How to Find Dropship and Wholesale Suppliers
Some of the most common questions I receive on this forum are “How do I find a dropship wholesaler?” or “How do I find suppliers?”. Most people have at least heard of dropshipping, but there is some confusion as to what a dropship supplier does exactly. For instance, the term “dropship wholesaler” is not really accurate. A supplier EITHER dropships OR sells wholesale. They are not the same thing.
What is a dropshipper?
A dropshipper processes individual orders and ships them directly to your customer. When you make a sale on your website or on eBay, you order the product from the dropshipper and have it sent directly to the buyer. A dropshipper may offer you wholesale prices, but generally they charge some kind of dropshipping fee and you purchase orders individually, not in bulk wholesale lots.
What is a wholesaler?
A wholesaler sells bulk orders of products, say, 20 t-shirts or 100 candles. You keep the product at your house or in a storage facility and you process and ship your own orders. Selling products this way is more time-consuming and requires a greater investment, but you usually get the products more cheaply than you would from a dropshipper.
How can I find suppliers?
There are many ways to find suppliers.
- Google Searches: You could perform a Google search, say for “bowling ball dropshippers”. Unfortunately most of your results would be middlemen masquerading as legitimate dropshippers, or international suppliers from places like China. Even if you did find a legitimate dropshipper this way, it would be the same dropshipper a hundred other people could find.
- Trade Shows: Trade shows are actually a great way to meet quality suppliers. The only downside is the time and expense of attending trade shows in places like Las Vegas.
- Databases: You can use a quality database to find suppliers. If you choose this option, remember that not all databases are created equal. Some databases are never updated, have very few suppliers in each category, or do not screen out fradulent suppliers.
Wholesale Match’s database is continually updated: we add new suppliers every week. We have many suppliers in each category, and if we don’t have a supplier for the product you’re looking for, we will actively search until we find a supplier that works for you. If we receive a complaint about a supplier, we investigate and remove them from the database.
Wholesale Match is the only database that has a Research Team who will do the work for you and provide professional results. Wholesale Match is also the only database that provides a 100% money-back guarantee if you do not make back the cost of your membership (as long as you use our services at least once a month). For these reasons, I would recommend using Wholesale Match to find dropship and wholesale suppliers.
