more flexibility in handling large number of products.

Market Analysis

The Significance of OSS in Telecom Billing Solutions

Communication is a never ending process that remains mandatory in both personal and professional level. Today, the telecom industry offers numerous services that act as a proper communication tool to undertake market analysis and further assisting the companies to promote their sales lead. But, the telecom providers often face some discrepancies while rendering some important aspects. Especially, the subject matter of billing policy comes in first. Today, there is a new concept known as OSS or Operations Support System, that is specially developed to have a proper track upon the inventory, management, planning and repair functions for telecommunication service providers.

Every telecom operator undertakes a task that is fully responsible for billing services and charging related matter. With the help of the Telecom Billing Solutions, it is convenient to understand the requirement of the client and what type of services should be requested. This will allow the client, retain to the service provider for a longer time. The implementation of OSS enhances billing, traffic analysis, cost allocation, inventory management service, order management and network optimization.

The main functionality of the telecommunication OSS is to track the database that the customer is using. After accessing the data, it is forwarded to the billing department for next level of processing. Providing a detailed billing structure is very vital to make the clients satisfied. This will definitely make them feel that their interests are always safeguarded by the service provider.

The OSS starts with a client application request in favor of a fresh account, with a specific telecom service provider. Once the customer records are verified, a special ID is sent to the fresh client. After the approval, the account is activated and then the client is entitled to access the services as per the scheme.

After the service commencement, the call records are processed under the specific ID as per the tariff plan. If the client is using some value added services then all the additional costs would be credited to the primary plan. Apart from the primary billing usage, OSS also monitor the errors and faults that are faced by the customers. All the customer support calls are closely scrutinized and are used for future reference. The modified records into the customer’s ID such as errors, additional discounts or manual data reports are also updated through this system and assist respective departments to improve or cut down the problems in the future. After a specific period, a database is formulated as per the billing standards (Automated Message Accounting System, Network Data Management, etc). In addition, OSS incorporates cost based on the collections, printing, billing cycles and call center.

As the competition grows, the service provider needs to concentrate upon advanced billing system through a better mode. The Customer relationship management represents an effective telecom billing solutions through OSS. It is a must in telecommunication industry.