eComm Tips

Ok, so I’m a little stuck on this idea of finding suppliers for your site. Simply put, this is a very important step in getting your e-commerce website set up and going! If you can’t supply something, you can’t really sell it now can you?! In fact, seeing what suppliers are out there is one of the final criteria in deciding what the topic of your new site will be.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about how to find suppliers at events like trade shows. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that this be your first avenue, but it is one to take as your business matures and grows. The reason that it might not be the best first choice is because if you’re going to approach a company at a trade show about carrying their product on your site, you better have something to show them! Most of these companies won’t want to work with you if you walk up to them and say something like “I’m considering setting up a site about … can I add your product as well?” Wouldn’t it be much more effective to say something like “I am already doing well online and would like to partner with you to sell your product online”? I think so! So wait to do this until your site is established and running.

The first step in finding suppliers through trade shows is to find the trade show! There is a good chance that in some big city in either your state or a nearby state will have some type of a trade show that you could attend. Of course, this depends on the product or industry that you represent, but make sure to look outside your town. This is another place where The Shipper comes in handy. One of the services that The Shipper offers is they try to keep you up to date on trade shows across the country that you could attend.

So what do you do when you find a trade show and even some vendors at that trade show that you’re interested in? Here are some things to consider:

Have the Right Posture
Don’t act like you ‘need’ this supplier. Approach the situation as a win-win deal. You are going to sell the product for this supplier on your site, and they don’t have anything to lose! If you sell stuff, you both make money. If you don’t sell anything, neither of you make or lose money! Make it a win-win situation and don’t be needy when talking to these people.

Have Something to Show Them
If they have a laptop or computer connected to the internet there at the booth, see if you can take a minute and show the person your site. Visual examples like this can be much more convincing. If they don’t have a computer available, give them a business card with your website address on it.

Talk to the Right Person
If this is a larger company, the owner or main person for this type of relationship may not be present. Be nice and courteous to whoever you talk to, but also don’t waste a lot of time talking to someone that really can’t help you.

Follow Up
You probably won’t close the deal there on the spot (they also may not have tons of time to just talk to you depending on the size of the show as well). Be courteous and plan on getting back with them in a day or two after the show ends to go over the final details. But, if they really like the idea, do whatever you can there at the show. You might as well!

Finding potential suppliers at a trade show is another method that will take a little bit more time, but in the long run can be very well worth it. Like looking for manufacturer directories, you might want to consider starting with an easier route like Doba, The Shipper, or World Wide Brands and then work on this as time goes on.

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I was just looking over a previous post the other day about finding dropshippers or suppliers for your site (you can read that post here) and I realized that I left out one of the other techniques for finding a supplier: looking through manufacturer directories!

There are several of these directories out there. Here’s a list of a couple that you’ll want to consider:

ThomasNet
TradeKey
Alibaba (mostly Asian manufacturers)
eSources (UK directory)

There are others of course, but you could at least get started with these.

So here’s the concept with contacting manufacturers: ideally you want to get as close to the source as you possibly can. It keeps your profit margins a lot better because you’re cutting out a lot of the middlemen. Not all manufacturers will be interested in doing a dropship arrangement with you. You can always talk to them and explain the concept a bit and you may persuade some of them to try it out with you. Others will just say that they only sell in bulk. If this happens, you next step would be to ask them who some of their main distributors are and then work up the line until you find a distributor/wholesaler that will do dropshipping for you.

This method of finding suppliers is a little bit more in depth and may take more time, but by going about things this way you might be able to arrange some type of agreement that few others will take the time to get. What you might consider doing is starting out with a company like Doba or The Shipper to supply your site for the short term, but in the mean time keep working with finding a supplier this way and make the switch when you’ve found some that will work with you.

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So you’ve done your research, you have an idea of what you want to sell online. Now comes the problem of finding a source for your products. Well, one option is you could go with the old wholesaling approach. In other words, you buy the items in bulk and then ship them out yourself. This actually isn’t a horrible option because it gives you a little more control over your inventory. But the one downside is where to store the items and also coming up with the immediate capital to buy the initial inventory. Most of the people that I talk to on a daily basis just don’t have the funds (or the space) to make this a realistic option for themselves. So the next option would be to look for a dropshipper.

Before we talk about how to find a dropshipper, let’s first clarify what a dropshipper really is. Basically, a dropshipper is a supplier that will do the shipping for you. You just have to sell the product on your site, and then process the order with the dropshipper so that it can be sent out.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you have a website that sells shoes. I as a customer come to your site and see a pair of shoes that I’m interested in. I then buy this pair of shoes from your website for $50. At this point as the customer, as far as I know I have purchased these shoes from you and you’ll be promptly shipping it to me. But on the back end, you would go and contact your supplier and say “Hey Mr. Supplier, Dan ordered this pair of shoes. Here’s his address and here’s the wholesale cost for it.” So you pay the dropshipper the wholesale cost of let’s say $30 and they ship it to me. That’s the basic idea. Of course, this is a very simplified example, but I hope it gets the point across. You process the orders through someone else but keep the profit.

Alright, so how do we find this suppliers? Let me give you a few methods you can use:

- Google (or any other search engine)
This is probably the hardest and most time consuming way to do it, but you can just go to a search engine and search for “(product) + dropshipper” and see what you come up with. For example, if I was looking for a supplier for tents, I might search for “tent + dropshipper” and see what I come up with. The only problem with this method is that a lot of the dropshippers out there don’t necessary advertise themselves as dropshippers. But its worth a look!

- Big Dropship Sites
There are several companies out there that you could consider in one way or another as Big Dropshippers. These are the sites that claim to have hundreds of thousands or even millions of products. These sites are not necessarily your best long-term option, but they can be very good for getting started. One example is Doba. Doba basically goes out there and finds a bunch of suppliers and then lists their products on their site for you to get access to. But of course they are going to charge you for access to this information (as they have a right to do since they took all the time to find these suppliers!). You can sign up for a trial with Doba by clicking this link. There are other companies out there that follow a similar process. Feel free to check them out.

- Dropship Directories
Rather than going through one of these big dropship sites, another great way to find some potential dropshippers is to use a dropship directory. These are sites that instead of trying to sell you the actual products, they will give you a list of known dropshippers and tell you how to contact them. Two of the big players in this industry are The Shipper and World Wide Brands. Both of these sites give you a good starting point for finding suppliers to get started with. One thing that I really like about The Shipper is that they will also give you information to teach you how to go out and find suppliers on your own as well. This can be very valuable information that could put you ahead of your competition as far as what products you are able to provide.

- Other Methods
There are some other things you can do to try and find suppliers. One would be to contact some local companies and see if they would be willing to work with you. This has its benefits because then you’re working with someone that you can create a personal relationship with. Another thing you’ll want to be doing once your site is established is going to any trade shows that are related to your topic. If you come to a booth that has products that would make sense for your site you could approach them about setting up some type of relationship where you would sell their product on your site. Who knows, you could be the first person to do this and for a while at least have an exclusive online relationship. Not a bad thing to have!

So there you have it. These are several ways that you can go about trying to find some dropshippers if that’s what the goal of your site is. Remember, if you’re trying to sell a product but you don’t have access to it, it kinda makes it hard to sell :-).

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