As a business owner, the process of manufacturing and launching a product can be smooth. But only until realization dawns upon you that you can’t find a fair, trustworthy, genuine, and reliable supplier for your product. That leaves you annoyed and baffled. But has it occurred to you where to source products to sell on Amazon? Is it a good choice?
That’s precisely what we are here to discuss today. In China, some companies serve as agents providing amazing Amazon FBA prep services. This is your ultimate Amazon product sourcing guide, today we are going to discuss everything you need to know about where the top sellers get their products from.
In case you’re new to the functioning of sellers on amazon and are not completely sure what Amazon sourcing is, this article is for you.
Work With a Sourcing Agent
Source: Freepik
Whenever you are working with Amazon and want to sell products on Amazon, you would be looking out for options for sourcing these products. There are many ways to source the products. You, as a business entity, are required to choose the one that sits fine with us.
Sourcing agents prove to be the best alternative for most businesses. This is because not only does it unburden us in many aspects, it also benefits us financially. In fact, if you are able to find a genuine, and reliable sourcing agent, they can use their network for your benefit in unfathomable ways.
The issues like unfamiliarity to the Chinese market, and language barriers can lead the international buyers at risk of fraud, and hence, a genuine sourcing agent can be of great help. But how do you verify if the sourcing agent is reliable or not? We will tell you how. While looking for sourcing agents to source your products to be sold on Amazon, look for the following capabilities:
- Fluency in native languages like Mandarin and Cantonese
- Thorough & advanced knowledge of the Chinese business culture
- Experience in managing Chinese suppliers and manufacturers
- Category and sourcing process experience
- Quality Control experience
- Audit experience
- Logistics experience
If you are able to manage to find someone with these capabilities and are convinced by their work culture, you are good to go. Guangzhou sourcing agent in China can help you build your network, find targeted buyers, and help you acquire the best products with comparatively less financial harm.
Online Arbitrage Product Sourcing
Source: Freepik
Arbitrage, in terms of business and trading, refers to purchasing an item from one marketplace at a lower price and selling it on another marketplace which gives it a scope of a higher return.
Online arbitrage has become increasingly popular over the past months, mainly because of COVID and the quarantine situation, which has led to the temporary closure of physical stores. Undoubtedly, online arbitrage is welcomed more profusely than offline one because of the reduced costs of physical presence, and more convenience.
Online arbitrage for Amazon implies sourcing products (that aren’t available on amazon) from online websites, Facebook shops, Instagram stores, and other eCommerce platforms. means sourcing potential inventory items from retail store websites, Facebook shops, and other eCommerce platforms.
Now, even though this model is convenient, and can be worked with the comfort of our home, finding products online, pricing them correctly to make a healthy margin and attract customers, and managing logistics becomes time-consuming. They also enable you to take advantage of market trends, bringing short-term gains but making longer-run scalability and success is difficult.
However, if you are someone who is convinced by the workflow of online arbitrage, the following are some of the online resources that you can make use of for the same:
- Walmart
- Target
- Sears
- Best Buy
- Gamestop
- Office Depot
- Home Depot
- Lowe’s
- Walgreens
Search Wholesale Products on Google
Source: Freepik
Another way of sourcing products to sell them on Amazon is searching for wholesale market availability. Buying goods in bulk not only promises you the benefit of inventory scalability, but it also eases out of your pockets since bulk purchase leads to reduced costs.
Once you’ve established a good relationship with the Chinese manufacturer, you can always negotiate better terms that will help you address flux in consumer demands flexibly and support your cash flow without incurring a big loss.
In the wholesale model of establishing your inventory, you can purchase products in bulk at a very discounted price from a manufacturer and resell them on Amazon. You can demand a catalog to update more profitable products in your inventory while you choose a manufacturer, leading you to enjoy heavier discounts.
One plus point of this model is that since you are purchasing from a manufacturer, you can order as much quantity of a product in demand and quickly replenish your inventory. There are no constraints on the quality or quantity of the products, provided you manage to deal with reliable suppliers.
Alibaba
Source: Ali Baba
Alibaba is one of the most recommended eCommerce websites used to source products that can be sold on Amazon. Product sourcing From Alibaba to Amazon FBA is one of the elementary pillars of your Amazon sales. It procures high profits for sellers, given the extremely low prices of products in the Chinese marketplace as well as other markets around the world.
The process of sourcing products from Alibaba to Amazon starts with detailed market research and product analysis for your targeted products, and markets. Your research should be entirely focused on finding products that interest you and have good potential to generate high-volume sales. Sourcing it at the lowest possible costs and selling it at a price that earns you a good profit is what matters the most.
You can make use of Amazon bestseller lists to get a list of such products. Once this is done, you will be required to go back to the official Alibaba website, and set up a seller account there. Decide the most feasible price range for your products, and then start looking for quotes accordingly and narrow down your search list for suppliers that fit exactly within your price range.
Alibaba is a well-known marketplace that eliminates the middlemen. But it is always good to be aware since there are a lot of fraudster middlemen that you may encounter who are not manufacturers but actually product resellers.
Find a Manufacturer in China
Source: Freepik
By now, we have covered the major basics you should know about sourcing products on Amazon, but we believe the thought of how to find suppliers in China must be greatly troubling you, isn’t it? We will tell you how.
A. Get a Supplier Candidate List
First of all, you will be needed to jot down the suppliers available in China for your products. There are three ways to do this:
- Find suppliers all by yourself
- Find suppliers from a sourcing company
- Deal with a trading company
B. Evaluate the Suppliers
Now the next step is to analyze all the suppliers, their profiles, their past experiences, and find the supplier that fits best for your products, and work culture. You need to look for attributes like:
- Supply scale
- Company registration & production certificates
- Basic business model verification
- The intensity of supplier-buyer interaction in the past
- The prices, quality standard, lead-time, and services provided
C. Verify Your Prospective Suppliers Before Finalizing the Deal
Before you close the deal, verify the legal and industrial authenticity of your supplier. Check the company background, and verify the following documents:
- Business license
- Business registration
- Certificates
- Patents
You should also get an onsite/online factory visit to see how the manufacturing takes place and if the quality checks are properly done or not.
Dropshipping
Source: Freepik
In a typical, conventional supply chain in a business, a company receives the order and fulfills those with the stock they have stored in their huge inventories. The usual flow is very obvious:
- Picking the order
- Packaging the order
- Shipping the order
What is the problem with this method? The problem lies in the fact that this working model requires a lot of overhead expenses and tends to burden one party with everything from receiving the order to packaging it to delivering it.
Dropshipping is a feasible option that has been surfacing when it comes to avoiding these overhead expenses. This model allows retailers to receive the order and leave the rest (inventory management, storage, and fulfillment) to the dropshipping supplier. With an endless number of dropshipping sourcing agents, it has now become a common way of business management.
Conclusion
In this blog, we saw the basics of sourcing our products to Amazon for selling. We saw the different ways to replenish our inventories, and how to find a manufacturer in China. If you are searching for sourcing agents in China, who would help you source your products for minimal costs reliably, MatchSourcing is your place.
We hope this article helps you in discovering the vast sea of Amazon Sourcing that would open paths for endless business opportunities for you.
