[0:00]In this video, I'm going to show you where to find suppliers to source your products for sale in the United States as well as different parts of Asia and China. Finding great suppliers is a straightforward process and you do not need to travel or hire a sourcing agent. You just need to know where to look. By the way, this is lesson four of a 10-part series. In case you've missed the first three lessons in the series, you can grab them all by signing up for my free six-day e-commerce mini course below. So first off, when it comes to finding good suppliers, it actually depends on your e-commerce business model. For example, if you're looking to dropship, you're going to want to look for dropship suppliers. If you are selling private label or selling your own branded products, you're going to want to look for factories and manufacturers. And finally, if you're just looking to sell other people's products, then you need to find wholesale suppliers. They are all different. Now, finding the right supplier also depends on your budget. For example, if you have less than $100 to spend on your online store, that pretty much limits you to dropship wholesalers. Now, if you have between $100 to $1,000 to spend, that limits you to domestic wholesale. And finally, if you have over $3,000 to invest in your e-commerce store, I highly recommend private labeling your own branded products. Now in my opinion, private label is the best way to go because you are in control of your own brand, you own the product, and no one else can sell under your name. Where you source your products also depends on your risk tolerance. Certain suppliers will force you to buy a thousand units up front, and other suppliers will be willing to sell you products in single unit quantities. Now, where you decide to source your product also depends on the type and the nature of the product that you're selling. For example, if the type of product you're selling is very complex, that might influence you to source from the United States, for example, as opposed to China. If there are high tariffs or high customs duties, then once again, you might want to source from the United States as opposed to China. And finally, if your item is really heavy, or if it costs a whole lot of money to ship, that may influence your sourcing strategy as well. Now, there's a bunch of information out there on the internet that says source from China, source from China, source from China.
[2:05]And there's this misconception that sourcing everything from China is going to be significantly cheaper. Now, in general, that will be true mainly because the cost of labor in China and the other Asian countries is significantly cheaper. Now, just as an example, anything you sell that requires a high amount of labor, such as clothing, or anything that requires woodworking, sewing, stitching, assembly, or packaging, will tend to be cheaper if you source from China. But the key thing to realize here is that not everything is cheaper in China. For example, the cost of raw materials is roughly going to be the same no matter where you are in the world. So let's say you sell plastic products and you already have a mold created. Once you have the mold, it's probably going to be the same price whether you produce your products in your home country or in China. And depending on the political climate, tariffs and customs duties and taxes can make things much more expensive sourcing from China or other Asian countries as well. Now, even though sourcing from China is going to be less expensive in general, there are some disadvantages that you want to keep in mind as you choose where to source your products. For example, if you source from a Chinese supplier, you're probably going to have to deal with a language barrier. In this day and age, there's always going to be someone that can speak and write English, but there will be cultural differences that you must understand and adapt to. You're probably going to have to pay import duties on your goods when you're determining your true landed cost of goods. You often have to pay high costs of shipping. When I get my stuff over from China, it comes over by boat. I have to hire a freight forwarder and I also have to hire a customs broker to clear customs. You also have to contend with long lead times. For my online store, manufacturing can take upwards of two to four months to get product in house and oftentimes, communication problems arise due to the time difference between the US and China. When I'm sleeping, they are awake and when they are sleeping, I am working. But China's main advantage is going to be price! In many cases, you can't beat the low cost, and you just have to decide whether the cheaper prices are worth all the extra headaches, such as longer lead times, communication barriers, and customs. Now with that in mind, where you choose to source your products depends on cost, and you got to run the numbers. You've got to factor in the cost of shipping and freight forwarding. You've got to factor in the cost of import taxes and duties. You have to factor in the hidden costs of cultural language barriers, and you also have to factor in the cost of longer lead times. Don't worry, I'll go through a couple of examples in this lesson on how to do exactly that. But first things first, where can we find vendors to source product from China? One of the best places that people find vendors in China is through a site called Alibaba. Alibaba is a directory of all the Chinese and Asian vendors that you can search through over at alibaba.com. Global Sources is another website that is very similar to Alibaba and that it is a search engine for Chinese suppliers. Now, the main difference is that Global Sources tends to have larger factories in their directory and as a result, your minimum order requests will tend to be higher on Global Sources. But in general, the quality of supplier that you'll find on Global Sources will tend to be higher quality than Alibaba. Now, in addition to these directories, there are a number of trade shows that you can go to as well. And these are trade shows that my wife and I try to attend every other year. The first one is called the Canton Fair. The Canton Fair is probably the largest trade show in the world for sourcing products, especially from Asia. It is held in Canton, China twice a year and is the largest trade show that I've ever seen. And what's really nice about the Canton Fair is that all the Asian suppliers congregate there, and you can often get samples, see the actual product, and it just makes the whole sourcing process a whole lot faster! You can watch this video here for more information about my itinerary for the Canton Fair. Global Sources Summit is also a trade show that takes place in Hong Kong right before the Canton Fair. So in the event that you decide to head over there, you can often hit both trade shows all at once in one trip. Another way to find suppliers is to use the Jungle Scout supplier database, Panjiva, and Import Genius. These are search engines for people who are shipping stuff over by sea. Because anytime you make a shipment by sea, it becomes documented in the public record. And you can search this record to find out which factories any company is using. So, for example, if you want to find Dick's sporting goods suppliers, you can actually just type in Dick's into these services like Jungle Scout, Panjiva, and Import Genius, and find where their factories are that are producing their products. For more information, watch this video to see how it all works. Now I'm going to give you a quick tutorial on how to use Alibaba right now, which is an online search engine for Chinese vendors. And it's probably the easiest way to find Asian suppliers online. Now, this is what Alibaba looks like. What you have to do here is you just have to type in what you're looking for. So let's say I'm looking for knee pillows, which is the example I used in the last lesson. Here are the vendors that are willing to sell you knee pillows and the approximate price and the minimum order quantity. Now, one thing I like to do is to source these suppliers based on trade assurance and verified suppliers, because for verified suppliers, Alibaba sends in third-party inspectors to vet these suppliers. Meanwhile, trade assurance is a service that Alibaba provides, which acts like an escrow service. The vendor sends the product, you send Alibaba the money, and both are exchanged at the same time, so you never get ripped off. By clicking these two boxes, Alibaba will display a bunch of suppliers that you can contact through Alibaba, and here are the rough prices for the cost of goods in addition to the minimum order quantity. In any case, that's just a quick and dirty crash course on Alibaba. And once again, if you want to source from China, Alibaba is probably the easiest place to find Chinese vendors online. But remember what I told you, when you are importing from China, you'll have to pay customs duties, and depending on the political climate, there may be tariffs on certain items. Now the next step is to go to Google and do a search for "import duty calculator," and you'll find these calculators online where you can actually find out what the customs duties are for your products. For our store, we sell handkerchiefs. So all I got to do is I just type in handkerchiefs into the tool, and the tool is telling me that there is a customs duty associated with importing handkerchiefs from China. Now, the next step is to take this duty rate and calculate your true landed cost of goods. Now, I put together a real landed cost of goods calculator, so you can get a rough estimate after shipping and customs duties. How much it's going to actually cost you to get a product to your warehouse in your home country. Now, the link to this calculator is in the email when you sign up for my free six-day e-commerce mini course below, or you can just go over to mywifequitherjob.com/free. Here's what the calculator looks like. For handkerchiefs, let's say the cost of handkerchiefs are about 10 bucks each, and I'm importing a thousand units, and my duty rate is 7.1%. When I click submit, the calculator tells me that even though the supplier is charging me $10, it actually costs me $11.61 to bring in 1,000 units by sea to my home country. This is just a quick and dirty way to figure out how much it's really going to cost you depending on the price that you were quoted on Alibaba. And incidentally, this is the price that you're going to take into account, whether it's worth the savings to source from Asia versus in the United States or wherever you live. Depending on your risk tolerance or your willingness to import from China, some of you might want to just source from the US or your home country. So let's switch gears now and focus on finding suppliers in the United States. There are three resources that you can use to help you find suppliers in the US, and the first one I'm going to talk about is called Data Axle, which was formerly called Reference USA. Data Axle or Reference USA is basically a directory of every single business that's in the United States. Whenever a company registers for a business license, they are actually put into this database. And by going to your local library, you can actually access the directory of every single business in the US. And this service is 100% free. The only catch is that it can only be accessed at your local library, and you need a library card, but I'll just give you a quick demo here. This is what it looks like on the inside. Just type in what you're looking for, along with where you live, and in this case, I entered in California, and in this example, I typed in apparel wholesale, and out came the results of the category that I was looking for. I click on apparel and notions merchant wholesalers, and then I click on view results. And what Reference USA has done here, it's given me all the apparel wholesalers in California that I can contact one by one and find out if they sell wholesale. So that's just a quick and dirty demo of Reference USA, which is now called Data Axle. The next demo I want to show you is Worldwide Brands. And I'm just going to be up front here, Worldwide Brands isn't for everyone. But Worldwide Brands is really good if you want to dropship goods in the United States, or if you want to do light bulk wholesale. Light bulk wholesale is defined as a minimum order of $500 or less. So basically every vendor that you'll find on Worldwide Brands, either dropships, or is willing to sell you product at really low minimum order quantities. And the way it works, it's just like a search engine. So let's say I want to find clothing once again. Out will come a directory of clothing suppliers, or whatever you happen to be looking for, and when you click on full details, it will actually list all the contact information and the phone numbers, so you can get a hold of the supplier, find out what they sell, and get a product catalog. And once again, Worldwide Brands pre-vets all these suppliers so you know that they're going to be legit. Now, the final demo I want to show you is a site called Thomasnet.com. And Thomasnet is really good if you want to fabricate your own products from scratch in the United States. So, for example, let's say I want to create some sort of plastic toy. I type in plastic under suppliers, and out comes a bunch of vendors that specialize in creating plastics. And from here, you can go in, find their contact information, reach out to them, and get quotes if you want to create your own products from scratch. Now earlier, I mentioned trade shows in China. But there's actually a bunch of trade shows in the United States as well, and there's a site I like to use, and it's called wholesalecentral.com. Basically, this site is a directory and schedule of all the wholesale trade shows that are happening in the United States. And my wife and I used to tend a lot of these trade shows back in the day. Often times, they have really low minimums on their products, downwards of like $100 minimum order, which means that you can get started at a really low price. So that's just a high-level overview of where to source products, whether you want to source from Asia or the United States or in your home country. And keep in mind that I offer a full-blown class that talks about all these steps in depth over at profitableonlinestore.com. I know I talked a lot about the US in this video, but I just want to emphasize that this class actually applies to students from all countries. And in fact, I have students from all over the world, including Canada, different parts of Europe, Asia, and even Saudi Arabia. I have a bunch of students in Australia and New Zealand of all places. And what you're going to learn when you take this class is how to find the right niche and prox to sell online, and where to source your products. Obviously, I couldn't go over all the little details in this short video. But interacting with suppliers and approaching them is another lesson in itself that I go over in depth in the class. I'll teach you how to set up your own branded website. Selling online doesn't require any sort of technical knowledge, and I can walk you through the entire process of how to sell and leverage marketplaces like Amazon in addition to your own online store. And I teach you how to get traffic to your store as well, optimize it for conversions, and make sales. And I'll hold your hand through the entire process. I also offer live weekly office hours every single week that I've been doing since 2011, where you can actually ask me questions in real time. And I'll answer them right there live in a webinar. I also offer 24/7 email support, so you can email me your questions at any time during the entire process, and you have lifetime access to the class. Because I've been doing this for so long, there's actually a library of over 500 videos that covers every single aspect of running an online store. And I actually run a seven-figure online store myself that you can check out over at bumblebeelinens.com. Every single strategy that I implement in my own online store, I actually add to the class, and the class never goes stale, because I constantly add new content every single week. And I give lectures every single week during office hours where you can ask questions in real time. Now, because I've been podcasting, and because I run an annual e-commerce conference called the Seller Summit, I have access to a bunch of experts in the space that I periodically invite to talk to the class as well. I remember when my wife and I first got started, it was a very lonely process. And as a result, I have a private Facebook group where you can interact with thousands of other students online who are doing the exact same thing that you are trying to do. And one thing about the class that I do want to mention is that I hate getting nickel and dimed. As a result, it's just one single fee for lifetime access to the course. I will not nickel and dime you with upsells. It's just a single fee, and once again, I offer 24/7 email support in addition to the weekly live office hours, where I'll answer your questions in real time. So if you're interested in signing up to the full-blown class, I look forward to getting to know you. Head on over to profitableonlinestore.com, sign up, and I hope you enjoyed this lesson. And there are many more to come. I believe there's actually six more lessons to go.
