Congratulations on the selection of your business niche!
Your next task is to make the list of products that you are planning to sell. You can sell your products via existing marketplaces as well as from your ecommerce store. Keep in mind that light-weight and costly products can be favorable to entice customers with the offer of free shipping. You can also set the threshold price on your store to get benefited from free shipping or discounted shipping. Consider this factor as one of the vital points to distinguish your wide range of products. Also, this factor can help you decide the products that you can add to your other sales channels without compromising your profit share.
Now, it’s time to tell you more about product sourcing.
What is Product Sourcing?
Product Sourcing is the science of finding the right products after researching your business niche. You keep an eye on the target audience, affordability, and requirement of customers in the demographics.
While selecting the products, you need to consider the investment that you will be making to get the inventory, additional cost of product packaging, shipping, and miscellaneous expenses. The ways you will try to manage your stock and possible modes in which you can replenish your inventory.
Your goal is not only to find the product, but it also includes analysis of profit margin and losses that can incur in case of returns.
The popular methods used for product sourcing are:
● Create products on your own
The artistic handmade creative things are making a distinct place in the market. It’s leaving a unique impact on the mind of customers and users, as there is a greater scope of personalization.
Every individual wants to be treated personally and like to own unique products. We know that you can’t get out-of-the-box product ideas every time. But, it will still be unique when compared with millions of ready-made products available in the market.
When you are getting started, you probably like to create the products solely by hand. As a hobbyist, you surely love to create things and try new ideas to customize it.
But, now, when you are planning a business, you need to take scalability as a vital factor. To automate certain tasks of manufacturing, you can hire a team or take the help of machinery. Also, you can partner with the other local artisans to help you with the mass creation of the product. It will help you feed the customer demand on time and grow your business from foundation to the next horizon.
The on-demand printing business, selling customized t-shirts can also be your idea of launching your online store. The best thing about these innovative ideas is, you will not be responsible for manually creating all of your product orders. Thus, it will be easier for you to feed the market demand and deliver custom gift on-time.
To grab some unique and innovative ideas, you can always take the help of Pinterest, Facebook groups, go to the flea markets and retail stores.
● Partner with manufacturers
Unlike the previous option of creating products on your own, you can connect with the manufactures and purchase the product from them. In such a case, manufacturers will be responsible for the mass production of products. If you have an idea of products in the same niche, they will take bulk orders from you and deliver finished goods.
These manufacturers may or may not have their brand name. You can connect with them and start selling their products on the name of your brand unless they have certain restrictions on any product category.
To connect with the manufacturers directly, you can check business directories and online platforms as well. To ensure the product quality and place of manufacturing, you can request them to visit their factory locations. This will help you rely on their business and can be responsible for building long-term business relations.
Partnering with manufacturers gives you the freedom to experiment with the products and add varieties in your catalog. The price of the product will vary from the Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) for products. For bulk orders, you will be able to get discounted rates. Thus, you can add more profit per product.
● Purchase from the wholesale market
To feed the requirement of your retail business, you need to order inventory for your warehouse. The wholesale markets were always responsible for this. The wholesale market enables you to add a variety of products in your inventory without actually having the headache of creating them. You can stock the products as per the market demand and availability. To fulfill your business demand, you can opt for:
- Shop from online B2B platforms: The online marketplaces and B2B platforms can help you a lot with understanding the product’s ideas that can help you thrive in the competition.
- Search for the best seller products: You can try this option in your business niche. From here, you will get a list of products that can be a lot beneficial for your business. Give special attention to updating product detail pages for the best seller products. Since the products are in demand, there are higher chances of witnessing the organic growth of your store.
- Place bulk orders: The availability of B2B marketplaces like Amazon, Alibaba, and numerous others, empower you to place bulk orders as well. Higher will be order quantity; more will be the discount that you will be getting for your products. The significant benefit of placing online orders for your business requirements are:
- You can get imported products for your store without actually visiting the places.
- It will be easier for you to explore the variety, range of products, compare the price and place orders.
- You can place orders as per your business requirements.
- You can request the quote from multiple businesses and place an order accordingly.
- Traditional wholesalers: Traditional wholesale market has been serving the need of retail businesses since eternity. One of the best ways to add unique product categories at your store is by visiting the warehouse on your own. These days, some of the wholesalers are using Whatsapp to fulfill the requirements of their existing customers. However, it’s really challenging to showcase all the samples, and it’s equally tough to gain the trust of wholesalers because of the popularity of e-retailers.
At the time of the season of business, it turns very critical to get the products delivered in the meantime. That’s why it is advisable to estimate the threshold and place orders as per your business requirement. Otherwise, you will be stuck with the larger stock in your inventory.
The stores of wholesale businesses are always flooding with trending products. Thus, you can stay ahead of your competitors. If you don’t have any idea of offline wholesale stores, you can search for the business directories online as well as offline. The more you will explore the market, the more ideas you will get for products as well as improvise the reach of your business.
It will also help you connect with the like-minds and improve your business network. You can plan the expansion of your business by partnering with wholesalers and even start a business in a new dimension.
● Partner with drop shippers
Dropshipping business is one of the finest product sourcing ideas, especially when you don’t have a lot of amounts to invest in your inventory. By partnering with the drop shippers, you take the benefit of selling the product of manufacturers/wholesalers as well as retailers without actually buying their products. It will help you start an online store instantly.
On partnering with the drop shipping companies, you will be getting full access to their catalog. You can select the products that you like to sell in your store. When you get an order at your store, the request will be sent to the dropshipping company as well. Now, that company, with the help of their shipping partner,s will pick, pack, and ship products on your behalf. They will surely deduct the commission fees on your orders, and it will be fulfilled automatically.
The amount that you will get on each of your orders will be that of wholesale rates. The primary benefit of using partnering with drop shippers is, you neither have to care about inventory count nor invest in getting a warehouse. This will reduce the order processing time as well as keep you from the headache of replenishing inventory in the stock. The only challenge is to meet quality standards and handle customer’s concerns, even when the order fulfillment is controlled by the third-party business.
Our Last Thoughts
In addition to the above-listed ideas, we recommend you to go to the flea markets and offline events targeting your business niche. Visiting these places will surely add thoughts in your bucket and help you connect with the local vendors as well as suppliers/ manufacturers whom you can’t meet offline. Timely you will invent other ideas for products to add to your store.
To keep your business alive, we prefer you to add a combination of ideas rather than relying on a single source. Now, since you have a list of products ready, you must create ecommerce store. To build your dream business on your own, register yourself with Builderfly, and start selling!
