perhaps taking course work a little too seriously.

[Anonymous]

I am a 2nd year collage student and have been asked as course work to set up an internet business.
I made the desision to conduct reaserch into the designer handbag market. I enjoyed trawling through sites as any girl would, and soon realised i had a true passion within this market and considered the idea of setting up the bussiness for real, it has however come to halt as wholesaler lists are impossible to get hold of! I have found several "buy our wholesale list" sites but am very sceptical of these as i have bought one (only for a small price) and it was useless as the contacts on it i couldnt get hold of.
so how do i go about getting a reputable uk wholesale list?

many thanks for your time.

Alice

[mdarwish01]

Don't ever use any of the wholesale lists. They are pathetic.

If you want to make contact with wholesaler, try wholesale forums. There is a really good website called www.thewholesaleforums.co.uk . If you post asking for people who sell your type of products then I am sure that people will reply.

Many wholesalers spread by word of mouth. As a result they don't have many good websites. But these forums help.

Another few are www.wholesale4um.com Although american, and www.eurowholesaler.com

Hope this helps

mdarwish01

[SillyJokes]

Finding wholesalers was, for us, one of the hardest parts of setting up.

They do not wish to deal with the public because it is not what they do and can compromise their status with their retailers. So they do not make themselves easy to find.

Now I have a bunch of suppliers I never disclose them to others and I am asked regularly by people who are looking to set up a similar business. Sorry, you'll have to learn the hard way, mate.

I would strongly suggest you attend some trade fairs. There are plenty like Glee or the Spring and Autumn Fairs for the gift market which do have some handbags suppliers. I'm sure there must be others with more handbag suppliers with which I am not familar, since I don't sell handbags.

Finding suppliers is only part of the battle. Getting them to deal with you may be harder still. We found that suppliers were not interested in suppling an internet start up. They simply shut off when we said we were an internet store and virtually turned their backs on us. That has changed more recently, but 5 years ago it was a serious problem.

This is because so many little net companies fail and only want to buy in small quantities to start with (if you are sensible).

This makes it feel like it is all about you, but we also found that some suppliers were absolutely rubbish, never had stock, had no information on stock levels or re stock dates and sent only half of what you ordered which made it very hard for you to deal with customer queries.

I don't know how you avoid investing time and money working with crap suppliers because I'm not sure who is going to tell you which ones are the worst. We learnt by trial and error and have at least two suppliers who we would work with a whole lot more if they weren't so totally inept.

However drill away at it, you will find stock eventually and I hope that 5 years down the line you will have a successful business and some trusted suppliers.

[Ozzy]

SillyJokes just gave you the best advice I was going to, which is attend trade fairs. Earls Court and Alexandra Palace. Its a lot of leg work, but at least you also get to see the products "in the flesh".