Not only merchants but buyers as well sure realize that ecommerce is at its most flourishing years and there is great potential in it especially when it comes to dropshipping. The demand for online shopping is growing fast and more online stores appear on the market in parallel. And affiliate marketing is the potential example if you are looking for the best way to promote your products widely. If you are at the stage where you decided to sell products on the internet, the next detail on your list is to find local suppliers for your Shopify store.
If you are selling online you must know that it is more beneficial for your business if you can find local suppliers to cooperate with. The delivery time can be shorter than when getting products from overseas. If you don’t want your customers to wait weeks for their products to arrive, choose local sources.
Another reason why it is better to find local suppliers to partner with is that there won’t be any language problems as you will possibly speak the same one, and you can avoid misunderstandings. You will be familiar with all local market laws, rules, and opportunities and it can be a closer partnership with your partners.
You can also support local manufacturers, the national economy if you can find local suppliers to partner with and whose products are of great quality you can market well for your target audience. The competition can be also lower with unique and quality products of local manufacturers, furthermore, the warranty is also guaranteed.
How to Find Local Suppliers for your Shopify Store?
First of all, you need to decide what kind of products you want to sell, and what is a niche in your local market you can hop on. Sell products that your target audience really is in need of, and they can’t get that item easily where they live. When it comes to dropshipping there is not high capital investment needed to start your trading business.
1. Try a Reliable B2B Marketplace
If we are looking for qualified ambassadors to promote our products, we will find UpPromote Affiliate Marketplace. So if you want to find your suppliers, how can you find them? Real B2B Marketplaces are great sources of products and you can find local suppliers there whose selection you can add to your Shopify dropshipping store. The reason why you can be sure you can find reliable companies listed there is that they are going through a pre-vetting process before their products would be integrated and becoming available for online merchants.
There is Syncee which is a leading, globally trusted dropshipping application on Shopify. It has a directory of millions of dropshipping products from real B2B, US/CA/EU/UK/AU/AS dropshipping suppliers called Syncee Marketplace so you can find local suppliers for your business there. You can set the location on where you want the products’ warehouse to be or where you want the items to be shipped to.
Syncee not only makes sure you can find local suppliers on its Marketplace, but it also has you covered in automated product data uploads and updates and order data synchronization. This is a great advantage of a B2B platform: you can find suppliers and products there, and you can also access a robust set of tools at the same time that is essential for starting your store and managing products successfully in the long run.
2. Check Your Competitors
You can learn a lot from your competitors, especially if they are on the market for years. You can check what are their strengths or weaknesses. You can also check which of their products are the most trending ones, and what are the needs of their target audience which can be similar to yours.
You might also have the opportunity to find out who is the vendor, the source of those particular products you are interested in. Check their website thoroughly, or you can also order something from their website to find more details about the source of product on the product packaging or maybe on the invoice.
Do not copy your competitors, do not be their version number two. What you can do is to try to get inspiration from what they are doing. When it comes to supplier partners, check if those products you find from them are really worth selling in your store too. The selection of the products you have has to be different from your competitors’, do not sell exactly the same range of items with your business.
3. Attend Trade Shows
Local trade shows are a very beneficial place for you to find local suppliers to partner with for your business. Not every city arranges this kind of show, however, if there are some trade shows near to you that you could attend, there is nothing to lose, just win! Those suppliers are showing their products to a big audience and their selection is definitely made for the dropshipping market. You can find cloths manufacturers, machine products manufacturers, threaded bar manufacturers, etc there with great quality and unique products.
4. Know How to Use Search Tools Well
To find local suppliers for your business Google comes in handy as by using the most relevant keywords you can browse among the most relevant search results. Include keywords like dropshipping, wholesale, manufacturer, supplier while searching. When you are checking those suppliers’ websites you must look for an individual dropshipping or wholesale menu where you can find all the information needed, but it is also beneficial to contact their support team for more details of their service and products.
5. Leverage the Opportunities of Social Media
Social media is also a great source for you to find local suppliers to partner with. One of the best options you can do is to look for groups on Facebook that are about the topic you are interested in. You can find products that are made from manufacturers so like this you can find local suppliers for your business. These communities are talking about relevant topics for online store owners, so you can gain strong knowledge from there.
5+1. Seek for Information on Forums
When we are talking about social media we have to mention forums as well which can be another great source to find local suppliers. Basically, Facebook groups can also work as forums as people ask their questions there and those people who have knowledge in those specific areas can answer with relevant details. What are those further forums that you are recommended to try as a Shopify store owner?
We can mention a source that is exactly for those who run or planning to run their business on Shopify, and it is the platform’s forum itself, the Shopify Community. What else? Probably you have heard of Quora as well which is a very popular forum globally, and there is Reddit too to seek for information.
On these forums, questions arrive day-by-day and you can also ask yours. While you may think forums are for the past, it is not true. They are still alive and in great use. You just need to have the ability to decide if an answer is relevant and of quality!
Conclusion
If you are just about to kickstart your online store you must need a robust set of tools for everything your online dropshipping store needs. If you want to push up your brand name, you should think about how to start with your affiliate marketing campaign. If you want to find local suppliers to partner with while also being covered regarding automated product data uploads-updates and order data synchronization, Syncee is something you might look for. It is an all-in-all, always evolving B2B dropshipping solution for not just Shopify stores. Find your winning dropshipping products on Syncee Marketplace!
If you can find local suppliers on any of the other aforementioned sources it is also really great! You just need to ask for an always updating product datafeed file from them. You can add the products to your store using that file easily, and keep the product data updated automatically in your e-shop. For this, Syncee’s other solution, Syncee DataFeed Manager comes in handy!
Author’s bio:
Barbara Racz is a Senior Marketing and Content Manager at Syncee. She is passionate about ecommerce novelties and about writing articles. Besides developing content marketing strategies, she is also a devotee of dropshipping. She is committed to helping others succeed through her writings.