Finding the right vendors for your business is as challenging as finding a customer, sometimes it becomes more important too. Laity sellers start up with full on energy and as time passes, lose all interest because of lack of planning and research to get the best and cheap vendors, who can trade products of their niche with adequate margins that cover the whole expenses and still there’s a bite left.

Does Drop shipping work?

Drop shipping seems fascinating for starters and fall into the trap as they see no risk of handling products, no inventory, and no fulfillment obligations. Just take the orders, push them and get paid based on the difference in selling price.

Start your 14 days free trial now…

That’s all true but people hardly realize the quantum of mental pressure put on while providing customer service for the products they don’t even own. They often fall into a paradigm given by the Manufacturer or a supplier that might or might not meet the standards as proposed. What happens when the product didn’t reach the buyer? You’ll perhaps need a yoga treatment to calm down the thunder of questions that just struck you LOL. The best part is it wasn’t your fault at all and after all that follow up and convincing, all you get is a puny 10 or 20% from their profits.

You can rather have a combination of direct and drop shipping for an additional income and not just drop shipping alone. But even before doing that you’ll need to double check upon the central system that’s going to share your Brand’s reputation. Websites like worldwidebrands.com investigates drop shippers so that you don’t get embezzled.

What about buying wholesale locally?

“Wholesale” is a very catchy word. The term actually means that the price of the product is the lowest in Market when bought in huge numbers. But, ironically the terminology counter feats the reality. Wholesale products that are claimed to be cheapest are for sure lesser than the MSRPs, but aren’t sufficiently less to be claimed as wholesale. What make things worse is that there are already people selling the same products with prices that hit the bottom of your margins. You might sell such product to just pull in higher traffic. But end of the day you’ll need to re-check your cash in and out flows.

Will buying from abroad work?

Though buying products from overseas have contentious vibrations like policies, shipping etc., with distinctive cultures and efficiencies, countries overseas provide more opportunities for a variety of products in style and quality. For example if you’re a seller from US dealing in fashion and want to gain recognition of your own prototypes, what’s the use of getting material from US where the fashion is all known and the prices are more close to retailers. Rather, you can get the best quality textile material with freshness in design and fashion from China.

Buying products directly from overseas manufacturers is the best way to get lots in lowest prices. But there are reasons why sellers refrain. Some of them could be like:

• Vendors speak poor English so communication was often a big issue
• Manufacturers in Asia have really crappy websites and it’s often hard to get an idea of their merchandise quality online
• You have to purchase product in larger quantities, sometimes more than you are comfortable with
• The logistics of shipping large amount of product overseas can be a major hassle
• You will get sent crappy product at some point and you’ll have to constantly go back and forth with your vendor about quality issues until they are resolved.
• Product returns are extremely complicated
• There are long lead times in order to manufacture products so you have to plan ahead.
• There may be long lead times just to obtain samples of the goods you want to sell.
• Some of these vendors are just downright sketchy

Start your 14 days free trial now…

Instead of abruptly bumping into an overseas manufacturer, websites like alibaba.com or globalsources.net gives you wide range of manufacturers with huge verticals. You can find a potential vendor, get in touch and see whether he can cope up with your requirements.

But all of this requires patience because you cannot start trading with an overseas manufacturer just like that. You first need to build up a good relationship especially while getting into trade with Asian manufacturers. A face to face conversation or talks over the skype will help you do that.

See Cross Trading Polymers for Online Sellers to understand the fundamentals of effective and profitable importing.