Finding suppliers - what am I missing?

Hi,

Just a new little traderwannabe here calling from Sweden. I will start to thank you for a great site, I have learned, and still learning, a lot from your guides, even though I’m based in Sweden.

This thing with finding suppliers is quite a task… for me it is anyway.
First of all I have located some products that seems to be promising. Then I have checked the prices in different type of forums, like auction sites. After that I have tried to locate suppliers with prices so I can compete with the others. And it is here I get stuck.

Something that really surprises me is to see others having better prices than the suppliers and still offer free shipping together with a delivery time of 7-15 days and up to 4 weeks. It must be dropshipping with wholesaleprices.

Like this popular coat for example.
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The best price I have located (with those to seem to be trusted sites) is about 35$/piece, and this is at aliexpress or at a wholesaleprice about 30$ with at least 10 pieces.
So how can people in our biggest auctionsite in Sweden sell them for the same and a lower price and still offer free shipping combined with the dropshippinglike deliverytime? I wouldn´t have said anything if they bought it in stock, but this...? Well I don´t know. I can´t even find it cheaper in wholesale. That tells a lot of my experience in doing this. :)

There must be something I missing, but what?

Anyway, thanks again for a great site.

Kind regards,
Lars
Sweden

Hi Lars,

Online selling is super competitive, as you have been finding of course. Looking at your example, there is only two ways they can be doing it. Either buying in large wholesale volume and getting a good discounted price, then allowing them to sell with free shipping. I don't mean just buying 10 units, I mean buying 50-100 units or maybe even more. Quite an investment in buying in super large quantities, but it will reduce the price per unit and if the products are good sellers, then well worth the investment because of the turnover.

If they are Drop Shipping, then they have to be buying from a cheaper supplier than you are finding or if the products are branded, then they could well be buying cheaper fake copies of the genuine articles.

The answer is in among those options somewhere.

Ok!

Thanks for your quick respond. It´s not branded items. It´s noname clothing that you can find in places like Banggood, Chinabuye, Aliexpress, etc.
Well. They seem to have been lucky to find a cheap supplier so I must try search deeper in this jungle. But it´s really hard filter out the scams when the forums in internet very often are filled with opinions that direct you in both ways. Some says a site is good and others it´s a scam. And how can I be sure that the opinions are real? Well, there is only one answer to that, I can´t.

That is also one of the reasons I chosed to come to Salehoo. I belive you can be a good assistance to find both the legit suppliers and the scams.

Thanks again!

//Lars

Yes, welcome to the murky world of e-commerce lol

Many times it is hard to tell which side of the fence is the right one to be on. For me personally, I treat feedback like this. 1 positive feedback = 2 negatives. In other words, I put more cred in a positive endorsement of a company than I do in a negative. Now there is caveat on that, being that I need to find at least 10 positive comments before I have any faith in them.

Why do I put more faith in a positive comment than a negative?

Simply, when someone is happy with a service they usually won't take the time to comment. Their content and that's what is important. When someone is upset with a service, they feel the need to vent to clear their frustration and so bad news is far more likely to spread, than positive news is. Now I'm not saying that all the negative comments are rubbish, but I've been in business a long time now and you learn very early that no matter how hard you try, you'll never please everyone.

Every customer comes with their own expectations, right or wrong and when that is in play, not all negative venting is based in fact!

As I said, that's just how I assess what I find when researching. You may well have a completely different opinion, but you'll find a way to put it all into perspective.

Cheers

Hehe! Thank you very much! It sure will be an adventure. ;)

I very much I agree with you and I think you have a good tactic there.

Cheers!
//Lars

Cheers Lars :)