Before you look for the suppliers, it is important to know how to make a difference between the true and legal wholesale suppliers and stores that act as wholesale suppliers. Real wholesale supplier purchases straight from the manufacturer, and that is why offers you a good price.
This article tells you exactly how to find and work with suppliers-
How to Identify Fake Dropshipping Wholesalers?
You will come across a lot of fake wholesale suppliers when you are searching for the real or true ones. Real and authentic wholesalers are hard to find as they are not so much good at marketing themselves, but retailers can`t get them off their minds as it is the top way to do business.
Here are some of the tips that will help you distinguish between the true wholesalers and fake ones:-
Fake Wholesalers Demand Ongoing Fees: Real wholesalers never charge any fees for the membership or other things. If a supplier asks you for monthly payment just for the entitlement of purchasing the items directly from him at the best price – most probably it is not a real one.
At this point, it is essential to make a difference between the suppliers and supplier directories. Supplier directories are directories of wholesale suppliers organized by market or product types and screened to make sure the suppliers are authentic. Most directories will charge a fee – either one time or endure – so you should not take this as a sign the directory itself is real.
Fake Wholesalers Sell to the Public: You need to prove that you have your own authentic business and be approved to get genuine wholesale pricing. You can instantly place your first order after the approval. If the wholesaler offers products at the same price to the general public, then most likely the wholesaler is fake, and he is just a retailer.
Some of the legitimate dropshipping fees you will probably come across:
- Per-Order Fees: Many dropshippers will charge a dropshipping fee pre-order that can vary from $2 to $5 or more, which depends on the size and intricacy of the products being shipped. This fee is very affordable in the industry, as the costs of packing and shipping separate orders are much costly than shipping a bulk order.
- Minimum Order Sizes: Some suppliers will have a lowest initial order size, which is the minimum amount you have to buy for your first order. They do this with the intention of filtering out window-shopping merchants, who will waste their time with small orders and questions but would not convert into significant business.
If you are a dropshipper, this could cause some difficulties. For example, what do you do if a supplier has a $1000 minimum order, but your average order size is around $500? For a new dropshipping account, you will don’t want to order products worth $1000 in advance.
In this condition, it's good to offer to pay $1000 to the supplier in advance to build credit with them to apply to your drop shipping orders. This enables you to meet the minimum purchase need of supplier without having to place a single large order without any consistent customer orders.
How to Find Wholesale Suppliers?
Now that you can come to know how to identify fake wholesalers, it is the time to learn how to find a wholesale supplier. Some ways and tips will help you find out a supplier. Some tips are greatly effective, and some are less effective. Below are the tips:-
Contact the Manufacturer
That is the most preferred and excellent method to discover contacts of real wholesale suppliers. Knowing the products you need, just call the manufacturers and ask them to send you the list of suppliers, and then contact everybody on the list to make a database about the goods and charges of these distributors. Calling up numerous manufacturers you will be able to evaluate the details and come across the best wholesale merchants in the niche you work in.
Make Use of Google
Google is how everyone searches for any information, but keep to these rules:
- Search intensively – As stated above about the not so good advertising of wholesalers that may be a challenging task. So, you have to deeper analysis, do lots of research and search your wholesaler only on the 15th list of a search.
- Don`t judge by website – As mentioned previously, poor promotion and marketing do its job. Do not let poor website drive you away from the real wholesaler with a good pricing and conditions.
- Use modifiers – Other than the many trading websites; wholesalers do not make use of much SEO to promote their services, so you may need to utilize diverse queries, use synonyms and all the related to your topic words: supplier, reseller, warehouse, and product.
Order from the Competition
If it is truly tough to discover a supplier of any individual product, you can utilize the services of your dropshipping competitor and Google the return address to contact the supplier. We have never done this, though we have heart about this from others. This system can help you, so you ought to remember it in the event of some unexpected issue.
Attend a Trade Show
Trade shows are a good way to get the contacts of all the possible wholesalers and manufacturers. If you have decided your niche to operate in and the products to sale, you just have to visit the trade show in that niche and made lots of business connections.
Directories
To the extent that you know that supplier directories are paid, a worthy question come in your mind if you need it that much to pay for it? In fact, this database of wholesalers is made of genuine wholesalers. They are essential, particularly for free-associating. With this, you don’t need to spend hours in searching for the real wholesaler or manufacturer. All suppliers are gathered together into one directory, whom you need for your niche.
There are numerous different supplier directories, and an all-inclusive review of all of them is further than the scope of this guide. As an alternative, we have emphasized some of the most renowned supplier directories online. Please note we are not promoting any of these directories, we are simply providing you with some options.
Worldwide Brands
- Quick Stats:
- Established 1999
- Thousands of wholesalers
- Over 10 million products
- Price: $299 for a lifetime membership
It is one of the renowned and oldest supplier directories that provides a list composed by proved and real wholesalers. We have utilized its details and found them very helpful, as we have found true wholesalers we like to collaborate with. Obviously, it is hard to enlist all the authentic wholesalers that are available, but the ones that can be found on the pages are authentic and proved.
SaleHoo
- Quick Stats:
- Established 2005
- Over 8,000 suppliers
- Price: $67 per year
SaleHoo directory has more than 8.000 bulk- dropshipping and bulk-purchase suppliers and even fusses over the ones working on Amazon and eBay. The cost of the directory is not too much for a yearly one, and they offer a 60-day money back guarantee.
Doba
- Quick Stats:
- Established 2002
- 165 suppliers
- Over 1.5 million products
- Price: $60 per month
This service went far away from a simple directory. It incorporates with 165 verified suppliers that let you place orders with numerous warehouses through their centralized interface. It also associates with eBay. Their cost is as well surpasses the ones of other directories. Contrary to around $70 yearly it is $60 monthly. But the interface and the work are worth this money. In case you can come across worthy suppliers by your own, it may be better to save $700 a year.
Wholesale Central
- Quick Stats:
- Established 1996
- 1,400 suppliers
- 740,000 products
- Price: free
This is undeniably a different directory of suppliers. Totally different from all the rest they charge the wholesale manufacturers and suppliers, so you can see their advertisements as well. But you can get their reviews and be sure that they are worth and proven working with. Free means that it is hard to find, not to use this service, but you need to keep talking about the pricing and make a more detailed search, as you can discover their retailers, not wholesalers with wholesalers pricing.
Before You Contact Suppliers
OK, so you have found numerous solid suppliers and are ready to go ahead – awesome! But before you begin to contact companies, you will want to have everything organized and together.
You Need to Be Legal – As we written previously, most genuine wholesalers will need proof that you are a legal business before facilitating you to apply for an account. Most wholesalers only expose their pricing to verified customers, so you will need to be lawfully integrated before you will get to see the sort of pricing you will get.
What is the bottom line? Ensure you are legally integrated before getting in touch with the suppliers! If you only want to ask a few basic questions, you would not need to provide any documentation. But don't expect to launch without having your business set up properly.
See How You Appear – Wholesalers are continually assaulted by individuals with "incredible strategies for success" who pepper them with inquiries, take up a great deal time and after that never arrange anything. So in case you're launching another business, know that numerous suppliers aren't going to make a special effort to help you begin.
Most will be glad to set you up with a dropshipping account on the off chance that they offer it. Be that as it may, don't request discounts or invest hours tying up their business representatives on the phone before you have made a solitary deal. It will rapidly procure you a terrible notoriety and hurt your association with the supplier.
If you want to make some special requests, you need to build trustworthiness. Be conclusive about the plans of your business, rather than making use of flaky rhetoric. And be sure to communicate any specialized achievements you have had in the past – particularly with sales and marketing – that will assist you with your new venture.
You have to influence suppliers that the embarrassment of accommodating your special requests will settle down the road when you turn out to be successful and start bringing them a lot of business.
Try not to Be Afraid of the Phone – One of the greatest fears individuals have with regards to suppliers is essentially picking the phone and deciding. For some, this is an incapacitating prospect. You may have the capacity to send messages for a few issues, but typically you will need to pick up the phone to get the details you need.
The great news is that it's not as terrifying as you may think. Suppliers are acclimated to having individuals call them, which includes newbie entrepreneurs. You are liable to get somebody who's inviting and glad to answer your inquiries. Here's a tip that will help you, just work out your inquiries early. It's splendid how much simpler it is to decide when you have a rundown of pre-composed things to ask.
How to Find Good Suppliers?
Just similar as other things on the planet, suppliers also may be good as well as bad. To the extent that suppliers are a crucial part of dropshipping business, you need to have it recognized, so here are six features that most great suppliers hold:
- Skillful Staff & Industry Focus – Popular suppliers have well-informed sales representatives who truly know the business and their product offerings. Being able to call a representative with questions is vital, exclusively if you are launching a store in a niche, you are less familiar with.
- Devoted Support Representatives – Great supplier will supply you with an individual sales representative who will deal with you and also of the considerable number of issues you may have. That will help you to understand the issues quicker and all the more successfully, and that is actually critical.
- Invested In Technology – Updated sites are not the thing to surprise these days, so great suppliers think about online inventories, continuous stock and the various staff genuinely helpful while placing an order. You will truly feel the distinction when you attempt it.
- Can Take Orders Via Email –That is much superior for the customers as calling to make an order or making it online on the website is more inefficient.
- Centrally Located – More time consuming. If you are living in a big country, it is a very expedient point, as the most of the parcels will get the destination place within a couple of working days with a centrally located dropshipper. And it saves both money and time.
- Organized And Resourceful – Knowledgeable employees make your cooperation more organized and just about perfect. Others can lead you to some nervous disease damaging every 5th order. But unquestionably, you will only know after you try.
To examine the supplier, you may place some small orders and discover how their support work, how they manage the whole thing, how quick will you get the products, how they work with tracking information and invoices and obviously the quality of the parcel.
How to Pay to Suppliers?
These are the two most common way to pay a supplier:-
1) Credit Card
Normally if you just started the business, you are asked to pay in advance. Even if you have a successful business, it is essentially a very appropriate way to pay. And there is no need to mention about the additional benefit you may get like flier miles and so on. You do not have to pay from your pocket, as far as the customer has already paid to you for the order.
2) Net Terms
Net terms are the other most common way to pay suppliers on the invoice. This just means that you have a definite number of days to pay the supplier for the products you have purchased from him. So if you are on “net 15” terms, you have 15 days from the date of buying to pay your supplier – by bank draw or cheque – for the products you bought.
Commonly, a supplier will make you provide credit references before offering net payment terms as it is efficiently providing you money. This is usual practice, so don't be shocked if you have to provide some documents when paying in net terms.
