Now you’ve come to the stage of getting down to the nuts and bolts of creating your eCommerce empire. It might be that you’re deciding on your niche and investigating dropshipping suppliers and looking within the private market.
In this article, we’re going to be discovering where you can find the best supplier for your product in order to earn yourself the best profits you can.
You might have a list of questions about which vendor is the most reliable, cost-effective, etc, whether to go with a dropshipping agency or indeed where you can find partners from china, so let’s start with the short answer as to where to find the best Dropshipping vendors.
Where can I find a partner for my dropshipping business? Make contact with and enter discussions with dropshipping agents, there are advantages to using agents like HyperSKU who have access to many factories and breadth of products. Dropshipping partners such as Alibaba and AliExpress are able to deliver direct to customers, but many dealers are resellers, which would cost problems when scaling.
Now we’ve looked at the short answer as to where to great dropshipping vendors, we can drill down a little more into the different types of vendors there are and what might work best for your dropshipping business.
How to select your dropshipper supplier
Selecting suppliers is a really crucial step that everyone involved with a dropshipping business needs to take. However, there are so many factors that need to be taken into consideration when you’re looking for dropshipping suppliers.
Even if you are at the point when you already know which products you want to sell, and you’re sure that they’ll prove to be successful for your business, it’s vital that you find dropshipping suppliers that can provide a really high-quality service that your business deserves. We are talking about processing efficiency, delivery time, and automated operation here.
In general dropshipping suppliers aren’t usually that visible – or market themselves to their audience that well, so finding the right dropship suppliers can be a difficult task.
Get involved and talk
There are several ways to find dropship agents:
- Browse and search B2B marketplace such as Alibaba.com
- Browse and search B2C marketplace such as AliExpress.com
- Search on Facebook
- Ask other dropshippers for recommendations
Start with a list of suppliers and ask them questions. Fire away anything you have concerns, from their warehouse, product sampling, to fee structures. Once you’ve found a dropshipping supplier that suits your needs, make sure you engage in a real relationship with them.
So now we’ve looked at some of the steps for choosing your dropshipping partner, let’s take a look below at why we love dropshipping agents.
The reason we love dropshipping agents
There are many kinds of dropshipping partners you can choose. So why should you choose a dropshipping agent? Let’s look at some important reasons why.
- They are more flexible and provide extended service than traditional B2B suppliers
- They may have direct connections with factories so will be able to offer a better price and much better quality products
- They have the ability to take care of many aspects of the customer’s journey, including purchasing, pick and pack, shipment, quality checks, and they’ll even take photographs if you ask them to!
So now we’ve seen some of the reasons why dropshipping agents are our ‘go-to’… let’s look a little more closely at the kinds of partners available.
Dropshipping partners
So what kind of drop shipping partners are there available?
Alibaba sellers
Alibaba sellers are the biggest platform in B2B marketplaces. There are many, many trading companies and factories in their database to choose from. You might be wondering what kinds of steps you need to take in order to begin your partnership with them. Let’s take a look.
- Request a quote from your selection of Alibaba and make sure you ask any questions you might have at this stage
- Narrow down your search to around 5 or 6 sellers
- Ask for samples
- Look at products and compare
- Finally, choose your supplier
One of the important things to remember is that these kinds of sellers often require you to make a minimum order of hundreds and sometimes thousands of units in order to partner with them.
AliExpress sellers
AliExpress sellers are one of the most prolifically used agents by dropshippers. A few of the reasons why people prefer to use them include:
- AliExpress sellers are generally on the button with trends
- Very familiar with the dropshipping business model
- Dropshippers are able to start with a minimum order quantity (or more commonly known within the dropshipping business as MOQ)
Many dropshippers commonly choose to partner with an AliExpress seller and after building up a relationship will go off-platform and deal with them directly.
One of the important downsides to consider with AliExpress sellers is that most of them don’t directly own factories and are essentially resellers, so you might put reputation at risk if the AliExpress seller cannot hold stock for your incoming orders. The fact that AliExpress sellers using ePacket would be another big donwside, as ePacket is extremely slow and share a relatively low delivery rate.
Traditional dropshipping agencies
It’s common for sellers to find their sourcing agency by word of mouth, become partners with top AliExpress sellers, and then move offline to continue their partnerships. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of taking this route.
- Dedicated service – These traditional types of agencies can assist business and entrepreneurs by providing sourcing and order fulfillment without MOQ
- Longer payment cycle – Often they will offer credit and the ability to pay over a longer period of time
- Offer suggestions – They are able to offer advice on trending products
However, one of the downsides is the fact that often this service can be quite slow in terms of sourcing, fulfilling orders and their general communication with you. The reason for this is that they work manually.
This could look like a small team of providers, looking after your order daily, along with many others while coordinating with factories using nothing more than a manual spreadsheet.
There is also likely to be lots of errors due to the way they manually work with order fulfillment. From managing thousands of parcels through to repacking, label printing, onward shipping to new addresses and passing tracking codes to dropshippers can be a hotbed of potential mistakes which can result in unhappy customers and lack of trust, affecting your Facebook advertising, for example.
“However, one of the downsides is the fact that often this service can be quite slow in terms of sourcing, fulfilling orders and their general communication with you.”
So is there any other type of dropshipping partner you can work with that has more of the benefits you are looking for and less of the downsides! Let’s look and find out.
HyperSKU
HyperSKU is a new type of dropshipping agency! Let’s look at some of the benefits of using HyperSKU to see how we can bring success to your dropshipping venture.
- Direct from factories: We directly source from factories, providing the competitive price and best quality
- In-house system: Self-built system which allows Shopify and WooComneece sellers to sell effortlessly and seamlessly
- Provide quotes within days: our dedicated sourcing team get back to you with quotations, as fast as 2 business days.
- Sync orders automatically: we use automated system to sync order details including tracking codes. In this way, no more spreadsheet work and no more mistakes.
- Order fulfillment – Provides a seamless journey from the factory through to the customer, and all you need to do is a few clicks.
- Provides tracking codes – To your stores and customers, with our powerful API so you’ll both be at ease
And finally…
We hope you have got lots of important information from our article to enable you to get right on board with your dropshipping business. In this current climate, many are looking to escape the 9 to 5 grind and be their own boss.
Simply contact us by clicking the chatbox on website, and HyperSKU will be happy to get you on the right track – and provide you a flawless dropshipping service from the factory to your customer.