New Importer’s First 90 Days: A Step-by-Step Playbook for Kerala-Origin Buying

In the first fifteen days, define your commercial intent. What product lines are priority? What channels will you serve? What quality level is required by your customers? Without this clarity, supplier discussions remain generic and hard to execute.

Also set internal roles immediately. Even small teams need clear ownership for procurement decisions, logistics coordination, and finance approval.

During this phase, evaluate process maturity. Ask potential exporters to explain their workflow from sourcing to dispatch. Compare clarity, responsiveness, and documentation discipline.

Select one supplier for pilot execution based on process confidence, not only quote attractiveness.

Your pilot should be intentional and measurable. Lock specification, define evidence checkpoints, and set communication cadence. Keep volume manageable so learning is prioritized over speed.

At completion, evaluate shipment outcome with a simple scorecard: quality, timeline, documentation, and issue handling.

Take pilot learning and convert it into written SOPs. Include pre-order checklist, pre-shipment evidence list, document validation steps, and post-arrival protocol.

This documentation reduces dependency on memory and allows new team members to ramp quickly.

Once SOPs are stable, design your monthly ordering rhythm. Define forecast update cycle and decision deadlines. Align with supplier on realistic lead-time bands.

Predictability improves both commercial negotiation and logistics reliability.

In the final phase, increase volume only if process indicators remain healthy. Keep review cadence tight while scaling. Growth without governance recreates the same instability you just removed.

By day ninety, your team should have a repeatable import engine, not just one successful shipment. That is the true milestone for sustainable expansion.