I was just curious how well wholesale does on the web. When I say wholesale, I mean wholesale not retail. i.e. Selling items in quantity for re-sale. I have some friends who started a business with a few interesting products. The are not ready to start retailing at this point, but they have a few very promising large quantity buys in progress. They acquired these leads through a "real life" trade show. I suggested they start marketing on the web as well, but then I realized that I know nothing about wholesale on the web... When I search for wholesale I seem to end up at only retail sites calling themselves wholesale, meaning "cheap" I guess. Any thoughts?
I think it really depends on what you are selling wether or not it does well on the web. I will tell you one thing when I was really looking for real wholesale companies for a costume jewelry store I owned I could not find any true wholesal sites on the web. I finally went to a trade show and realised most of the companies didnt have websites and the ones that did didnt advertise because they didnt want to have to deal with retail customers asking to purchase at wholesale prices. They were pretty strict on having lots of proof that you were indeed a business owner. E'Lisa
Firstly, sorry to bump this one up, have only recently signed up. Hey alext, I have an auction site in Australia, if I can assist in any way feel free to PM me.
Thanks for the info folks. I haven't been able to dig up anything terribly useful as far as actual wholesale on the web goes. But I did learn about "dropshipping" They really do not want to be doing retail right now, and it seems like tradeshows and other direct contact might be a better option for them atm. The website serves as virtual product display. If anything things come out of it, I'll post.
Yes I agree most of such wholesellers are having no online presence but I guess probably they have good offline base, you can get problem in future if you've choosen them without proper review. Some seems quite good with lot of impressive plan but there service and support are not upto the mark.
iv found catalouge returns to be quite profitable in the past. Theres a place called gem discounts near to me that stock a huge amount of palets. They are in scrap, unsorted, sorted and grade a conditions and are priced acordingly. Worth taking a look if theres any around you. I used to sell quite a lot of the stuff on ebay.
Talking bout this wholesale bussines, we are manufacturing and distributing our own products with many products division involved to produce qualify and reliable price. And then we go online to serve more and more costumers abroad, and.. indeed, we go wholesale with all of our products, as well as retail do.. Check our website as you can see on my footer
We have done a fair bit of buying and reselling both for wholesale and retail. You would be surprised at how many items you can buy for $1.50 and sell bulk for $5. The trick is to find a niche market. For example, remember the pull on rubbers from when you were a kid? We purchased 400 pair at $.60 and resold them a week later at $2.10 ea. To sell them, we posted on a safety products forum and explained them in detail offering them at $3 ea. or 100 for $2.50 ea. We sold them in two lots giving each buyer a small discount. The buyers were happy and we made about $600. The trick is to choose a product that you can take to the market. The tighter a niche market product the better. - JD Blog About Retail