Whether you’re new in the market or have an established business, you will always be in the need for a supplier who is trustworthy and offers a great value for your money. Wholesale Supplier Selection is a very critical decision for your business as it directly affects your business sales and its reputation in the market. Along with the process of selecting the right supplier for your business, you should also understand how his or her products may affect your customer’s interests for those products.
Monitoring your customer’s activities and figuring out the buying pattern can be quite helpful, but it is a tough job. Moreover, it is difficult to predict whether your supplier’s products are future-proof. These are some of the reasons why business owners are quite skeptical when it comes to choosing the right seller for their online store. The situation becomes even more complex when there are multiple sellers to consider and manage. Thus, it is very important to understand your suppliers.
The motive of this article is to help you find the various ways to choose the right vendor to keep your online business running smoothly. You will also find key elements that are required for deciding the ways and tips on Supplier selection.
So, without any further delay, let’s dive right into it.
Understanding the wholesale market scenario
The market is huge. It includes a wide variety of industries that offers different products like clothing items, consumables, medicines, electronic gadgets, etc. There are so many companies and industries that are producing similar kinds of products. Soaps – for example, there are a number of companies that sell similar kind of soap. Some of these companies are big and famous, while others are small-scale industries. So, as a business owner, you should look for two things here, the cost of the commodity and the popularity among its consumers. It is important to do the right research to eliminate the wholesalers who aren’t going to save you money and bring you a good reputation.
But, the segregation process of the suppliers does not entirely depend on the market, it depends on your business profile too. The business profile includes a bunch of other important attributes like the size of your business, your gross income in a particular time period, brand reputation, etc. This is important because various wholesale companies respond to different business differently. To simplify this, if you’re a big business, then you can request your supplier to provide the goods at a cheaper rate. But, if you’re a small business and even if you ask for a decreased rate, there is a high chance that you’d be disappointed. This situation might not apply to every business, but it sure happens a lot.
So, try to measure your business from your supplier’s perspective. It will give you the confidence to approach them in the right way. And in the meantime, you can try to increase your reputation in the market to amplify the request.
What are you looking for?
Irrespective of the size of your business, you should first decide the type of supply that you’d need. This might be your first time to go for a supplier or you might be changing the supplier because of some reason. There are many reasons behind this shift of supplier. One of the most common reason is when the customers do not like or prefer a particular product in an online store. The result of this situation usually leads to a dramatic drop in sales. Thus, in order to bring back your loyal and potential customers, you’d have to introduce a similar product that could have the potential to become hugely popular among your customers.
Based on the type of need, you can introduce the right products accordingly. Most of the products fall under the following three categories,
Regular products
These type of products that are regular in your online store. People buy them because of their popularity, demand, need and abundance. These products could be one of the reasons why your business is famous and successful. Thus, it is important to ensure that these products are always in stock. But, let’s say if you want to change the supplier for one of your regular products then you’d have found the right replacement. Meaning, you’d have to choose a supplier without compromising on the sales and budget.
But, choosing the correct replacement is not an easy task. It requires you to research on the business history of that supplier and relations with other companies as well. This situation is just like finding a new best friend all over again. You’d have to find the matching interests and equal affection from him or her. Moreover, you’d have to predict how the new fusion of your business and your wholesaler transforms your store sale performance. You will have to notice whether the sales improve, remains the same or declines by a large factor. Though, there is a chance that your customers will take some time to adjust to the change and it may make your business to slow down for quite a while.
Popular products
The market trend is like the seasonal weather, you’ll have to make some changes in order to stay safe and risk-free. The trend in the products changes as the eCommerce grows. Every day, people are becoming more and more aware of the products and their details. They will buy the products only if matches their interests and the latest trends. But the consolidating and satisfying thing about introducing a popular product in the store is that you’d get a huge increase in the popularity. Usually, many business owners try to achieve popularity rather than earning huge profits. Thus, it becomes really important to introduce a popular item in your store. The article on current trending products to sell gives you an idea regarding the same.
Another reason why you should introduce a popular product is to meet the expectation of your customers. As soon as a new product is introduced in the market by a company, people would like to see it on your online store. For example, if a new phone was recently launched by a famous company, then it would be a better idea to contact the distributors of that company to initiate the supply of that phone to include it in your store. Doing this will give you the upper hand in this tough competition and will also help you to retain customers in a better way. But, this also means that you’d have to update the stocks from time to time.
It is important to do that because customers will quickly shift to another online store if they find the required items to be out of stocks. Thus, the money and traffic that was meant for you will be going to your competitor, which is not a good news for any business. You can also look into this article, that will help you choose the popular products to sell.
Innovative products
Sometimes, business owners take a leap of faith by selling a unique and new product on their store. They do that in order to please their customers and gain decent money out of it. These new products may help online business owners to mark new territory in the market. In order to do that, you’d have to plan some new business and marketing strategies for that product. You would need to figure out the commodities required for that product and contact the right vendors for them. Moreover, the budget should also be planned in order to keep the costs in check.
It is good for your business to introduce a unique product. But, it could be equally bad for your business as well. This is because of the unpredictability of the customer responses and success of that product in the market. How will my audience will respond to the new product, what would be the change in the sales, and many other similar questions might trouble some store owners before they introduce a product. And by looking at the current competitive market, these questions are quite obvious and thus, you’ll have to play smart in this situation.
SimpleMind is a great app that helps you to arrange your creative ideas and suggestions for your new product. You can easily access your work from your phone. You can further share your work with your team members and your supplier. This app is available for almost all platforms.
How to figure out the inventory?
Inventory management is very important for any business. If the stocks are well-organized, then it is easy for you to control the flow of the products and deliver them to the respective customers on time. But, if you’re adding some more products to your inventory, then you’d need a bigger warehouse to hold them. Moreover, if the location of your new supplier is difficult to reach, then this could prove to be a huge problem for your business and inventory. These are some of the problems that might trouble you when you are planning to find a wholesale provider.
There are two major things that you’d need to understand before going for a new supplier. These points will help you to figure out your inventory better. So, without any further delay, let’s check them out.
Figure out the offered products
It is important to ask your wholesale provider to show you to items or commodity. This way you would have some idea about the physical dimension and other characteristics, which will help you to plan your warehouse beforehand. Try to work with your supplier to help you to make your buying process as simple as possible. You should also examine whether the wholesale provider will offer the products on time or there could be a possible delay. Moreover, you should check if they are consistently available with their products so that you never run out of stock. So, if you find the supplier to be very good for your business, you may choose that supplier for your future supplies as well.
Check out the shipment methods
Another area where you need to invest some time to understand it the shipping process of your supplier. To put it simply, even if you find a supplier who offers their products at a cheaper rate and don’t deliver the stocks to you on time, then its a big loss for your business. If they are not paying attention to deliveries of special products, then don’t choose them. For example, if you want to sell consumable items on your online store, then you should choose a supplier that has the refrigerated trucks to keep your items as fresh as possible. If they don’t have those facilities to offer, then it might stop you to deliver excellent products and customer service.
There are some vendors who prefer to send their goods by means of some third party services. These delivery companies have a pre-defined way of delivering systems that can be custom-made for specific goods. Online business owners and vendors can choose the appropriate delivery services that suit them.
This will help you to choose the right delivery service for your business.
How do they pack the items?
It is important to know how your supplier packs your item. The extreme packing conditions might serve you wrong. Meaning, if the packaging quality is too bad then you would have a bad time arranging the items. But, if the packaging quality is too good, then it will increase the costs. In this case, it is better to analyze how would you like to receive your items. You can talk to your supplier and come to a proper conclusion.
If your online business requires sending packed items directly from your supplier then you can choose to customize the packaging. For example, if you’re selling some electronics items, then don’t need to open the sealed boxes, rather you can add your own packaging sheets on the box. This will help you to personalize your orders to your own design. You may choose to use some innovative packing techniques that might help you to increase your popularity. For instance, there are a lot of food-ordering online stores that prefer to pack the food items in their own boxes, labeled spoons, and tissues too. Doing this helps them to create their own brand image.
You can check out the following link to try some innovative ways to pack your orders.
More to follow…
So far we have seen some parameters that can help you to choose your supplier for your online business. There are other important parameters as well that matters a lot. In this article, you will find some more specific points that you should implement in your business.
It is a fact that running an online business is not easy and choosing the perfect vendor is quite tough as well. You are going to face a lot of practical difficulties while choosing the right supplier. But, with the right knowledge and information, it will become quite easier. This article was one such approach to help you in some way. Let us know if it helped in the comment section below or do contact us.
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