What can I import from China with 500k, 1m or 5m naira?

What you can import with 500k, 1m or 5m naira once freight, duty and certification are paid, and the costs that do not shrink when the order does.

What you can import with a given amount of capital is the first question every Nigerian asks and the one every course answers dishonestly, because the honest answer starts with the costs that do not get smaller when your order does. Freight has a minimum. Certification has a fixed price. Clearing has a floor. Those three decide whether a small order is a business or an expensive sample. This page is the arithmetic at each level, and what each one realistically buys.

Why does what I can import with a small budget buy so little? #

Before any figure, understand the four fixed costs, because they are what makes small importing hard.

Sea freight has a minimum. Groupage is priced per cubic metre with a minimum charge, commonly around one cubic metre. Half a cubic metre of goods is charged as a full one. Our CBM page explains it.

Certification is per product, not per unit. A SONCAP product certificate on the unregistered route is 500 dollars, covering one shipment for six months, plus 350 dollars for the SONCAP certificate. That 850 dollars costs the same whether you ship one carton or fifty.

Clearing has a floor. An agent's fee, terminal charges and documentation do not halve because your consignment did. Our clearing agent page covers what is reasonable.

Duty is a percentage, but the port charges are not. Our landed cost page puts the whole stack together.

The practical consequence: the smaller the order, the higher the cost per unit, and the point at which importing beats buying from a Lagos wholesaler is further away than the videos suggest.

Under 500,000 naira #

At this level you are not importing commercially. You are learning, and that is a perfectly good use of the money.

What it realistically does: a sample order of a few product variants by express courier, so you can hold the thing, test it, and find out whether your market wants it. Our samples page covers doing that properly.

What it does not do: a certified commercial consignment of a regulated product. The certification alone would eat most of it.

The honest advice at this level is to buy samples, sell them, and find out what your customers actually pay before committing more. Many people discover at this stage that the product they were sure about does not move, and discovering that for a few hundred thousand naira is cheap.

A second option that suits this budget: join a consolidation shipment through an agent, where your few cartons travel inside somebody else's container and you share the fixed costs. Our shipping companies page explains how that works.

Around 1 million naira #

This is where a real first order becomes possible, if the product is chosen well.

The shape that works: one product, one or two variants, unregulated or cheaply certified, light enough that freight does not dominate, bought after you have tested samples.

Work the arithmetic like this, in order:

1. Decide the selling price you can actually achieve in your market
2. Work backwards through your margin to a maximum landed cost per unit
3. Take off duty, VAT, port charges, clearing, haulage and the freight share
4. What remains is your maximum purchase price per unit in China
5. Only then look at 1688

Most people do this in the opposite order, fall in love with a 1688 price, and discover the problem after the money has moved. Our margin page has the method.

At this level keep it to one product. Two products means two certificates, two sets of samples and two ways to be wrong.

Around 5 million naira #

Now the fixed costs stop dominating and the decisions change.

You can afford the registered route SONCAP product certificate at 1,000 dollars, which lasts twelve months and covers repeat shipments, instead of paying 500 dollars for every single consignment. That alone changes the economics of a repeat product.

You can consider a full container if the goods are bulky. Somewhere around 12 to 15 cubic metres a 20ft container usually starts working out cheaper per cubic metre than groupage. Our container cost page has the comparison.

You can afford a pre shipment inspection, which at this order size pays for itself the first time it catches something. Our inspection page covers it.

And you can hold stock long enough to sell it at your price rather than dumping the tail of it. That is where importing margins actually live.

Above that #

The questions change from "what can I afford" to "what can I sell". At container scale the constraints are demand, storage, cash cycle and the exchange rate, not the size of the first cheque. Our Form M page covers the banking side that opens at this level.

The rules that apply at every level #

1. Check the prohibition list before anything. Footwear, bags, furniture, plastic household wares, used clothing and used fridges are banned, and people pick exactly those. Our prohibited imports page has the list.
2. Check which certificate applies and price it in. Our certificates page is the decision tree.
3. Never spend the whole budget on the first order. Keep a third back for the thing that goes wrong, because something will.
4. Do the landed cost before you pay a deposit, not after the goods ship.
5. Watch the exchange rate, because the naira moving against you between deposit and balance can remove your margin entirely. Our yuan to naira page covers it.

What nobody tells you about the first order #

It will probably not make money, and that is normal. The first order buys you three things you cannot buy any other way: a tested supplier, a tested agent and a tested market. Those three make the second order profitable.

Treat the first one as paid education and size it accordingly, which is the real answer to what you can import with any given amount. Our product page covers choosing what goes in it.

First published 20 Sep 2026. Last checked 20 Sep 2026 by The ChinaBridge desk. Something here out of date? Tell us in the comments and we will fix it.