Finding the right supplier for your dropshipping business is difficult. With so many fake suppliers and counterfeit products around the web, it’s important to do your due diligence before working with a supplier and selling their products. Researching suppliers one-by-one is time consuming, but in the end you’re doing this to ensure your customers have the optimal purchasing experience.
Many different factors come into play when you’re choosing dropshipping suppliers. This article will help you find the best suppliers available that fit your needs and can provide high-quality products on a consistent basis.
How To Find Dropshipping Suppliers on ProductPro
What is ProductPro and How Does It Work?
ProductPro is a dropshipping solution where you can find a wide variety of products from USA suppliers who offer fully automated dropshipping.
Every supplier on ProductPro is vetted to ensure all products listed are high quality, offer fast shipping times, and have great margin potential. In addition, every single product listed ships from the United States. That means 2-3 day fulfillment on your orders.
ProductPro suppliers are vetted individually and held to strict standards. This helps us guarantee that the suppliers you see have high order success rates, low turnovers, and excellent customer service.
Benefits of ProductPro Suppliers Over AliExpress Suppliers
Choosing a supplier on ProductPro is much safer than choosing one on AliExpress for multiple reasons.
Shipping Times
All ProductPro suppliers are required to ship orders with 48 business hours. This is a requirement for every supplier on ProductPro. In comparison, AliExpress orders can take anywhere from 15-45 days to fulfill.
Fulfillment
Orders are automatically processed, billed, and fulfilled with ProductPro, meaning once an order is placed there’s nothing else you’ll need to do.
To fulfill an order on AliExpress, you’ll need to visit its website, purchase the product, and wait to get tracking confirmation.
Product Quality
As mentioned earlier, ProductPro vets all of its suppliers to ensure all products are legitimate and high quality. With AliExpress, you run the risk of selling low-quality, counterfeit, or fake products, which can be detrimental to a business.
Returns and Refunds
As a retailer, it’s important to have a consistent and reasonable return policy in place. AliExpress suppliers are known for shady return policies. Suppliers can take days to respond to a request for a return or refund, and sometimes they may not respond at all.
ProductPro has a universal return policy for all suppliers. Any orders with missing, incorrect, or damaged products will be refunded or replaced. Any situations outside of those scenarios will be handles with the suppliers directly. We require all suppliers to respond within 24 hours to customer inquiries.
Finding Dropshipping Suppliers
Manufacturers
The most common way to find suppliers is to contact manufacturers directly. While manufacturers don’t sell to the public, they often maintain a list of wholesale distributors that they’ll share with you. With these lists, you can contact suppliers directly and ask if they offer dropshipping.Don’t be fooled. This process sounds simple, but this is where the time consuming part of dropshipping comes in. There are tens of thousands of manufacturers around the world. Finding the right manufacturer can be difficult.
A quick google search for “fashion manufacturers”, “jewelry manufacturers”, etc, will give you some leads to move forward with and begin your search for the right supplier.
Search Google
This seems like the simplest method, but it’s important to keep a few things in mind while searching:
Make your search extensive – You’ll likely notice millions of results when you begin searching for wholesalers. As we mentioned before, the best ones are often hard to find. You’re likely not going to find the perfect match on page 1-10 of your search results. Be prepared to dive into pages 60+ to find a good fit.
Filter your search – Using modifiers (“wholesale”) on your search will help weed out results that are non related to what you’re looking for.
Directories
Supplier directories are lists/databases of suppliers organized by industry, niche, or product. Good directories will use a screening process to ensure all of the suppliers/wholesalers listed are in good standing. You can expect a one-time or recurring fee to access a supplier directory.
Here are some of the most popular directories to look through:
Worldwide Brands – $299 for a lifetime membership, Over 10 million products, Established in 1999
Doba – Over 1.5 million products, $60 per month, Established in 2002
While extremely useful, directories are not necessary. Identifying your desired product or niche beforehand will help you narrow your search and hopefully find suppliers faster on your own.
What to look for in a great supplier
Location – This is one of the most important things to consider when looking for suppliers to work with. The location of their operations will have a direct effect on your shipping times. For example, if you’re targeting consumers in the U.S., sourcing products from a supplier in China can lead to extremely long shipping times. Try finding suppliers who operate close to your target audience.
Product quality – Great suppliers will always have great products. You’ll want to ensure you can trust the quality of the products your selling. Be sure to ask questions about where the products are made, how they’re packaged, etc.
Support responsiveness – Pay close attention to the level of customer support you receive the moment you make contact with a potential supplier. If it takes them a few days to get back to you, that’s what you should expect when you have order or product issues.
Modern technology – Ensure that your potential suppliers have invested in their technology. This would include real-time inventory updates, automated order fulfillment, software integrations, etc. It can be damaging to your business if you aren’t able to have orders processed quickly or if you have a product sell when it’s out of stock.
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