Looking for suppliers

[Brian Turner]

I keep thinking that at some point soon it's going to make great sense to sell general consumer products online under my own banner.

At the moment I sell services to help people make money selling their own goods - it makes perfect sense that I should utilise those services to sell my own products.

I believe I've heard of "drop ship business", where I can basically have a storefront up, and third party products are sold though it - with the third party providing the products on demand, as well as final sales support for the customers.

However, it's not a market area I'm very familiar with - so where should I start looking for reliable supplier,s to build long-term sales relationships with?

Comments welcome.

[rtroxel]

You might check the eBay site. Many of the sellers there deliver their goods by drop shipping. You can get a good idea by seeing how they do it. (Actually, you might even contact some of them.)

[RWA]

Just did some googling and came up with this article, giving the basics of how drop shipping works:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/...306132,00.html

[Brian Turner]

Thanks for that, poolking - great article!

Looks like my best interest is to locate individual companies selling product ranges I'm interested in, and then start making calls on the drop shipping side.

I'll repost a couple of core recommendations from the end of it:

So here are a few things to watch out for when you're researching drop shipping:

* Companies offering to sell you lists of drop shippers for $3, $4, $7. The old saying "You get what you pay for" applies here. Spend $4 on a drop shipping list, and you'll get an e-mail listing 200 company names, addresses and maybe phone numbers. A few calls to out-of-service numbers, and you'll realize that the list is years old and basically useless.

* Companies charging you a "monthly fee" to be your drop shipper. Think about it: Why would a company charge you to sell you things? Answer: Because their products are either worthless junk or they're marked up way too high. In either case, they know your online store won't be able to sell any of them, so they need to make their money from you through a monthly fee.

* Companies offering you a turnkey online business, complete with Web site, products that can only be purchased from them), and a merchant account that allows you to accept credit cards. The strategy here is to get you to spend your money advertising and selling their products that they're buying from real wholesalers, marking up and selling to you. These companies usually also charge a one-time and/or monthly fee.

Here's the bottom line: No one's going to do your work for you. If you want to set up a real online business, you're going to need to do some legwork. Always look twice at any company that offers to make your job "easier" by giving you lists of hyped products to sell or offers to set up your site for "free"--chances are, their "all-in-one" solution will eat up a hefty portion of your profits.

[Shellybobs33]

Hiya Brian

I used a dropshipper on a few occasions, quite a few years back now though, I was selling items through ebay, think I sold a few garden items, I never had any compains from the customers only praise,

As I remember, they set a charge for their items and a standard postage and basically you charge whatever you want on top of that.

I signed up to a wholesalers directory which subsequently have now closed, ukwg.co.uk, but there are loads out there, it is a very good business to get into, not sure if you still have to pay to join I know i used ot pay 6.00 a month!

Hope it helps
Shell

[Globalart4u]

Brian

if you go onto the following site http://www.thewholesaler.co.uk/trade/distributor/ - then choose which subject interests you, some of the wholesalers will act as drop shippers too but you do need to go through their websites though individually.

Hope this helps.

[Brian Turner]

Great link - many thanks for that - lots of interesting contacts in there.

[Brian Turner]

Just to add, seen a few recommendations from other sites on finding out more on drop shipping:

http://www.worldwidebrands.com/WWB/main_dropship.asp

Also, to be aware of issues, such as bonded warehouses.