Contacting a company

Hi,

i live in Israel and have been selling on eBay for the past two years. i have been working with Chinese suppliers and selling by drop shipping to costumers all over the world. this method has been very successful to me, but recently i decided to seek different ventures and open my own online store. this lead me to signup to SaleHoo as my first task was finding suppliers that offer drop shipping services in the same niche i was familiar with and successfully sold in the past two years (the Chinese suppliers aren't suitable for this kind of task).

While searching the web and the directory i have found some suppliers the sell the kind of products i am looking for, but these suppliers aren't wholesalers ,they are legitimate small companies that sell their own branded products and work with retailers and other businesses worldwide . working with these companies requires registering to there site and providing: business name, business address, resale/tax ID (is the last one even requirable for a business in a different country?)

this is quite a problematic issue for me. i am planning on registering a business in my country but this is a complicated and expensive process, and i feel like it is to soon for me as i need to find and build connections with the right suppliers first, figure pricing, polices , etc..
so my questions are:

how to approach these companies in the right manner to start selling their products?
is it mandatory to register a business first so they take me seriously and be willing to cooperate?
how do most companies approach individuals as myself? do they direct you to wholesalers that offer drop shipping with whom they partner with? or do they offer this kind of service to their affiliates?

it is also important for me to mention that importing the products to my country
isn't really optional for me as it is to expensive and logistically demanding for me at this point.

sorry if some of the questions may sound a bit naive :)
as i said before, i am exploring new ventures

thank you for your replay

Hi Asaf and welcome to the foum,

I just want to start by making sure you have a clear understanding of the difference between WHOLESALE and DROPSHIPPING, so I've droped a link below that better explains the difference.

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In regards to importing being cost prohibitive for you, that would rule wholesale out altogether as you would of course need to be buying in bulk and importing, unless you were using a fulfilment service. Perhaps that's an option you take look closer at when you do have all your business registration to give you a wholesale model option.

So in essence, what you are looking for are dropship suppliers, not wholesale suppliers at this time. Now all wholesalers will usually require a tax id, no matter what country you are from. They need it for their own tax requirements, but as you are talking dropshipping, we can forget about wholesale account requirements for the moment.

Larger dropshippers may require the same, some smaller ones do, some don't. So it does come down to the dropshipper. What you need to do is discuss your situation with them. Explain your location and that you don't yet have a tax id and is there any other option available for you to establish and account with them.