How to Find Suppliers for Dropshipping Business

Suppliers play a huge part in a dropshipping business success. If a supplier fails to deliver high-quality items or fails to deliver orders at all, it is certain that the dropshipping business will lose money.

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It is important to pick respectable drop ship suppliers for your business. You need to consider a lot of factors when choosing because you need to make your customers satisfied with the item and delivery time.

I will show you today how you should search for suppliers, and how to stay away from fake ones. This little guide will teach you how to perform a thorough research on every potential supplier.

Do Not Rush to the Lowest Price

Always have in mind that the lowest price does not always mean the best service and quality of items, as well as the higher price tag, does not mean that it’s the highest quality item possible. What you want to do is to find the middle, as people like to say find the best price to quality ratio.

If you are using AliExpress with Oberlo (by the way, it is a great choice), most of the time price is comparative with the quality of the product. When you are using AliExpress you might see that there is a lot of items looking the same but for the different price. If you see that one seller has a drastically lower price on the same item than others, it might be an indication of lower quality product.

Another tip that you should follow is to check AliExpress supplier’s review and identify negative reviews. Those reviews can give you a brief understanding of what kind of problems your customers can get.

Have a Backup Supplier

You might not hear this before, but it is a good idea to have a backup supplier if anything goes wrong. As I would say have a backup plan for your business. In case that your current supplier fails to deliver orders on time or they went bankrupt, you need to have a plan for keeping your business up. Here comes a question of how many suppliers one should have?

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It depends on the size of your business. If you are just starting up, you should have several suppliers and maybe one supplier as a backup plan that you could contact in case of emergency. Do not only use one as well as do not use too many as this can hurt your business. When you have a lot of suppliers it might be hard to keep track of them and provide a simple assurance of quality. Do not build too complex supply chains that you are not able to manage.

Try to Stay Away from Dropshipping Suppliers that Sell Brand Products

Nobody likes to get into legal trouble as it might cost a fortune. So, as a drop shipper you should avoid selling branding products unless you signed all the copyright paper and know that they are real, not counterfeits or knock off goods.

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If you are using AliExpress sellers as suppliers, you should know that most of the time branded products there are fake. You can hardly find genuine designer products there so it is better to just avoid them. It will keep a peace of mind and might save you from legal troubles.

Take Notice of the Responsiveness of the Supplier

When you are a dropshipper it is important that your supplier would answer you as fast as possible to fix customer complaints. You need a supplier that would respond to your inquiries immediately, not after several days when you might have already lost your money.

To check their responsiveness you can message or email them several times with general inquiries and check how long it takes for them to respond. You might also create a fake scenario where you send questions that your customers might ask you such as an item came broken or you did not receive your order at all.

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If you are using Oberlo with AliExpress you can just message AliExpress suppliers through the inbuilt message board. It will allow you to see the attitude of the supplier and how quickly supplier will answer to you with a suitable response.

Look at the Reviews of the Supplier

The Internet is full of information and you should use that to your advantage. Always try to Google your chosen supplier and look for reviews or testimonials. This might save you from using a fake supplier and familiarize you with issues that you might face.

In AliExpress you should check the positive feedback ratio of the supplier as well as of the individual product, the higher the percentage the better. Also, do not forget to look at the order count as there is a huge difference between a product with 5 stars positive feedback that was sold 3 times and an item with 4.6 stars positive feedback score that was sold 10,000 times.

Final Thought

Be careful when choosing a supplier, do not rush into it and do a thorough research on every item, supplier you encounter. This should keep your business safe and sound.