Date: August 24th, 2026Summary: With Market Masters 4 just wrapping in Austin, Kevin hands the episode over to a sample edition of Marketing Misfits, the newsletter he writes weekly with Norm Farrar. The theme is product sourcing: Kian Golzari's fifteen years of factory-floor experience, what AI actually changes about supplier research, and where tariffs are pushing manufacturing next. Along the way there is a customer avatar framework, a welcome-sequence teardown, and the Cards Against Humanity case study. Key Points Discussed: Pay Chinese suppliers in RMB rather than USD — suppliers often give a quiet discount because it removes their own currency conversion costKian Golzari's background: he grew up around Chinese factories and learned MOQs, lead times and quality control before most sellers learn to sellThe gold iPhones for Real Madrid players — proof that relationships, not databases, get impossible orders madeThe face-to-face factory visit is non-negotiable: better pricing, faster samples, extended credit terms, early access to new product conceptsChina +1 is a survival strategy — Vietnam, India and Mexico are the three most commonly used backup countriesLegally separating product development costs from cost of goods can meaningfully reduce tariff liabilityBuild relationships with backup factories before a crisis forces the outreachAI compresses the sourcing timeline: trend identification, market validation, Alibaba discovery and negotiation brief in hours rather than weeksQuality control and supplier trust stay human — AI accelerates discovery, not inspectionTariff picture: US tariffs on Chinese goods around 51% (up from roughly 20% pre-2025), India near 26%, Vietnam around 12%, Mexico effectively zero under USMCARoughly 65% of US importers are moving away from China-only sourcing, and sellers who visit factories in person report about 23% lower defect ratesThe customer avatar framework: name them, write their morning, read 200+ reviews for their language, find the purchase trigger, define the transformationWelcome sequence structure across five emails spaced over 7–10 days, with mid-sequence segmentation when a subscriber clicks a product linkSupplier red flags: no factory audit certificates, reused or generic factory photos, and a supplier who agrees to everything without ever pushing backUsing AI to build supplier comparison matrices, due diligence checklists, negotiation briefs and landed-cost modelsCards Against Humanity case study — deliberate polarisation as a moat, from $5 dirt to a $6 empty boxPappy Van Winkle: 7,000–8,000 cases a year against a $3,000–$5,000 secondary market price, and why the scarcity is realSourcing FAQ: a four-day Guangzhou or Yiwu trip runs $1,500–$3,000 all in, and RMB payment pays off above roughly $10,000 per order Links Mentioned: Subscribe to the Marketing Misfits newsletterStop Writing AI Marketing Slop (Do This Instead) with Mike Kaput15 Years of Sourcing Secrets in 60 Minutes with Kian GolzariAI Just Changed Sourcing FOREVER with Kerim KfuriStack Influence (10% off this month)Blueland micro-influencer case study with Stack InfluenceDragon Fish — email marketing and AEO helpCollective Minds Society cigar and whiskey trip (Feb 18–22, 2027)Check out the Marketing Misfits podcast Stump Bezos Answer: RMB, the Chinese yuan, rather than US dollars. Suppliers will often give a quiet discount for payment in their local currency because it eliminates their own currency conversion costs — a 3–7% saving that is worth the setup on orders above $10,000. Parting Shot: "Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like." — Paul Graham, Y Combinator co-founder Find us at BillionDollarSellers.comFollow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. See the full Billion Dollar Sellers Media Library Ask the Ecom Oracle your ecom questions (better than Chat GPT!)