Looking to expand my website... suggestions for suppliers please.

[Scott Bro]

Hi everyone,

I co run a "deals" website for my local area and it has been growing steadily. I am really happy with the results and relationships that I have built up with local businesses and believe that if I continue to work hard and build great relationships this site can become a huge success. I do this with my business partner and we both work full time jobs. We both have a wife and kids so aren't willing to jump right in to self employment until we are in a very strong position. It's been really hard graft but we are getting there and all profits we make for the business get reinvested into the business to help it grow. And it is worth noting that we are not paying ourselves a wage.

Now that you have an idea of what we are doing and how we are doing it I would like to ask for a little bit of advice in regards to expanding the site and the best place to secure stock to sell.

As you probably know "deals" sites promote restaurants, health and beauty, shops... you name it and it can probably be done. We are looking to start selling items through the site via a "shop" section and we'd really like to get into selling tablets... ipad, samsung, asus and the likes but we're struggling to find where to get a hold of this stuff at cost price/wholesale. Is this because we need to go direct to the manufacturers? We have checked esources but can't find anything on there but maybe I'm just being blind.

Does anyone have any suggestions of the best places to locate something like this please?

Thanks for your help in advance.

 

[charlesdupont]

Hi Scott,

The company I work for, Rangespan, aggregates supplier offers on a drop-ship basis: you list the product and own the supplier relationship, we handle the operational side of order fulfilment, returns etc... This could be a great way for you to test the water without significant inventory risk. Feel free to send me an email on charles[at]rangespan.com

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Not really answering your question I'm afraid, but wondering why you would be wanting to sell these items in particular? The electricals market is very competitive with small margins and carries a lot of risk of returns (particularly since you have mentioned in another thread that your Borders area is rather non-techy).

Is there not also a risk that you might end up competing with local stores who might be less willing to pay for your service if it is seen as advertising your shop.

 

[Scott Bro]

Not really answering your question I'm afraid, but wondering why you would be wanting to sell these items in particular? The electricals market is very competitive with small margins and carries a lot of risk of returns (particularly since you have mentioned in another thread that your Borders area is rather non-techy).

Is there not also a risk that you might end up competing with local stores who might be less willing to pay for your service if it is seen as advertising your shop.

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your concerns and all of your valid points.

Both myself and my business partner worked in electrical retail for 10 years and 8 years respectively at Sales Manager level for Comet (RIP) and we understand only too well about the tight margins... I mean we used to sell a laptop for £299 that only had a 10% profit margin in it. We know what we would be getting into. We sold 1000's of PC's and laptops and the return rate was quite low in comparison to the amount we sold.

Although The Borders does have an ageing population it would be wrong of anyone to assume that there is not a younger techy generation that wouldn't be interested in this technology. These are very sought after products and if we can bring another option to the local market and encourage people to get up with the times then I'm all for it. It would also give many more people another reason to visit our site.

In regards to your concern with competing with local stores you obviously don't know The Borders very well (no offence). We have a HUGE Tesco and a HUGE Asda who sell electrical items and a normal sized Curry's store. These are not what you would class as local businesses and if anything I think people would applaud a new up and coming Borders business who are bringing more options to the local table. There are a few small independent computing stores who mainly market themselves as repair centres and I can't see it having a huge impact on our sign up rate if the 2 or 3 don't agree with what we do. As I said before we have excellent relationships with all of our partners and one of these is one of the local independents, SRE Computing. We know what we're doing but thank you again for your concerns.

 

[TheClearance]

Try these sites:

www.wholesale-outlet.co.uk
www.thewholesaler.co.uk

Be sure to know the risks of drop shipping before you go into it. It can be a messy business.

And beware of 'Branded mobile phone drop shippers'.

Not saying all are scams, but only a few legit ones exist.

You need to be careful with the ones who do brokering. By this I mean, you place the order with them and they go running off to buy it. The downside of this is, they don't hold the stock, so if their supplier messes up, you will be in a difficult situation.

 

[adpstore]

first of all you should make a budget.And then according to your budget start looking for the places where you can run your business.Do not forget to calculate the level of competitions in those areas.

 

[aogilvie]

"we'd really like to get into selling tablets... ipad, samsung, asus and the likes"

Nice site - and a nice angle to promote the Borders. I guess if you find a decent supplier it might come down to volumes to help you protect margins. You might want to think about supplementing the shop ecommerce side of the site with use of the marketplaces amazon, play, fnac etc. That would help with volume - though admittedly that's a bit of a chicken and egg situation.

 

[Scott Bro]

Nice site - and a nice angle to promote the Borders. I guess if you find a decent supplier it might come down to volumes to help you protect margins. You might want to think about supplementing the shop ecommerce side of the site with use of the marketplaces amazon, play, fnac etc. That would help with volume - though admittedly that's a bit of a chicken and egg situation.

Hi and thank you for your kind words about the site.

Yeah, we were contemplating setting up a separate site so we can display our products at a normal price which would then allow us to sell them through our site for a discounted price. Amazon, ebay and the likes could be a good option for that?

 

[aogilvie]

Yip - Amazon et al are well worth considering as an option. And that involves very little to get started - just some time really. Watch out for some of the Amazon rules though - ie they will suspend your account if your own site is selling an item cheaper than you have listed it on Amazon. So some thought there would be good. But that said you could be listing in about a dozen countries via amazon.de, .es, .it etc very quickly. Worth thinking about.