Dropshipping business is one of the low-risk businesses that have the potential for success with minimum capital investment. Product suppliers play a central role in every dropshipping business. While the right supplier can make your business successful overnight, a supplier ill-suited for your business can also destroy your clientele and damage your reputation.
Therefore, choosing the right supplier for your dropshipping business is the most important business decision you will make.
AliExpress: The Best Place To Find The Right Supplier
Most drop shipping businesses choose to outsource their products from overseas, particularly from the Asian countries, for their lower manufacturing costs and other benefits.
If you’re planning to outsource the product for your business from Asian countries as well, AliExpress is the best place for you to start looking. AliExpress is the most extensive directory where you can find millions of suppliers for your product.
In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of choosing the right supplier for your dropshipping business on AliExpress. Let’s get started.
Research
If you’ve made your choice about the product your dropshipping business will sell, you can start researching your suppliers.
On AliExpress, you’ll find a long list of suppliers selling the product you want to buy. Since you can’t talk to all of them, you’ll have to filter through them to shortlist the suppliers most suited to your business demands. Check out the product price, the minimum order quantity (MOQ) they’re willing to accept, and their payment methods.
Contacting Suppliers
Once you have your shortlisted suppliers, it’s time to contact them.
Get in touch with your suppliers and talk to them about the kind of service they provide. You can discuss and even negotiate, over the production time and pricing, delivery time, getting a sample, and so on. You can also ask about their other customers, and talk to them to get a first-hand of their service.
You need to build a good relationship with your suppliers, for your relationship with them will ensure that your business runs smoothly in the future.
Ordering Samples
By now, you might have settled on two or three suppliers that you have communicated with and like. To move forward from here, get samples from these suppliers. The sample is the major deciding factor in hiring the supplier, as it gives you the experience of what your customers will receive when they order from you.
Focus on the quality of the sample product, the delivery time it took, and its packaging. If the quality of the sample product is right, you can negotiate with your suppliers about other aspects and strike a deal.
Ordering From The Competition
Before you get started with your business, you must have an idea of your competitors, and the kind of products and services they offer.
To achieve this, order from the supplier your competition uses. When you receive the order, check the quality of their product, delivery time, labeling, and packaging. The knowledge of their products and services will help you understand the competition and strategize your business to provide your customers better.
Dropshipping Suppliers To Avoid
AliExpress is a huge directory where, amongst the genuine suppliers, there are many middlemen and scammers who register themselves as suppliers and can disappear with your money, or leave you with poor-quality products.
Here are some guidelines that you can use on AliExpress to ensure your safety:
Ask questions
You’re free to ask as many questions as you have to verify that your supplier is genuine. Ask for photographs of their manufacturing sites, or request a video call. To be extra-cautious, hire someone local to visit the site in person and confirm.
Get Samples Anonymously
When you order a sample as a buyer, the suppliers might send a product of a quality they’ve no intention of maintaining in the future. Therefore, use fictitious identities to get several samples and check if the quality remains the same.
Avoid Paying Monthly Or Ongoing Fees
If a buyer insists you pay a monthly or ongoing fee, he’s most likely from another directory and not independent. You wouldn’t want a supplier like that.
Summing Up
Selecting the right supplier is a crucial decision for your dropshipping business, and must be made carefully. Directories like AliExpress have millions of suppliers for every product and can help you look for the right supplier. However, you should know what to look for, and choose the right supplier that meets all your business demands yourself.
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