Want to know what it takes to get those rock bottom prices that you see Amazon sellers advertise at? Want to source like a Professional?
We do a lot of sourcing here at Merchsprout. It’s one of our main bread and butter businesses. And we can tell you how to do it properly.
New Amazon seller?
Are you a new Amazon seller? Confused how other sellers are undercutting each other? Let’s show you how it’s happening.
Heard of Alibaba right? If not and you are looking to source and sell on Amazon, its probably a good place to start your research.
Research, research and do some more research. Look around the things you have bought, the things you have bought for other people. What’s going to be wanted in 6 months? Get these ideas in your head.
Don’t think about what you want to buy now, that bandwagon has gone. Remember the old saying, If you see a band waggon, it’s already passed.
Got a product, an idea? Start searching Alibaba. Write down the products that are similar to the ones you want to sell. Get the suppliers names and details.
Get the costs and cross-reference them. Ensure that there is enough profit margin for your percentage, the shipping cost and advertising costs. If you want a sustainable online business, there is no point starting from a losing position.
That’s where the fun starts. Start doing some digging. Dig, dig and dig some more into their companies, their trading names, their company names. And you may eventually get down to the factory name… Maybe…
This is time-consuming
There are many sites like Alibaba offering cheap products from China, straight from the factories. 10’s of thousands.
You want to find the suppliers of the big Amazon players. There are a few ways to do this.
Just phone up the Amazon sellers and ask them where they get their product from?
Yeah right…
You need to dig… Again… This spade your using; needs to be big, this is a big hole we’re digging here. Use search systems like Panjiva. These services allow you to interrogate the import and exports of your market.
Or you can use sites such as Camel Camel Camel these services allow you to track the price, and therefore the sales of the products you are researching. Either way, it’s all a pretty labour-intensive task.
Getting the best price.
So, you have several suppliers in a shortlist, they seem to be pushing stock out to the big players. Time to start to email your ideas.
It’s a simple enough process. You can use an RFQ (we discussed that here) and send it out to 15 suppliers. This will cause around 150 questions to respond to. Again it takes some time.
Ensure you are clear concise and have all the details available in the RFQ. There is nothing more soul-destroying than answering the same question 30 times.
Once you have your quotation and are happy with the price, the supplier and all the terms and conditions than its time to place an order.
The suppliers then produce the stock and after the remainder of the funds have been paid, they will ship the stock to your port of choosing.
Quality of product
It’s worth noting here that a great deal of trust depends upon the supplier. You have a couple of choices.
You can trust the supplier in what they are doing, trust them to take your cash, without ever seeing the factory, trust the stock without ever touching it and trust the shipping company to ensure everything is packaged correctly.
Or you can go there yourself. Again its time consuming, a much better solution would be to employ a trust worth contact on the ground.
Sourcing Companies, and what they offer
Of course, you can find good suppliers that will provide you goods, free of quality defects, at a great price, and ship them to you in a prompt time frame. You, of course, can visit them on the ground in China and communicate with them without the use of interpretations.
But for every single one of these, there are hundreds of suppliers that you cannot do that.
This is where sourcing companies like Merchsprout can assist greatly. We really do all the hard work for you. Source, Audit Project manage and QC. Ensuring the best products are gained by you in the best possible time frame.
he only 100% sure-fire way to ensure you are dealing with quality in Chinese factories is to have someone on the ground, on your side. Batting for your team. A team player who not only knows how to capture and report out but a player that can hold those suppliers to account in the event of quality issues.
Here at Merchsprout, we do just that, we offer you the ability to save time and money by doing the hard work for you. We offer several services that allow you to remotely oversee operations.
If you want to learn more about how we do what we do and the services we offer, have a look here.
Source Chinese Products Without Going China
If you want to just get in touch, we are a friendly bunch and honestly just like hearing from you. Contact us below, or leave a comment.
Dealing Remotely Is Very Much A Possibility, Have The Right Team Members On Your Side
Source Chinese Products Without Going to China is not only a possibility it’s relatively easy when you have the right team on your side. We are the right team for Sourcing, Auditing and Quality control.
