SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Niche Marketing Opportunities
Finding
Wholesale Sources For Niche Products
by Jeff Cohen
If you want to sell niche products from your
own website, physical store or even on eBay, you need to be
able to compete with your local retailers. This means finding
a wholesaler willing to trade with you at prices which give
you enough leeway to make a profit.
The
first place to look is locally, why pay shipping charges
for goods sent from a supplier across country when you could
take a drive in your own car to a local supplier for small
goods or hire a van for bigger stuff? Some local wholesalers
might even provide a cheap or even free delivery service.
Wholesalers
as a rule don't advertise in the mass media such
as TV or newspapers and so they are often difficult to find.
To get you started, here are a few ideas for locating wholesale
sources of niche products for you to sell:
1) One of the first places to look is in your local
trade directory, many wholesalers place advertisements in local trade
directories and even in the Yellow Pages for the products they
carry.
2) Another place to conduct your research is on
the internet,
and there are search engines which are wholesale specific such
as www.wholesalecentral.com and www.wholesalequest.com. These
wholesale specific search engines allow you to search for wholesale
sources by browsing categories or by entering keywords (related
to the products you want to sell) into a search bar.
You can find other wholesale specific search
engines or directories by typing "wholesale search engine" or "wholesale
directory" or "wholesale directories" or even "wholesalers" into
the search engine of your choice.
3) Nearly all wholesalers will belong to a trade association
and these trade associations will often host trade shows all
over the world. It stands to reason that an excellent place
to discover new wholesale sources is to visit as many trade
shows as you can. Here are two ways of finding suitable tradeshows:
i) Join a trade association related to the goods you wish
to sell and subscribe to their periodicals or newsletters as
these always carry details of local, regional and international
trade shows.
ii) Conduct research on the internet by visiting
websites such as Trade Show News Network (www.tsnn.com).
You could also
search for others by entering "trade show directory" or
add a keyword related to your products to the search phrase
- for example, "jewelry trade shows".
4) Look
for the items you wish to sell in a local store, when
you find the item look carefully at the packaging as many suppliers
provide their contact details and often include their website
URL. You can either contact them directly or visit their website
to discover how to either purchase from them directly (which
is often cheaper than buying from a wholesaler), or if that
is not possible ask them who your local wholesaler is and if
they can give you the wholesaler's contact details.
Once you have a list of possible wholesale sources for your
niche products you need to do some due diligence on
each wholesaler. You need to find out if they are legitimate businesses and
are approved by the manufacturers. They last thing you want
to get involved in is a copyright lawsuit because you are inadvertently
selling illegal copies of the original product.
From a purely business point of view you
need to find out their payment terms, return policies,
shipping charges and
methods. If you can, you need to get references from other
customers; are they happy with the wholesalers service or not?
Once you have decided on a wholesale source, there's one thing
you need to be aware of... When you purchase from a wholesaler
you have to buy in bulk, you cannot buy individual items. If
you're just starting out you're probably going to find this
quite expensive, but there is a way to reduce this cost. If
you can, find another established customer who buys the same
products as you, you can approach them with a joint venture
whereby they sell you products for a set profit, say 20% on
each item you buy. Your end of the joint venture will be that
you agree to buy a set number of items each month and that
don't compete with them directly.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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