4p1.pdf

Module 4: Finding Products and Suppliers

Manual 1: Finding Suppliers

Contents:

Overview

Sourcing

#1:

U sing

Dropship

Blueprint

find

suppliers

#2:

Targeting

suppliers

brand

names

Reaching

the

manufacturer

(

a ka

brand

name

)

#3:

Use

Google

find

potential

suppliers

all

else

fails

...

Important

Overview

In this document we will discuss how to identify what products to sell in your store. We will also discuss

how to identify suppliers that will dropship those products for you at wholesale prices.

Here are some quick tips for helping you understand this guide...

● The terms “manufacturer” & “brand” ( or “brand name”) are used interchangeably in this

guide. The “manufacturer” is just the company that makes that “brand” of product (i.e.

Sony makes Sony brand products).

● A “supplier” is simply a company that will sell to you at wholesale prices. Suppliers can be

the actual manufacturer of the products, or they can be a distributor that buys in bulk from

the manufacturer and sells to retail businesses (like you).

● A “dropshipper” is a “supplier” that will ship directly to your customer. In the dropshipping

model, you list the products that the “supplier” offers on your site, and when a customer

buys they pay you for the item. You then pay the wholesale price for that item to your

dropshipper, and they ship the item direct to your customer. The difference between what

Methods

Method

Note

the customer pays you & the wholesale price you pay the dropshipper is the profit & it’s

yours to keep.

● The methods discussed below, for finding suppliers, are not shown in any specific order.

You can use any & all techniques below to source products to sell in your store.

Sourcing Methods

Method #1: Using Dropship Blueprint to find suppliers

Since you have a free lifetime membership to Dropship Blueprint as part of this course, that’s a great

place to quickly check for suppliers. Access the special password-protected Blueprint Black client

sign

page using the following credentials:

Username: str456

Password: qwerty

Once you have signed up for your account, and have gained access to the members only side, simply do

a search for the niche product line you are targeting. Keep in mind that you may have to cut down to the

“root” word of your niche in order to find the maximum amount of suppliers (i.e. search for ‘dog’ if your

niche is ‘wood dog houses’). Once you find a possible supplier and are ready to contact them, see the

manual named ‘Communicating with Suppliers’ within this same module.

Method #2: Targeting suppliers by brand names

A great way to source products is to determine what brand names (or manufacturers) are popular within

your targeted niche, and then contact the manufacturers of those brands directly. A lot of times

manufacturers will dropship for you, and if they wont they can usually point you in the direction of

distributors that buy in bulk from them and may (more on this in the ‘Contacting the manufacturer’ section

below).

A great way to determine what brand names to target is to look at your competitor’s websites. Just go to

Google.com and do a search for the niche phrase you are planning on going after (i.e. “wood dog

houses”). Now, simply start at the top of the search results, and go to each of the websites on page 1.

Inside of each store, look for the brand names that the store carries (usually they will mention it

somewhere on their site). Be sure to look at the store’s menu for brand names, and also on the product

pages as well. If you find brand names be sure to write them down so you can contact the manufacturer

(see the ‘Contacting the manufacturer’ section below).

In rare cases, you wont find brand names on any of the top competitors websites. In these circumstances,

finding the manufacturer of the products they carry becomes more of a challenge. You may be able to

determine the brand name of the products they carry by looking for a unique identifier like a model

name/number, a UPC, or a SKU. Look on the product pages and see if you can find any sort of unique

code or number. Often times, these will be a SKU, a UPC, or a model number/name that are used by the

manufacturer. If you find any possible winners, do a search for that unique number/word in Google and

see if you get any results. If you do get results, visit the web pages that are ranking for that search term &

see if they mention a brand name. You can also search Google for the product names you are seeing on

these competitor’s websites and see if any of the sites that rank for the product name mention the brand

name.

- up

Once you have found a brand name or manufacturers name you should move on to the ‘Contacting the

manufacturer’ section below. If you are unable to figure out any brand names within your niche, you will

not be able to proceed with this method for sourcing products. Check out the other sourcing methods in

this guide for another way to source products.

Reaching the manufacturer (aka brand name)

Now that you know what the brands you want to carry, you should contact the manufacturer of each

brand directly. However, before you can do that, you need to figure out how to contact them. Usually, this

can be done using Google and doing a couple basic searches. Let me walk you through this process:

1. Refer to the list of brands you previously wrote down & select which brand name you

would like to try to source.

Example : I had ‘Precision’ written down because that was a brand name I found on

doghouses

dog

houses

’ .

2. Now go to Google & search for the ‘brand name’ or the ‘brand name + the niche phrase’.

More times than not one of the top few sites will be the manufacturers website. If you

don’t find the manufacturers website on the first page of Google, you can try some more

advanced searches like these: ‘brand + manufacturer website’, or ‘brand + wholesale’, or

‘contact + brand’. There are some indicators to look for that will help you tell if the site

you’re on is the manufacturers site or not. Look for phrases like “manufacturer of brand

name”, or “since 19XX”, or “makers of XXX brand”. Some other indicators are links for

dealers or wholesale accounts. Don’t forget to check out the ‘about us’ & ‘contact us’

pages as well, these can help you as well.

. After quickly inspecting their site I am quite confident this is the

actual manufacturer’s website.

. c om

3. Once you find the manufacturers website, simply navigate to their ‘contact us’ page or

‘about us’ and find their phone number or email address (we highly recommend calling

over emailing). If they have multiple phone numbers or emails, make sure to look through

the list and use the appropriate one. A lot of the time larger companies will have multiple

departments & you want to try and call the correct one. For info on how to approach a

manufacturer or distributor, see the manual named ‘Communicating with Suppliers’ within

this same module.

Method #3: Use Google search to find potential suppliers

Believe it or not some somewhat advanced searches in Google can sometimes uncover some true

“diamond in the rough” suppliers. You see, sometimes manufacturers or distributors will create a basic

website advertising their services, and that makes it possible for you to find them on Google. Do searches

formatted like this:

● “niche phrase” + dropship

● “niche phrase” + dropshipper

● “niche phrase” + wholesale

. c om

, the site that was ranking #1 in Google for my niche phrase ‘ wood

Example: I went to Google.com and searched for ‘precision dog houses’. The #1 result on

Google.com is precisionpet

● “niche phrase” + distributor

● “niche phrase” + manufacturer

● “niche phrase” + supplier

● distributor of “niche phrase”

● manufacturer of “niche phrase”

Take a look at the websites that come up for these search phrases and you should be able to tell if they

really are a wholesaler or dropshipper. Once you find a possible supplier and are ready to contact them,

see the manual named ‘Communicating with Suppliers’ within this same module.

If all else fails...

If you’ve tried all of the methods explained in this guide and still don’t have any leads, here are some

ideas to consider:

● Call up one of your potential competitors - Believe it or not, this will often work. You’d

be shocked what some people will just tell the average person that calls them up. You

don’t necessarily need to tell them that you intend to compete with them. Just ask them a

lot of questions about the products that they carry. Get specific too, ask about warranties,

where they ship from, etc. These can all be keys to determining who their supplier is. It

wouldn’t even hurt to come out and ask them the name of the business that the items

ship from.

● Ask suppliers - If the manufacturers or distributors you get in contact with won’t

dropship, ask them if they know anyone that does. Often times people that are in the

market have good insider info that will help you find a supplier.

● Consider inventorying a small stock of products - In some markets you just plain will

not be able to find a supplier (manufacturer of distributor) that will dropship. If you have

the room and a small amount of investment capital, you can stock product and ship items

out yourself. Often times, this improves the margins and servers as a way to get into a

market that is otherwise impossible to get into. Also, many times we have eventually

convinced a supplier to dropship for us after we have bought is small bulk and shipped

on our own for a while.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Although you can source just about any product you can think of, there are just a

handful of niches we have found that you cannot seem to source through dropship suppliers. We are

posting this list here to help save you time. If you are thinking of building a store around one of the

following niches, we strongly suggest that you don't:

● Baby strollers, prams, car seats, or monitors

● Scuba diving gear

● Fishing poles & gear

● RC toys in general

● College/Pro sports jerseys & memorabilia

● iPods

Keep in mind that if you are willing to stock small quantities of product, and ship out yourself, these may

be viable niches to consider. They are just not available through dropshipping (that we are aware of). For

more info on stocking your own inventory, see the ‘Product Pricing & Margins’ Manual in this Module.

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