You’ve made the leap into Amazon FBA, done copious amounts of product research, and are finally ready to work with a supplier. This is an exciting phase of your journey, but also one that’s crucial to your success or failure on Amazon. A bad supplier can lead to poor product quality, bad reviews, and a significant amount of money down the drain. To avoid this, you need to find a supplier that produces high-quality products, is trustworthy and reliable, and offers a fair price.
Good Amazon FBA suppliers can be hard to find, but luckily, Alibaba.com makes the process easier. Keep reading for all of my personal tips and tricks for finding the best Amazon FBA suppliers out there.
Finding Amazon FBA Suppliers on Alibaba
If you’re not already familiar, Alibaba is essentially Amazon for suppliers. They currently offer hundreds of millions of products in over 40 major categories.
To get started researching supplies, head on over to Alibaba and follow these steps.
Search By Supplier
On Alibaba.com, type your product into the search bar. Then, sort products by suppliers using the search bar dropdown. I recommend searching by suppliers because you can find supplies that specialize in the product or product category you’re interested in.
After you click the “Search” button, you can see all of the suppliers for the product you want to sell.
Filter Amazon FBA Suppliers
Once you’ve completed your search, it’s time to filter suppliers. I recommend checking the “Trade assurance” box. Once you pay for your products, Alibaba will hold that money in escrow until the supplier ships out the product. This feature is here to protect you as a buyer!
The second filter I recommend is the “Verified” filter. Verified suppliers have been certified by independent third-party inspection companies for their quality.
Now that you have applied the “Trade assurance” and “Verified” filters, you can start getting more granular. I like to look for suppliers with some experience in the field, a few years at a minimum. Additionally, I pay special attention to suppliers with a decent total revenue, around the $2.5 – 5 million dollar range. These mid-range suppliers are ideal for new sellers because they have the experience you need and have the time to speak with you, and they work with smaller order volumes. You can experiment with more filters, but these are the best ones to get you started.
From here, I recommend using the “Top 3 Markets” filter and checking the boxes for “North America,” “Western Europe,” and “Eastern Europe” to ensure the supplier’s product quality meets your expectations. Now that you’ve applied your filters, you should have a solid and workable list of suppliers for your product. Remember to “Favorite” suppliers to review later.
Amazon FBA Suppliers – Quick Tips
#1 How To Talk To Manufacturers Most Efficiently
To contact your favorite suppliers, you’ll head on over to the right side of the search bar and click on “Favorites” and “Favorite suppliers.” You can now send a message to all suppliers. If you want a quick RFQ (request for quote) template, please check out mine below.
From there, I exchange Skype information with several suppliers so we can send instant messages back and forth. Skype messaging is the easiest way to keep communication flowing.
#2 How To Keep Your Supplier Honest
As more Amazon sellers enter the market from the U.S, Alibaba sellers have gotten smarter. Because U.S. customers are typically used to paying more for goods than Chinese customers, many Chinese suppliers have hiked their prices. To combat this, I use a website called 1688. com. 1688.com is essentially Alibaba for Chinese retailers. They sell all of the same things that Alibaba does, just at lower prices.
However, because 1688 is designed for Chinese business owners, you’ll notice that the website is in Chinese. Simply right-click on your cursor and select “Translate to English” or use the Google Chrome translation extension. Additionally, you’ll have to plug the Chinese yuan price into Google to find the U.S. dollar equivalent.
Now that you have a supplier’s 1688 pricing, you’ll have leverage in your negotiations because you know their minimum pricing. I encourage you to chat with the supplier and use the information you found on 1688. For example, if a supplier sells a lemon squeezer for $5 a pop on Alibaba, but only $1 on 1688, they have wiggle room in their margins. Explain to the manufacturer that you need a specific price and see how low you can get them to come down.
#2 How To Pay Amazon FBA Suppliers Securely
Paying for your first Amazon FBA supplier order is a little nerve-racking. You don’t want to get scammed or ripped off, but it can be hard to protect yourself when doing business with people in other countries, right? For this reason, I suggest avoiding wire transfers. Instead, opt for PayPal. Using a credit card on PayPal gives you two lines of defense against scams. The first defense is that PayPal allows users to make cases for fraudulent activity. The second defense is your credit card company. Credit card companies will enable you to dispute charges if you pay for something you don’t receive.
Once you’ve done a few orders with a supplier and trust them, you can start working with them on Alibaba using the Trade Assurance feature.
Alibaba is where I source 90% of the products I sell, so I firmly believe that it’s the best place to source products for new sellers. I hope this guide helps you find the right supplier and have peace of mind.
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Check Out Alibaba.com
MY RFQ TEMPLATE – IN CHAPTER 2 IN THIS GUIDE:
