I still remember the first proper order from Korea. It was spring 2024, a buyer who found us through a B2B page and wanted 1,500 composite sets for a summer promo. Not a giant order but for us, a big deal. First time anything of ours was going to Korea.
Making them was the easy bit. We had the artwork sorted, the handles in their orange, and the cartons stacked by the loading door a day early. I was feeling pretty good about myself, to be honest.
Then the courier showed up with a different truck than booked and the driver had no idea about the export paperwork. The forwarder we used was new to us and somewhere between the booking and the port, the HS code got entered wrong. So the whole thing got held at the Korean side for re-classification.
I spent four days emailing back and forth, our forwarder blaming the broker, the broker asking me for documents I'd already sent twice. The buyer was calm, thank god, but I could tell he was nervous it'd miss his window.
What fixed it in the end was boring. We re-issued the commercial invoice with the right code, I added the material breakdown (the composite vs the wood percent confuses people), and it cleared in a day. Felt like a week.
After that I made a little checklist for any Korea shipment and I still use it. Correct code, material breakdown attached, confirm the truck booking the morning of, not the night before. Sounds obvious now.
The funny part is that same buyer has come back twice since. So the headache was worth it I guess. But yeah, the first one is never the smooth one.
