Learn How to Source Australian-Made Products for Less Than You Thought Possible — With the Help of AI

A lot of people assume that if something is made in Australia, it must automatically be expensive.

Sometimes it is.

But very often, people are comparing an Australian quote with an overseas unit price without looking at the full picture.

They’re not factoring in things like freight, duties, minimum order quantities, warehousing, quality problems, long lead times, currency movements or the cost of having too much stock sitting around.

And they often don’t know what the product should cost to manufacture in the first place.

That last point is important.

Most people approach an Australian manufacturer and ask:

“How much would it cost to make this?”

The manufacturer gives them a number, and they either accept it or decide it’s too expensive.

But unless you’ve already done some research, you have no idea whether that quote is good, bad or somewhere in the middle.

At the workshop, we’ll show you how to estimate what a product should cost to make before you approach the manufacturer.

You’ll look at the raw materials, purchased parts, manufacturing processes, labour and production time involved, so you can have a much more informed discussion when a quote comes back.

It’s this kind of research that has allowed Steve and his clients to source Australian-made products at prices that can compete very well with imports. And in some cases, come in 30–50% cheaper than imports.

There are more than 118,000 manufacturers in Australia, across almost every industry.

The problem is that most people don’t know how to find them.

If you were sourcing overseas, you might go to Alibaba and search for a finished product such as a fan, backpack or beard trimmer.

That approach doesn’t work nearly as well in Australia.

Australian manufacturers tend to describe themselves by their materials, capabilities and processes.

So instead of searching for a “fan manufacturer”, for example, you may need to look for injection moulding, wire forming and electronics assembly.

Once you know what to search for, a completely different set of options starts to appear.

We’ll show you how to do that at the workshop, and you’ll also see the Australian manufacturer database and AI tools Steve has built to help find and shortlist suitable suppliers.

The first day is all about deciding which products are actually worth pursuing.

If you don’t have a product idea yet, we’ll show you ways to find opportunities by looking for problems people already want solved.

And if you do already have an idea, we’ll show you how to test it before you get too attached to it.

This is where a lot of people get into trouble.

They come up with something they think is clever, spend a lot of time and money developing it, and only later discover that the market is too small, the margins are too low, or the product is simply hard to sell.

We take a different approach.

You’ll learn how to:

The idea is to do as much of the thinking and checking as possible before you spend significant money.

If an idea doesn’t stack up, that’s useful information.

You can move on to the next one before it becomes an expensive mistake.

Once you’ve found an idea that looks promising, the next step is finding someone who can make it.

We’ll show you how to find and shortlist Australian manufacturers, including the ones that can be very difficult to locate with a normal product-name search.

Then we’ll look at how to approach them.

This matters more than most people realise.

If you simply send an email saying, “Can you quote me on this?”, particularly when the product hasn’t been properly thought through, you may get a ridiculous quote, or no response at all.

We’ll show you how to approach manufacturers as a potential long-term partner, with enough research behind you that they can see you’re serious.

You’ll also learn how to:

And throughout the day, we’ll show you real examples so you can see how these ideas work in practice.

Day 3 is where we bring the sourcing process together with the sales side.

One of the core strategies we teach is Sell It Before You Source It.

The traditional approach is to order a large quantity of stock, pay for it, bring it into your warehouse or garage, and then start trying to find customers.

We prefer to turn that around where possible.

You create a sample first.

Then you take that sample to potential buyers.

That might be a retailer, an online seller, a corporate buyer, a government department, a mine, a hotel group, a distributor or another business that already buys the type of product you’re offering.

If you get an order and a deposit, that deposit can then help fund the production run.

It doesn’t work exactly the same way in every situation, of course, but it can significantly reduce the amount of money you need to put into inventory before you know whether the product will sell.

We’ll also show you how this process can work from the other direction.

You don’t necessarily have to come up with your own product idea.

You can find a business that already has a product or sourcing problem, work out what they need, and then use the same process to source a solution for them.

On Day 3 we’ll also cover repeat orders, finding new customers, exporting Australian-made products, and using the AI tools across the entire sourcing process.

So you don’t need to arrive with everything worked out.

That’s what the workshop is for.

Steve has now built a custom AI Sourcing Suite around his sourcing system.

This is not simply a collection of ChatGPT prompts.

The tools have been built to follow the same process Steve uses when he is sourcing products himself.

That means they can help with things like:

So instead of spending hours trying to work everything out manually, you’ll see how AI can help you move through parts of the process much faster.

The important point is that the AI sits on top of the sourcing system.

It isn’t replacing the process.

If you simply open a generic AI tool and ask, “What product should I sell?”, you don’t necessarily know what criteria it’s used to give you the answer.

Steve’s tools are designed around the sourcing process he’s developed over thousands of real-world projects.

Steve Eagle has spent most of his working life in product development, cost estimating, purchasing and sourcing.

Across more than 3,800 projects, he has sourced over $1.8 billion worth of products around the world.

His experience ranges from everyday consumer products through to automotive, marine and defence projects, including work with organisations such as Ford, Toyota, Fisher & Paykel and the Australian Defence Force.

The system you’ll learn at the workshop is the process that came out of that experience.

It’s very practical and very data-driven.

The goal is to help you make better decisions before you put significant time or money into a product.

Steve will be joined by Andrew and Dr Daryl Grant, who have spent many years working with businesses on strategy, sales, marketing, grants and implementation.

Their role is to help turn Steve’s sourcing knowledge into a process that’s easy to understand and apply.

The workshop includes examples from people who’ve applied the process in very different industries.

For example, Gordon started with 100 samples of a carbon-fibre marine instrument panel. His initial outlay was $530, and he made $13,630 in initial profit.

Marvin sells Australian-made safety blankets and hi-vis products to organisations including BCF, Akubra, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and Glencore mines.

Jo replaced imported fabrics with higher-quality Australian-made fabrics at a lower price for cushions and other home furnishings.

Pip won an Export Marketing Development Grant to help take her Australian-made dog products into the US.

And Dominic used the product-selection and benchmarking process to choose reusable bread bags from a number of possible ideas, then built that into a multi-million-dollar product business.

There are also examples where the process begins with the buyer rather than the product.

In the school furniture case study, for example, an existing relationship with schools led to an opportunity to supply furniture for a new school building.

The job was costed properly, the right Australian manufacturer was found, pricing was negotiated, and the customer’s purchase order and deposit helped fund production.

The first invoice was more than $100,000.

These are individual case studies rather than guarantees, but they’re useful because they show how the same process can be applied in lots of different ways.

You can also complete the Australian

AI Product Sourcing Certification

This is a scheduled 3-day online event, with four sessions each day.

The training sessions are played at set times, and Steve, Andrew and Daryl are live in the chat throughout the workshop answering questions.

We actually prefer doing it this way because it means we can concentrate completely on helping attendees in the chat rather than trying to present and answer questions at the same time.

So if you have a question about your own product, manufacturer, business model or situation, put it in the chat.

We’ll be there.

The training recordings are not provided afterwards, so you do need to attend the scheduled sessions if you want to see the workshop.

You don’t need manufacturing experience.

You don’t need supplier contacts.

And you don’t need to have a product idea already.

Over the three days, we’ll show you how the process works, where the opportunities are, what the numbers look like, how to find manufacturers, and how people are using samples, buyer deposits and AI to reduce the amount of time and money involved in getting started.

By the end, you’ll have a much better understanding of whether this is something you want to pursue and, importantly, what the next steps look like.

The next How To Source and Sell Australian-Made Products Using AI workshop is:

It’s online, General Admission is free,

and you can register below.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Steve, Andrew and Daryl