What Are Wholesale Suppliers?
Wholesale suppliers are business-to-business (B2B) entities that sell products at a discounted rate to other businesses. The buyers then sell the products in individual units directly to consumers for a profit. Wholesale suppliers may or may not manufacture the products themselves. In some cases, they even do a mixture of both.
Wholesale vs. Dropshipping
You’ll see mentions of both wholesale and drop shipping when we look at some of these small business wholesale suppliers. In the case of wholesale, you purchase the inventory from the supplier, who ships the items to you to store in your warehouse, stock room, basement, spare bedroom, wherever you keep your product. When a customer makes a purchase, you are then responsible for picking, packing, and shipping those items.
Dropshipping, on the other hand, is a more hands-off approach. So while you control more of the logistics and customer experience in wholesale, you leave this up to the supplier in the dropshipping model. Essentially, a customer purchases from you, but the supplier picks, packs, and ships it. You never buy the inventory from them in the first place, and they are responsible for storing merchandise. This is also less risk, though margins are typically lower.
How Do I Find Wholesale Suppliers?
Every search starts somewhere – in this case, you can begin with a Google search. This will bring up a list of wholesale suppliers to try. You can search by product, industry, and even location to pull up an initial list.
Bear in mind – wholesale can be a scary place. Not every wholesaler is legit, so you need to do some vetting beyond the first page of Google. Search for the company name and add keywords like “reviews” and “scam” to your query to unearth any red flags.
For labour-intensive industries, importing from China can effectively help to reduce labour costs. When compared to other countries such as the US, management and technical personnel salaries are significantly lower, as are the rates for hourly type positions.
Supplies and Raw Materials:
There is a chance of reducing your material costs, but note that this factor will depend on the type of raw material used in your manufacturing process – this is seen for materials, such as copper and nickel, which prices are determined globally.
One of the biggest challenges here is finding and qualifying a reliable supplier. Shopshipshake however takes care of all these aspects, making use of tried and tested suppliers, ensuring that your manufacturing chain benefits from the use of reliable partners.
Equipment:
China is a rising market and, within the last 50 years, has developed into a country with high tech manufacturing capabilities. Companies, such as ChinaSavvy, make use of world-class machinery from Germany, Japan and the US.
As seen in machining, various types of machines are employed for various results. ChinaSavvy can offer services using:
Chinese Built Machines: Employed in cases where tight tolerances and precision is not a requirement for part appearance or functionality. These machines are relatively inexpensive to incorporate and is capable of delivering low costs parts where precision is not of the utmost importance.