Hello!

My name is Colette Marshall. I am the Business Development Manager of eBay Certified Solution Provider Worldwide Brands, Inc. We are a fully-staffed Product Sourcing Research company that has dedicated the past seven years to finding and qualifying genuine wholesale suppliers who are willing to work with home-based Internet Business Owners.

Our job is to do the very time-consuming research it takes to find genuine wholesalers who are willing to work with eBay Sellers, so that you can spend your valuable time where it’s needed most; running your eBay business, instead of searching for suppliers.

Chris Malta, our CEO, is also the Contributing Editor for Product Sourcing for The eBay Radio Show, and Host of both The Entrepreneur Magazine eBiz Radio Show and The Entrepreneur Magazine Product Sourcing Show. Many of you may have meet us at eBay Live this year. We had a booth there, and Robin Cowie presented several seminars on product sourcing.

Today I’m going to talk about taking your Hobby and building it into a business. Please ask as many questions as you like!

What are the Common methods of Local Sourcing?

Here are some of the common methods that eBay entrepreneurs start using. For many sellers local sourcing is an ideal method, however, normally local sourcing is a time consuming process, it doesn’t have renewable sources, and has inconsistent profit margins:

Attic/Local Household Items
Garage/Yard/Estate Sales
Local Merchants
Thrift Stores
Pawn Shops
Discount markets
Flea markets
Factory outlets
Local small town fairs
Local Storage Unit Auctions
Postal Auctions
Local Liquidators

Product Sourcing Methods

Drop Ship: A product sourcing method where the supplier will send products one at a time directly to your customer from their warehouse. The seller does not have to maintain an inventory or handle shipping. The seller however does handle the collection of the money from the customer and pays the supplier for the product purchased. “Blind” Drop Shipping refers to suppliers placing labels and inventory slips on the shipment with your company logo. Not all suppliers will have blind drop shipping as an option.

Light Bulk: A product sourcing method where the seller purchases from a wholesaler in quantities less then $500. These quantities are ideal for storing in a garage or a storage unit. The seller manages all interactions with the customer and the product from collecting the payment, and handling the inventory, to shipping to the customer. Since eBay sellers are very familiar with shipping process already, many sellers will go straight into using Light bulk wholesale combined with a few drop-shipped items.

General Wholesale/Large Volume: An extension of Light Bulk, however the quantity of product is much higher. The larger the quantity purchased directly from the wholesale the higher the discounts received by the seller. When a retailer buys in really large volumes the supplier will add discounts and have different wholesale pricing structures depending on how much money the retailer is willing to spend. This is normal with all suppliers. The more money the retailer spends on inventory… the more discounts they get…the more discounts they get…the cheaper they can sell the product!

Liquidation – A product sourcing method where a seller can source commercial surplus inventory and closeout products through wholesalers. Liquidations are normally conducted through auctions and bulk lot purchases.

Importing – Sourcing products from international countries. Importing can be done individually or through wholesalers that handle the importing procedures.

If you’re interested in learning visually about product sourcing basics, Worldwide Brands has a free educational video course available at www.worldwidebrands.com/productsourcingvideo

Step 3) Find what the Marketplace Needs and Sell that!

How to I decide what to sell? Research is the key factor in deciding what to sell. What tends to happen is people pick products they like without researching first to see if that item is something people are buying and whether they (the seller) can compete with the current competition. In general, find what a market wants to buy and then find the source for it. In other words, research what keywords people are typing into eBay and general search engines and sell products that relate to those keywords that generate a high demand and have low competition.

I recommend reading some of the archived workshops hosted by WorldwideBrandsInc. to learn about different research techniques. There are also research resources that can help you with your market research. For eBay research, tools like HammerTap’s Deep Analysis, Terapeak, and the Worldwide Brands OneSource Market Research Tool are well worth considering. You can find more details about them at www.worldwidebrands.com/marketresearch. In addition, eBay has a market research tool available at Link which is an excellent tool.

Step 5) Develop your Supplier relations – Start by setting up an account

Wholesalers have a variety of different methods for setting up an account including email, fax, phone, or website account . It’s a very simple and quick process.
Here are some tips when talking with suppliers:

Have your sales tax id, business name, and EIN available

Make sure when you’re talking with them that there are no screaming kids or loud noises creating distractions in the background. You want to present yourself as a professional business.

Provide Hours of Operation and a main contact for your supplier representative. I know that many of you work 24/7 but you need to list a reasonable 9-5 time slot (for example) that suppliers know that they can reach you at.

In a future workshop, I will go through all the details of Supplier Relations, so make sure to keep checking the workshop schedule.

Hi everyone:

We've posted the workshop material early to allow you to read through this wealth of information.

Please join us tomorrow, June 26 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time at which time, worldwidebrandsinc will be on hand to take your questions and comments.

See you tomorrow,

Deirdre,
eBay Community Development

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Cheers,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development