Ebay is not cheap either, they charged every single listings with limited period and their paypal sucks!
I think I will start with Thailand, their product will be much cheaper compared to Japan. But the country must be stabilized first, now a little messy with the red, yellow and blue always on loggerhead.
bro , forget thailand if you really wants to look for a new product to bring in singapore . reason is very simple ...
1) most singaporean go thailand every once or twice a year , they know what kind of things belongs to thai and where to buy it if they were to visit thai .
2) most businessman in singapore get their product in thai ( recently china ) to sell it in singapore ...so you are not the only one selling . if you look around singapore you will find that most shopping mall in singapore is selling the same old stuffs . if you want cheap stuffs ..i think china is a better place to look for ...more choice ...dont forget , most products in the world are now made in china including many japanese products . maybe you might consider coming to japan and look for "new item " , that you think you can sell and market it ...and try to find out which factory in china is helping them produce .
3 ) thai stuff might be cheap ...but you cant sell expensive ...ppl know whats the value of thai products .
thai is a good place for labour cost but not a good place to look for new item unless you are talking about arts , but even thai arts theres too many ppl selling in singapore ...maybe you can design your own product but made in thai .
many ppl thinks that japan product is expensive just because they dont know where to search for them and cannot speak japanese .