Selling and buying online aims at offering ease and convenience to both the merchants and consumers. Most, if not all, ecommerce businesses are based on an e-tail business model. The e-tail merchants buy the products in bulk at wholesale rates and sell them online. They might be selling in their digital network or via their online store. In layman’s terms, they took their brick and mortar business online to bring more sales.
There are numerous options to start your ecommerce business. You may choose to sell on marketplaces or reseller platforms or via your digital store. The platform on which you design your store or the framework you choose to build your site is entirely different.
The first and foremost thing is to conduct market research and create your business plan. Based on your business model and financial architecture, you have to count on options from where you can gather products in wholesale rates:
● Connect with manufacturers
If you are dealing with handicrafts or even industry-based products, you can directly connect with manufacturers and get the finished products at much cheaper rates. One of the major benefits of this collaboration is that you can get on-demand products designed exclusively for your store and stand with uniqueness.
By taking the products at manufacturing rates, you can invest fairly in branding and create your brand name. You can sell your branded products and effective prices to optimize your profit share. When products go out of stock in the entire market, you can have them delivered to you in bulk quantities.
● Explore business directories
Search online for businesses selling the products that you are planning to sell. The sites like IndiaMart, IndiaBizList, TradeIndia, YellowPagesIndia, SME.in, Yelu.in, IndiaTradeZone, and numerous others can help you connect with other businesses. You can filter the business based on their origin, tenure of establishment, and their offerings.
If you like to visit them physically, you can get their address and proceed accordingly. Some of the businesses have top products listed on their business page, and you can request the quotation for the quantity you want to buy. There is no restriction on the count of quotations that you can request. Based on received quotations, you can decide to place an order to the seller where your requirements fit in.
● Network with B2B merchants
You can opt for digital and a physical model of networking to increase your connections with the B2B merchants. It will be easier to connect and communicate with several other businesses like yours by visiting fairs, exhibitions, and expo events. Establishing the first-hand contact may reduce the communication gap and help you establish value-adding and long-lasting relations.
On social channels like Facebook, Instagram; it’s easy to connect with the groups selling similar products like yours or established businesses that are dealing in wholesale. Gain an understanding of the product delivery hierarchy for the type of products you are planning to sell. There can be a need to connect with exclusive distributors or connect with the regional contact person. Networking can surely help you grow your business to the next level. You can try connecting with professionals via LinkedIn, join forums, and popular business groups of your industry to open the windows for new connections.
● Order from marketplaces
The ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Alibaba deal in the B2B market as well. By creating your business account on these platforms, you can search for the products and check the bulk pricing for all the products listed. By placing orders directly, you can have the products delivered at your doorstep.
Some commerce marketplaces like Amazon give you the liberty to ask for a quotation for fixed quantity sets from the supplier. As per their business policies, you will get the response from the seller within 1-2 business days. Select the best quotation and place an order to get your order delivered within the next 2-3 business days. Thus, you will not face any delays in delivering orders to your customers and will be able to manage the supply chain with much ease.
While surfing for marketplaces, you will find several others from other countries. You can get the exported products delivered to you and resell them in your e-store. Such deals will optimize the profit and can be of a larger benefit for your business. However, it would be best if you kept in mind that delivery tenure for such orders will be more, and you better place orders for large quantities only.
Don’t rely on a single source only. Keep experimenting with online as well as offline sources and try to find the best bet. By doing this groundwork at the initial stage, you will find the right wholesaler merchants that can reduce one of your burdens. When you have your inventory ready as per market’s demand, you will concentrate better on other business tasks.
How to sell your products online?
Your next worry is to sell your products online. To start with, you can take chances with social selling. That’s just one idea; the established marketplaces can be your next target. Since marketplaces have an existing customer base, selling on those portals will not be that tricky. Register your business on the ecommerce marketplaces and start selling right away. By creating paid campaigns, you can raise awareness about your offerings and attract more user base towards your business.
The next mode of e-selling is to build your online store and take your business online. The choice of platforms and frameworks to design your ecommerce store depends upon your budget. Your business plan can give you better insights into this situation.
Unless you think of opening a hybrid model marketplace store like Amazon, ecommerce platforms like Builderfly can serve you at its best. You want to design your ecommerce store within your budget, and we have it readily available for you. Our intuitive design editor will make it easier for you to design your store on your own without any technicalities. The inbuilt features of Builderfly will help you streamline different frontiers of your ecommerce business. We have the insightful user guide ready for you, if you still need help at any stage, you can write to us at support@builderfly.com.
