Stationery looks like an easy category: lightweight, simple, low landed cost, nothing fragile to worry about. The reality cuts differently. Because the unit price is low, each fee layer takes a much larger percentage bite out of the margin, and because everyone thinks it is easy to import, the platforms are already crowded. This post goes straight to the numbers: what the real landed cost looks like, how much margin actually survives, and what conditions make this category worth trading.
The 1688 price is real, but it is only the starting line
Popular stationery items on 1688 carry genuinely low prices. A box of 12 gel pens typically lists between 6 and 12 yuan. An A5 notebook runs around 3 to 8 yuan depending on cover quality. Clear tape in bulk can drop below 1 yuan per roll.
The appeal is real. The problem starts when you add every cost between that factory price and a sold unit in Vietnam.
Stationery is light, so actual-weight freight tends to be cheap. But many items in this category are bulky relative to their weight: boxed pen sets, hardcover notebooks stacked in cartons, multi-piece school supply kits. When the volumetric weight exceeds actual weight, the carrier bills by volume, and freight costs jump unexpectedly.
Road freight from China to Vietnam currently runs roughly 18,000 to 35,000 VND per kg for standard goods (or volumetric equivalent when that is higher), before customs handling fees. Sea freight is cheaper but adds around 18 to 30 days in transit, so it suits non-urgent stock only.
Building the real landed cost: a worked example
Take one specific product to give the numbers something to anchor on. A box of 12 gel pens, listed at 8 yuan on 1688, imported in a test batch of 200 boxes.
Factory price: 8 yuan x 200 = 1,600 yuan. At around 3,600 VND per yuan (verify this when you calculate, the rate moves), that is roughly 5,760,000 VND for the batch, or 28,800 VND per box.
Domestic China shipping to the consolidation warehouse: typically 2 to 5 yuan per kg or per parcel, adding roughly 3,000 to 5,000 VND per box after conversion.
Freight to Vietnam: 200 boxes of gel pens are not particularly heavy, but the carton volume may push the shipment into volumetric billing. A reasonable estimate on a standard road freight route is 10,000 to 15,000 VND per box.
Order service fee (if using an agent): agents typically charge 3 to 5% of the goods value. On a batch worth 5.76 million VND, the service fee runs roughly 170,000 to 290,000 VND total, or around 850 to 1,450 VND per box.
Import tax and customs handling: depends on the HS code and import channel. For standard stationery on formal import, the import duty is often 0% to 5%, plus 8% to 10% VAT on import. Expect roughly 4,000 to 8,000 VND per box on a formal channel.
Total landed cost: adding everything together, the real cost per 12-pen box lands around 46,000 to 58,000 VND, depending on route and import method.
What price do you need to make money?
On Shopee and TikTok Shop, a 12-pen gel box currently sells most commonly between 55,000 and 85,000 VND, depending on brand presentation, quality, and packaging. Unbranded goods with no story tend to sit at the low end of that range.
Selling at 65,000 VND with a real landed cost of around 52,000 VND:
- Gross spread: 13,000 VND
- Shopee platform fee (commission plus transaction fee plus fixed charge): typically 10% to 15% of selling price. At 65,000 VND, that is roughly 6,500 to 9,750 VND.
- After platform fees: approximately 3,250 to 6,500 VND per box.
- If running ads: stationery ad costs on the platforms typically run 3,000 to 8,000 VND per order at average ROAS. Subtract ads and the real per-order profit narrows to somewhere between negative 2,000 and positive 3,500 VND.
Read that back: selling one box of gel pens with normal ad spend can leave you breaking even or slightly in the red. This is not a category where selling individual low-ticket items in isolation builds a business.
Why the margin is this thin
Three structural factors drive this in the stationery category:
Low selling price amplifies the fee percentage. When the selling price is 65,000 VND, a 10% platform fee is already 6,500 VND. The landed cost is also low, so the absolute profit on one unit is tiny. A 300,000 VND item paying 10% in fees gives up 30,000 VND, but the absolute margin per unit is large enough to absorb it. Low-ticket goods have no such cushion.
Direct price competition with domestic goods. Vietnamese, Thai, and Taiwanese stationery sold on the platforms does not necessarily cost more than imported 1688 goods. Buyers can compare in seconds, and that keeps pressure on price constantly.
Near-zero barrier to entry. Anyone can import stationery. No certifications required, no large minimum order, MOQ on 1688 is often 50 to 100 pieces. The result: the number of shops selling the same item climbs fast, and market prices compress steadily.
When stationery from 1688 can still be profitable
Light goods and low price points do not rule out profit. But you need at least one of the following conditions to hold:
Sell bundles, not single items. A stationery set combining a notebook, gel pen pack, and pen case sold as a combo at 180,000 to 220,000 VND produces far higher absolute margin than selling each piece separately. The order value goes up; the fixed shipping and handling cost does not scale proportionally. This is how the shops doing well in this category are managing the thin-margin problem.
Choose a higher price segment. Moleskine-style notebooks, magnetic-cap pens, adult watercolor sets: these items sell at meaningfully higher prices and produce better absolute margin per unit, even with their own competitive dynamics. Within general stationery, products in the 80,000 to 150,000 VND range are considerably easier to work with than those under 70,000 VND.
Build a channel that does not depend entirely on paid ads. Stationery has loyal repeat buyers: teachers, parents shopping for the school year, office workers. If you build a returning-buyer list or an owned content channel (stationery aesthetics, notebook collections), acquisition cost drops and margin recovers. Organic and repeat traffic changes the unit economics entirely.
Import enough volume to compress freight cost. At 200 boxes, per-unit shipping is noticeably higher than at 2,000 boxes. Once you have validated a specific item, scaling the order pulls landed cost down. Do not scale volume before you have a sales signal, but once you have one, the freight math improves quickly.
The real break-even
Using the gel pen box at 65,000 VND, break-even after platform fees without running any ads:
- Real landed cost: 52,000 VND
- Average Shopee platform fee: 8,000 VND
- Order handling cost (self-packed): 2,000 to 3,000 VND
- Total cost before ads: roughly 62,000 to 63,000 VND
At 65,000 VND selling price, the per-unit profit before ads is around 2,000 to 3,000 VND. Add 5,000 VND in ad spend per order and you are in the red.
To clear a real margin after ads, you need the selling price at a minimum of 75,000 to 80,000 VND, or you need to bring landed cost below 45,000 VND (larger order quantities, better-priced supplier), or you need higher order value through bundling.
Bottom line
Stationery from 1688 is a category many sellers enter thinking it is simple, then discover the margin is far thinner than expected. Light and cheap sounds good, but because the unit price is low, platform fees and ads take a proportionally large cut, and because entry is easy, competition is dense. To make this category work, you need to sell in bundles to raise order value, target a higher price segment, or build a repeat-buyer channel instead of relying purely on paid acquisition. Selling cheap single items with an incomplete cost picture is the fastest way to watch money disappear with no clear explanation.