Starting an Import-Export Business Abroad: What Closed the Gap

The original version of this article proposed import-export as a way to fund a life abroad: you are on the ground in a sourcing country, you know a market back home, and you arbitrage the difference. It was reasonable advice in 2013. The specific advantage it relied on has largely been competed away, and it is worth being precise about which part.

What actually closed

The information gap. The 2013 edge was knowing what things cost in Vietnam when buyers in Europe did not. Online marketplaces made factory-direct sourcing searchable from anywhere. A buyer in Manchester can now find, price and order from the same supplier without leaving home, and being physically nearby no longer confers the advantage it did.

The logistics gap. Freight forwarding, customs brokerage and fulfilment became platform services. That is genuinely good — it lowered the barrier to entry — but a barrier that falls for you falls for everyone, and margins followed.

The retail gap. Selling imported goods once meant wholesale relationships or a physical shop. Marketplace platforms opened that up and then took a substantial share of the margin, while making price comparison instant for the end buyer.

What did not close: cheap manufacturing. That was never the scarce input. Anyone can buy cheaply from Asia. The scarce inputs are demand, distribution and working capital, and none of them are located where you happen to live.

The constraint people discover late

Foreign ownership. Setting up a trading business in most of the region is not a matter of registering a company:

• Thailand restricts foreign majority ownership in many business categories under the Foreign Business Act, and the standard workarounds involving nominee Thai shareholders are legally precarious.
• Indonesia requires a PT PMA foreign investment company with substantial minimum paid-up capital — on the order of IDR 10 billion, roughly USD 630,000 — for the investor route.
• Vietnam permits foreign-invested enterprises with sector-specific conditions, and its investor visa categories start around VND 3 billion.
• The Philippines applies constitutional and statutory limits on foreign equity in a range of activities.

So the realistic version is not "start a small trading business while retired". It is either a properly capitalised foreign investment company, or a business operating through a local partner with all the risk that carries, or a business registered somewhere else entirely that happens to source from the region.

And a retirement visa generally does not permit you to work in or run a business, which is the same wall the teaching article runs into.

What still works

Three things survived the compression, and they have a common feature: they depend on relationships or judgement rather than on information others lack.

Quality control and supplier management. Buyers sourcing remotely still get burned on specification, consistency and delivery. Someone on the ground who can inspect, hold a supplier to a standard and resolve a problem in person is providing something the platforms do not. This is a service business rather than a trading one, and it is a better fit for a foreigner's actual advantage.

Genuinely differentiated products. Not commodity goods with a markup, but something with a story, a certification, or a producer relationship that cannot be replicated by ordering the same item from the same catalogue. Speciality food and craft categories still support this.

Export from, not import to. Helping producers in your host country reach markets you understand — the opposite direction to the article's original framing — uses local presence where it is actually scarce.

The honest advice

If you want to run a business abroad, run it because you want to run a business, capitalise it properly, and get the visa and ownership structure right before committing money. If you want to fund a retirement, this is among the least reliable ways to do it, and the failure mode — capital tied up in an illiquid business in a jurisdiction where your ownership position is compromised — is worse than not having tried.

Investment and business visa requirements for each country are in the programme dossiers.