481: Better Than Alibaba! Learn How Pro Sellers Find Their Suppliers – Family First Friday

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Whether you run your own online store, sell on Amazon, eBay, even Etsy, you understand the crucial role suppliers play in the success of your business. in this episode, I’m going to teach you the techniques that the pros use to find world-class wholesale suppliers for their e-commerce businesses. What’s up, everyone? You are listening to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast, where I teach you how to make money online by exploring different tools, strategies, and understand how to leverage human psychology to grow your sales. Welcome to a special segment of the show called Family First Fridays.

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where I go solo to give you my thoughts on how to make money without sacrificing your lifestyle. If you haven’t picked up my book yet, The Family First Entrepreneur, head on over to mywifecouterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and get over $690 in free bonuses. Also, if you’re interested in learning how to start your own e-commerce business, make sure you sign up for my free six day mini course below. Now today I’m going to share with you insights on finding suppliers who deliver high quality products on schedule every single time.

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Now this first method of finding a great supplier is one that I use when I want to sell name brand products. In fact, I’m often asked how to buy popular products like Lego, Sony or Apple at wholesale prices. Now finding a supplier who sells brand name products like Lego typically involves a process of researching, contacting and negotiating with distributors or wholesalers that are authorized by the manufacturer. And here’s a straightforward way to go about it. First off, most large brands like Lego

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do not sell directly to consumers or retail stores. You can’t just call up Lego and be like, hey man, I want to order a bunch of your Millennium Falcons. Instead, they use distributors. A distributor is a middleman between the brand and the retailer or the consumer. And the primary function of a distributor is to get the products from manufacturers and distribute them to various points in the distribution chain, such as wholesalers, retailers, or directly to the consumers. Now distributors.

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often buy products from the manufacturers in large quantities and then sell them in smaller batches to their customers. They also provide additional services like technical support or warranties. Now for large companies like LEGO, distributors have exclusive agreements and are the only entities through which you can purchase their products for resale. So how do find a distributor? You should start by visiting the manufacturer’s website. And in this case, we’re going to talk about LEGO or you can just Google LEGO

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authorized distributor. Now if you were to Google this right now, the first entry that would pop up would be this company called Toy House LLC, which is an authorized distributor of Lego. And keep in mind that most large brands like Lego, Apple, and Sony will require you to have some sort of brick and mortar component to your business. Now the remainder of this episode will assume that you want to source your own private label products or products under your own brand. So let’s start with the basics. The first way to find a supplier

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is to simply use Google. And believe it or not, the very first supplier that we found for our e-commerce store over at Bumblebee Linens was found by Googling a handkerchief manufacturer. We just happened to find a factory in China selling handkerchiefs and purchased a small batch of 200, which was at the time the minimum order quantity. Now we were just trying to buy hankies for our wedding at the time because my wife wanted everyone to carry a handkerchief for our photos. But we ended up using the exact same supplier when we launched our shop back in 2007.

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Now in general, don’t necessarily recommend finding a supplier by Googling, unless you plan on selling food products, supplements, or custom clothing. Basically, the Google method works really well if you want to have stuff made in the USA. After all, there are just some products that I would probably never source from China. For example, I would avoid sourcing vitamins from China because you never know what’s in the product. It’s just too risky. So let’s say you want to sell your own private label supplements. Just Google

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private label supplement manufacturer. And lo and behold, if you were to do this, you would find tons of options in the United States. So if you want to sell food products in the US, do a search for the word private label food co-packer. Now I know most of you guys listening to this probably aren’t going to be selling supplements or food. So the remaining options for finding a great supplier in this episode will be ranked from low to high, depending on what your budget is for travel and your timeframe for finding a supplier.

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Make sure you listen to the end to find the best way and my most recommended way to find suppliers today. Now, if you have a super low budget and you’d rather not travel to find a supplier, then I’d probably start with a China Wholesale Directory like Alibaba or Global Sources. Both of these websites are essentially directories of Chinese factories. Alibaba, for example, actually sends inspectors into the factories in the directories and provides an assessment so you can get a ton of information about the factory before you use them.

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In fact, recently I found a handkerchief factory on Alibaba with a very simple search. And because this factory was an assessed supplier, I was able to access videos of the factory floor, their inspection reports, as well as production line reports. Now this particular factory I’m looking at right now has 5,500 square feet of factory space and has exported for over 16 years. And in general, I would only work with factories that have exported to your country for at least five years or more. Using Alibaba or global sources,

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you can contact the supplier directly through the platform and ask for samples, price quotes, and minimum order quantities. Now I’ve used Alibaba many times for our online store, and I just have some quick tips for you. You always want to come across as bigger than you really are. And in your communications, you must project confidence. Never ever say that you’re a newbie or that you don’t know what you are doing. After all, the supplier is a human. If you were to put yourself in the shoes of your supplier, would you want to work with someone new?

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or someone who knows what they’re doing. Anyway, even though Alibaba is extremely convenient for finding suppliers, I still recommend visiting the factory at some point on your journey. One time we found a supplier in Alibaba that gave us great prices on our first shipment, and that first shipment was fantastic. It was packaged well, the quality of the fabric was excellent, and we were extremely satisfied. But over time, the quality started to degrade, and they became slightly less responsive as well.

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So we decided to fly over to China and visit the factory, talk to them face to face. We shared a meal together, had a couple of drinks, and ever since that face to face meeting, the quality has never been poor ever again. Now I tell you the story to illustrate that relationships are extremely important when working with Chinese factories. And if you can, you should try to visit your supplier directly because I can almost guarantee you that once you do, you’ll get better quality product and much better service.

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Now this next way to find a supplier is one of my favorite ways and comes highly recommended. Attend a trade show like the Canton Fair. Now if you’ve never heard of the Canton Fair before, it is the largest wholesale supplier trade show in the world where thousands of vendors and buyers attend. Here are just some stats so you can get an idea of how big it is. Last year, there were over 25,000 exhibitors. There were over 190,000 buyers and over 60,000 booths.

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and the exhibition space is over 1.2 million square meters or about half a square mile in area. Now to give you an idea of the size and magnitude of the fair, a football field is roughly 6,400 square yards, which means that the Canton Fair is the equivalent of almost 218 football fields. Crazy, right? And the fair is so large that it’s split into three phases. Phase one is electronics, household electrical appliances, machinery, lighting equipment, hardware and tools,

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vehicles and spare parts, building materials and chemical products. Phase two, it’s consumer products, decorations, goods and gifts. And phase three is textiles and garments, shoes, office supplies, cases and bags, recreation products, medicines, medical devices and health products. Now, attending the Canton Fair is free. However, you do have to get a visa to visit China and you have to pay for airfare and hotel. All told, your expenses will probably not exceed $5,000.

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Now going to the fair gives you the best of both worlds. And remember my story about the poor quality product. What I didn’t tell you is that with Alibaba, you have to wait to have samples made and shipped to you, which can take several weeks. Now, if you can imagine going back and forth regarding the design of your product and the packaging and having to wait 10 days between each iteration, it can take a long time. However, when you attend the Canton Fair, you can easily engage with hundreds of Chinese vendors in the span of just a couple of days. And the best part

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is that all the vendors will have sample products in their booths that you can touch and feel for quality. Not only that, but you can often take a quick train ride to visit their factory too if you want. And over the years, we found countless suppliers from going to the fair itself. And in my opinion, it is one of the most time efficient ways to find a reputable supplier. After all, every supplier at the fair has to pay a large sum of money to even have a booth. So as a result, you know right away that every factor you meet at the fair

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is an established player in the space. Now, I know a lot of you guys are probably scared of going to China, so I put together a full video that you can check out on my YouTube channel, including my itinerary. In addition, there are tour groups that take people to the fair every year with full accommodations. Now, this final method is one that I use primarily today, which is to hire a sourcing agent. A sourcing agent is a specialist that connects you with factories to produce your products, and they can also help you with packaging, shipping, quality control, and price negotiation.

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Now there’s different sourcing agents that specialize in different countries. For example, we’ve used Jing Sourcing for China with excellent results. We also have sourcing agent contacts who specialize in Vietnam and Mexico. Now what’s incredible about using a sourcing agent is that you simply tell them exactly what you’re looking for and they’ll find a factory for you. And typically the sourcing agent lives in the same country as the factory and can visit the factory, negotiate in the supplier’s native language, inspect samples, pretty much everything.

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Basically, a good sourcing agent acts as your trusted advisor on the ground and they’ll you locate manufacturers that you cannot find on directories like Alibaba or Global Sources. They also have a strong network of trusted factories, freight forwarders, and inspection companies for your review. And especially in China, where relationships are extremely important, a sourcing agent has contacts already and can often get you meetings with higher quality and more exclusive factories. Now you’re probably wondering how much a sourcing agent costs

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and they are definitely not free. Some agents charge based on a percentage of product source, some agents charge based by the hour, and some agents just charge a flat fee per product. Really just depends. For example, sourcing charges about three to 10 % of your final order value, and the percentage charge decreases as your order size increases. Some sourcing agents will not reveal to you the factories, so you must rely on them for all of your sourcing needs for that product. Jing, for example,

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doesn’t tell you the name of the factory ever. But other sourcing agents like Zignify charge you a flat rate of 70 to $80 per hour to find and negotiate with the supplier. However, they will tell you the name of the supplier and you don’t have to use them for future orders. Really just depends on what you’re looking for. Now the advantage of paying by the hour is that you only pay once to find your factory. In addition, the chances of kickbacks and backdoor deals with the supplier and the agent happen much less.

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Now advantage of paying a portion of your sourcing revenue is that you don’t have to pay any money upfront. If the agent doesn’t find you a supplier, then you pay nothing. It’s basically a game of risk reward and it’s up to you. Some countries like Mexico or Vietnam are extremely hard to find suppliers unless you have an agent. So if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you check out my YouTube channel and my other Family First podcast episodes to learn more about how to find profitable products to sell online.