We sell heating equipment into markets that could not be more different: mild coastal Europe, cold high-latitude markets, tropical countries that only need backup heating for two weeks a year, and hot dusty regions where "heating" mostly means heating water for hotels. The same catalogue behaves completely differently in each. If we had one rule from all those containers, it is this: heat pumps are a running-cost product that needs an installer, and conventional heaters are a price product that anyone can plug in. Trying to sell one where the other belongs is how importers end up with a warehouse of slow-moving units.
What the efficiency numbers actually mean at the shelf
An air-source heat pump moves heat rather than creating it, so it typically delivers a Coefficient of Performance (COP) of 3 to 4 in mild conditions — meaning it puts out three to four times more heat than the electricity it draws. A conventional resistance heater (fan heater, oil-filled radiator, ceramic tower) has a COP of essentially 1.0. In engineering terms there is no contest: the heat pump is two to three times cheaper to run for the same warmth at temperatures down to about freezing.
But the person buying from your catalogue does not pay the running cost. They pay the shelf price. A 9 kW air-source heat pump lands around USD 900–2,200 landed depending on brand and inverter quality, before installation. A comparable oil-filled radiator retails somewhere around USD 120–300, a fan heater USD 40–120. That is a ten-to-one sticker gap that no efficiency brochure erases at the point of sale. Heat pumps sell to the end user on a three-to-five year payback argument, not on day-one savings, and that only holds where the electricity price is high enough to justify the machine.
So the first question to ask is not "which is better" — it is "what is the electricity tariff in my buyer's country, and how cold does it actually get?" Where electricity is cheap (below roughly USD 0.12/kWh retail) or winters are short and mild, the conventional heater's running-cost disadvantage is small enough that end users rarely notice it and often refuse the higher upfront price. Where electricity is expensive and winters are genuinely cold for months — think northern Europe, parts of Korea, high-altitude markets — the heat pump pays for itself and the market already knows it.
The three things importers forget before ordering heat pumps
- Grid voltage and amperage. A real heat pump needs a dedicated circuit, usually 220–240 V and a 16 A or 20 A breaker plus outdoor compressor space. Some export markets, especially in developing regions, run weak household grids or voltage that sags under load. A compressor that undervolts is a warranty claim waiting to happen. Check the market's residential supply before you commit a container to heat pumps.
- Refrigerant and inverter quality. Cheap heat pumps still sell on R32 or R410A refrigerant and basic on-off compressors that cycle hard in cold weather. The units that build a repeat-buyer base use variable-speed inverter compressors and defrost logic that keeps working below 0°C. Inverter units cost more but they are what make or break the brand in a cold market. Judge the spec sheet by the compressor, not the COP sticker.
- Installer availability. A heat pump is a refrigeration circuit. It needs a qualified engineer to charge, install and commission it, and it needs spare compressors and sensors nearby when it fails. If your target market has no service network for split heating units, every install is one bad experience that travels fast. Conventional heaters, by contrast, are sold over the counter and installed by the end user in minutes — no workforce dependency at all.
| Heating product | Typical landed unit price | Running cost (COP) | Install requirement | Best-fit market |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air-source heat pump (inverter) | USD 900–2,200 | COP 3–4 | Trained installer + service network | High electricity cost, cold winters, existing HVAC trade |
| Oil-filled radiator / convector | USD 120–300 | COP 1.0 | Plug and play | Mild winters, price-sensitive buyers |
| Fan heater / ceramic tower | USD 40–120 | COP 1.0 | Plug and play | Spot heating, low budgets, seasonal spikes |
| Heat-pump water heater | USD 500–1,300 | COP 2.5–3.5 | Installer for tank + circuit | Hotels and domestic hot water in warm climates |
Notice the heat-pump water heater on that list. In tropical and subtropical import markets — places with no real winter — nobody buys a space heater at all, but hotels, guesthouses and even households all need hot water year-round. A heat-pump water heater converts that constant demand into a three-times efficiency win with no cold-weather defrost problem. For several of our export markets this is the product that actually moves, while the space-heating line sits idle.
A blunt take: If the country you are shipping to has cheap electricity or mild winters, stock conventional heaters and move on. If it has expensive electricity and real cold, stock inverter heat pumps — and only if you have an installer and spare-parts channel in place. The mistake we see most often is importers treating heat pumps as a "premium version" of the same shelf product. They are a different sales motion entirely, and half the container gets stuck when they find out too late.
Why the spare-parts decision decides your reorder rate
Conventional heaters fail with dignity — a dead element or a stuck thermostat, often repairable locally or cheap enough to replace outright. Heat pumps fail expensively: a failed inverter board, a refrigerant leak, a seized compressor. When an importer stocks heat pumps without a parts buffer and a failure happens, the buyer waits weeks for a replacement board shipped from the factory. That single wait can end a distribution relationship that took years to build.
Our advice to importers planning a heat pump line is to order roughly 8–10% of unit value in spare parts with the first shipment: inverter mainboards, compressor contactors, temperature sensors, and service gauges for the refrigerant. It feels like margin going out the door on day one. It is actually the cheapest customer-retention spend you will make, because it turns a one-time buyer into someone who knows their supplier covers them when things break. Conventional heater buyers judge you on price; heat pump buyers stick with you on support.
What we actually recommend importers stock
Most importers run a blended strategy and so do we. A sensible first year looks like this: a value line of oil-filled radiators and fan heaters to open the market and build order volume, plus one inverter heat pump SKU (or a heat-pump water heater for warmer regions) sized to the dominant housing type, tested with a couple of demo installs before you scale the container size. You let the heaters generate cash flow and the heat pumps generate the margin and the reputation, and you adjust the mix once you see real sell-through data from your own market — not from a brochure.
There is no universal answer, and any supplier who gives you one without asking about your market's tariff, climate and installer base is guessing. Send us the country you are targeting and the rough housing stock, and we will tell you which line to lead with — and which units we would leave out of the container entirely. Half the value we add to a heating order is telling the importer what not to ship.