How to handle e-commerce store suppliers and shipments

The last blog post shared how to find products < how to select products in e-commerce stores >, and this one shared how to deal with suppliers and delivery after having products. This article is mainly aimed at friends who do not have their own supply chain. If you already have your own stable supply chain or even have your own factory, this article may be helpful for you to start a new business.

First of all, the delivery of e-commerce stores depends on the number of orders for a single product. Different schemes must be used for the number of orders of different orders. Here are three cases:

0 - 20 orders per day
20 - 200 orders per day
200 + orders per day

0 - 20 orders per day

Some friends want to store goods for a long time. It's not recommended here. Unless you are sure you can sell it, or you will produce a lot of this goods for other reasons (such as selling well in other channels and needing some inventory), it is not recommended to hoard goods as soon as you come, especially when preparing goods for overseas warehouses. You're finished. If you can't sell it, it's embarrassing, a waste of money and energy. Therefore, the recommended method at this stage is not to hoard goods.

In addition, if the order quantity is still 0 - 20 orders per day, there is no need to go to the supplier's agent or contact the supplier alone for the time being. Because you basically have no orders now, no one is willing to pay attention to you, and it is difficult to establish any long-term and stable business partnership. You can hardly choose the most affordable and best supplier without a single order. Therefore, this method is not appropriate at this stage.

A better method at this stage is:

【1】 Aliexpress or dsers app

PROS:

There are a lot of products available, and you want to run ads, or the product you just started running ads might be on it;
Facilitate aggregation and automation with websites;
When the daily order is less than 20 orders, the order placing process is not too troublesome.

CONS:

The price is not very cheap by comparison, especially if there are many orders;
The transportation is slow, and the routine may take about 1 month or 2 months;
You may encounter unreliable merchants who do not deliver goods to you and directly send fake tracking number logistics tracking number;
If you buy more than 20 orders a day, it may be a little troublesome to place an order;
Other sellers will be easier to monitor your explosive products, because Aliexpress will display the number of product orders. When you place many orders, the product you place will be easier to be noticed in Aliexpress;

If you want to select suppliers on aliexpress, I personally prefer to select suppliers according to the following criteria:

The store was opened in 2017 or before. We don't have to be so strict with cards. Those who have been running normally for more than one or more years are OK. However, if there are many suppliers for your choice, we can see the shops with earlier construction time;
Store score 4.5 or above;
At present, aliexpress standard shipping is mainly selected for transportation;
If you need to choose ship from USA, the logistics will be faster and the cost will be more expensive.

【2】Oberlo Suppliers

PROS:

Oberlo certified suppliers will be more reliable on the whole, but when selecting suppliers, you should see clearly whether the other party is an oberlo certified supplier or just an ordinary aliexpress supplier;
The logistics speed will be faster, about 2 weeks;
The process of placing orders is more automatic, convenient and fast.

CONS:

The price will be a little more expensive
There are not as many product choices as aliexpress, and some goods may not be available

【3】Eprolo

The overall price is OK. Some will be lower than express, and some will be higher than express. The overall price is OK. Make your own comparison;
The transportation time is about 2 weeks;
The product selection is not as many as aliexpress sales, but the overall quality is OK. You can have a look at it;
The order placing process was quite smooth as a whole.

【4】CJ Dropshipping

The logistics speed is OK, about 1.5 - 3 weeks. Some products have the option of shipping from USA to the United States;
The overall price is OK. Like eprolo, some will be cheaper than express and some will be more expensive than express;
The overall evaluation of the company was positive;
The whole company has a large scale now, and all aspects of logistics and customer service are relatively perfect;
If you want products they don't have for the time being, you can go and tell them to go and ask them to go and find them;
The order placing process may be a little difficult to start for the first time. Some people will feel that their home operation interface is a little complex, but in fact, it's OK to follow their official guidelines. It's not a big problem;
It can provide personalized services such as brand packaging, brand cards and photo shooting.

【5】Wiio

The service was poor when it was first established, but after recruiting more employees, the service was much better;
The price is moderate, not high or low;
The logistics time limit is about 2 weeks;
It's better to use them after more than 20 orders a day;
It can provide personalized services such as brand packaging, brand cards and photo shooting.

【6】uDroppy，HyperSKU

Similar to the previous models, there are no high prevalence of the above models, but they can be used as an alternative.

【7】eBay

Some products are delivered to users in the United States or Britain quickly, maybe about a week. Of course, you should screen and find local suppliers;
The price is a little more expensive, and some products are cheaper;
Businesses with good customer feedback are basically more reliable;
Orders need to be placed one by one, which is a little troublesome, so it is only suitable for initial testing, not for large-scale starting.

This one is a small summary. You need to test out about 20 products a day. I can see these two articles on the selection of products, including vertical fields: How e-commerce stores choose vertical niche and how e-commerce stores choose products.

After you have products, you can go to the following places to find suppliers (bold and underlined are what I personally recommend):

（1）Aliexpress
（2）Oberlo Supplier
（3）Eprolo
（4）CJ Dropshipping
（5）Wiio
（6）uDroppy，HyperSKU
（7）eBay

20 - 200 orders per day

When there are more than 20 orders for a product every day, you can consider looking for a supplier agent. You can go to some foreign freelancer websites (because there is a complete and fair evaluation system) such as upwork or fivver to find the supplier agent with high customer satisfaction. Or if you find it yourself, there are many pits. Some agents are not efficient. Some agents may not be agents at all. They just want to know what your explosive products are. This needs to be carefully identified.

The recommended method is to go to express (or 1688 or Taobao or other e-commerce platforms) to contact those merchants who can supply you with this product and the overall evaluation is OK. You need to contact as many businesses as possible to see whether you can get cheaper prices and better services through platform private letters, WhatsApp, Skype, wechat, e-mail, etc. This process will take more time, but in the end, you will find that the time is worth it.

General delivery process after finding the supplier:

Export orders from your own website background;
Desensitization processing, delete all unnecessary items such as user's mailbox, your sales price and so on. Whether you think the information is valuable or not, as long as it is not necessary for delivery, all the information will be deleted. The specific reason is not to be said, some friends have suffered losses.
Send the desensitized order documents to the supplier, and the supplier will quote you according to the situation;
The price is not a big problem. You can pay with PayPal, aliexpress (let the other party place an order with a VIP link), Alipay and other official channels. Don't transfer directly (through wire transfer and other transfer methods) unless you already have deep trust. Because these more official channels of payment, in case of problems, you can return the money through the official.
The supplier will send you the documents with tracking number logistics tracking number.
You can upload the documents to the background of Shopify through massfullfill, or transfer the information to other places where you need it.

If you want your order to be sent faster, you can ask your supplier if you can use express delivery such as yuntu, 4PX, Yanwen and DHL to help you deliver the goods.

Suppliers not recommended at this stage:

Alibaba: There is no problem with the platform itself, but your order quantity is too small. Maybe people don't want to pay attention to you. If you buy a large quantity at one time, it's OK here.
Etsy : There is no problem with the platform itself, but the products are relatively expensive and there are few choices. Moreover, some businesses are either companies or individual small workshops, which are not modeled by laws and regulations.

200 + orders per day

When you have more than 200 orders a day, you can consider shipping in your own warehouse or in the full film center overseas. I don't say much about shipping goods from the whole warehouse. There are a lot of resources in China. In terms of logistics, you can find yuntu, Yanwen, 4PX, DHL and so on to help you deliver goods directly from China. This is mainly about the overseas performance center.

【1】 The conventional mode of the performance center is a third-party logistics warehouse service provider (such as shipbob, shiphero, etc.) + Alibaba (order a large number of goods at one time from here). You order a large number of goods from Alibaba and send them to the warehouses of various third-party logistics warehousing service providers. Then, if the customer orders on your website, the products will be directly sent from the warehouse of the third-party logistics warehouse service provider. At this time, you are not a simple dropship. You need to order more goods at a time, and you need to make a whole inventory.

【2】 The advantage of this is that the products will be cheaper and the logistics will be faster (it may take about a week from the performance center to the users. Of course, it still takes time from China to the performance center). Brand packaging, cards and so on can be integrated.

【3】 It is necessary to predict the sales volume of products in a period of time and the sales in different regions, otherwise it is not easy to make advance product reservation and arrangement.

I hope this article is helpful to you. Join the lelinta community and send the word "explosive products" to get a copy of trend explosive materials.