I see many wholesalers/dropshippers who are merely reselling SMC's stuff for a markup. Many of these products are not bad-looking, and not terrible quality, but market saturation is a big deal -- in fact, for anything you might get from an SMC-sourced dropshipper you would be well served to copy a line or two from the product description and enter it into a Google search box. Often you will find that not only are you trying to sell the exact same thing as 10,000 other people, but with the same descriptions and the same general price -- or worse, if you're competing against eBayers and flea marketers who are dumping mountains of SMC products, and have for at least as long as I've been in this business.
Some observations that are worth considering if you must absolutely get into the giftware/decor kind of market that SMC tends to dominate:
1) Stay out of figurines, particularly wildlife figurines. More than any other subset, these SMC products are instantly recognisable, and are
everywhere in the States. You can't swing a cat in a US flea market without knocking into a booth of these figurines. They're all over eBay, Amazon's market, and the smaller sites as well, usually with ridiculous asking prices -- but if you check the closed auctions on eBay you'll find that they almost never sell, and when they do it's for pennies.
2) Know how SMC works. In general SMC's price is 1/3 the "suggested retail" price, plus shipping. If you find a product you like, it can be helpful to Google around a bit to make sure that you see consistent "suggested retail" prices (some sellers inflate this figure in an attempt to boost their own "wholesale" prices.) Once you're sure about the retail price, compare it to the price being offered -- if it's near, at or below 1/3 the retail price, the seller is trying to get rid of it, and you might well be able to get the item even more cheaply if you contact him and make an offer on multi units or multiple items (just bear in mind how stiff the competition is.)
3) Know how things work on Planet China. If you really want to source the kinds of products you see at SMC resellers, the smart thing to do is find several related products, save the pictures, copy the dimensions and materials from the description, then go find yourself a supplier via one of the big gateway sites (DHGate or whomever you like.) Find a few suppliers offering similar items, send them the pictures and dimensions and ask for case pack pricing, with the implication that if the product is of quality and sells, you'll come back for greater quantities. You will be
completely astonished at how cheaply that stuff can be sourced.
Seriously, if you see the "World of Products" catalogue at any "wholesaler" you will be very happy with what you find if you just end-run this bunch of laowai and see if you can source the same or similar products directly. It will likely cost far less than you might think to make this kind of investment in your business (and yourself) and the potential return is so much more than that on spending irreplaceable time trying to post up the same stuff at the same prices as everyone else.
Frank
