Forget Alibaba! Here are 7 Alternatives For Wholesale Suplliers

all right so today we're talking about seven wholesale suppliers that are not Alibaba now although we do like Alibaba and we've sourced products from there uh you need to be aware of these other wholesale suppliers especially if you are a beginner seller um one of the biggest mistakes that people can make is that they only look at odd Alibaba they only look at products on there and I can tell you this that if you're only looking for products on Alibaba you've probably already lost because a lot of your competitors are using some of these other wholesale suppliers and they're able to Source from a variety of different networks supplier networks rather than just relying on one so you need to open things up and be able to look at all of these when trying to find the best prices and the best quality products for your eCommerce business so let's go ahead and get into this video right now if you're new here to the channel make sure you subscribe for more videos like this we don't have any courses to sell you none of that this is all just free information because I want to help you to become a better seller online um so just quickly before we get too deep into this we need to be very aware of the differences between like manufacturers and then trading companies and so manufacturers are the ones who are actually create like they own in a lot of cases the person that you're working with owns the factory and they're custom making certain products for you and then there are trading companies which you see a lot more of on like Alibaba for example um or dhgate or AliExpress where they're not necessarily custom making products for you but they're actually kind of a middleman between the manufacturer and the the wholesaler or the person who's buying things in bulk um SO trading companies manufacturers you know we've we've used both in the past obviously our goal is usually to end up having a connection with the manufacturer just kind of cut someone out out of the middle there um but we will include ones both for manufacturers and trading companies within this video so let's go ahead and get started with this let's talk about the first one that is very prominent and I think everyone should be aware of this and it's called Global Sources so Global Sources I kind of think of it as sort of the uh OG Alibaba it's been around since 1971. they have over one and a half million suppliers uh on the network of Global Sources you can just go to the website uh it is on globalsources.com and you'll notice it kind of looks pretty similar to Alibaba as well uh pros and cons of Global Sources one of the best things about it is that yes there's a lot of suppliers on there a lot of like Fortune 500 companies use Global Sources to find products and connect with manufacturers but I will admit one of the downsides to Global Sources is that it's not as beginner friendly as some of the other uh networks for wholesalers so you know like for this uh in a lot of cases the manufacturers on here they want to work with already pretty well established companies and so if you are a first-time seller and you're looking to just order five thousand dollars worth of products it might be not as easy to do on something like Global Sources don't worry though I'll include some other ones later on in this video for sort of for first time sellers if you're looking for kind of low order quantities uh for that but we really do like Global store courses I think it's one of the best options outside of Alibaba but let me share some of these other ones with you because there's some really cool ones in here that I think you're going to want to be aware of and the next one is not actually one specific um supplier but it's actually a way to find out what your competitors are selling and where are where they are getting their products from so if we use something like the jungle Scout supplier database I'll just take you over here and show you how useful something like this is um so basically uh what happens is whatever companies are importing things into the United States there's certain paperwork that needs to be filed and in a lot of cases some of that info can be public information and so if you use something like the jungle Scout supplier database you can see what companies are importing what what companies are exporting what and then also you can search specific products or suppliers or even search by specific numbers here so this is kind of like a huge hack here but let's say that for example you wanted to see what Target Brands is importing into the US and like who their specific manufacturers are and in some cases you can see that I don't know Target's exact company name that they would be using so um but you can see all these different suppliers here that they use and then you can just go in and basically steal their manufacturers um and say hey look they're using this manufacturer let me connect with this manufacturer as well um so I will leave a huge discount code uh in the description below if you click on the link for Jungle Scout uh you'll get a great discount if you want to sign up for it and access this supplier database but you can see like exactly when some of these shipments were coming in and which products they were um and then also like you know all these specific companies here so this is like one of our favorite things to do um and so if you have a competitor and you're like huh I wonder where they're getting their products from I wonder who the manufacturer is it's worth looking up on this site on Jungle Scout supplier database of course they have a lot of other things as well like this is especially useful if you're an Amazon Seller but I know a lot of people who use this uh just you know if you're doing Shopify or something else um for kind of keeping track of your store and also doing quite a bit of research as well so a lot of cool tools on there but supplier database is one of my favorites so you should check that out I will leave that link with the discount in the description below and I'll also put together like a free training for it I think probably next week and I'll take you through like an hour tutorial showing you exactly how to use the supplier database and everything else on Jungle Scout and the features that they have we partner with them so you know sometimes we get a small commission when people um sign up for them but you know helps keep these videos free and uh yeah so if you support the channel then we'd really appreciate if you checked it out through that link now let's go on to the third uh way that you can Source Products and this is another one of our favorites uh but is it's going to sound crazy when I say it but if you want to find the best manufacturers you want to find the best sources for products and you're serious then you should actually consider going to the source and what I mean by this is literally going to China going to Thailand going to Taiwan uh whatever some of the factories are that you would like to connect with this is something that can be very wise to do so there are massive trade Fair events there's something called The Canton Fair which is in guangdang China and it's mid-october into the first few days in November um and this is a massive event there's thousands of people at this event but a lot of manufacturers send some of their people to go connect with Buyers people like you and me who are looking to find products and connect with manufacturers so I know this like sounds kind of crazy like you know I remember like before I went to China for the first time it was like you know like it just sounded kind of weird like okay I'm in the US go across the world connect with manufacturers um it felt kind of scary because I didn't travel too much before that but it's something that's pretty cool uh you know this is probably also not for like the first time seller this is probably maybe you've already done some things with Alibaba maybe you've already you know sold a few products and now you're really looking for the best deals than connecting directly with manufacturers can be a great option um there's some other things as well there's a there's a Global Sources there I think it's in Vietnam I will leave a link to that below as well if you are interested in going to it I'm not sure if I'm going to go to China in October this year um but you know it is pretty fun uh and it's definitely like a cool experience and you know costs some money like a couple thousand dollars to get over there but uh I think it's definitely like a life experience that uh might might be worthwhile and also making those connections there so it's just one that a lot of people don't think about it's like actually going to the source and going to the manufacturers and connecting with them in person it really does have a lot of weight rather than just kind of like doing something over email and of course there is a pretty strong language barrier in a lot of cases I don't speak Chinese um so uh but luckily you know some of the people at some of the manufacturers do speak English and so we've been able to kind of get along there um and figure things out along the way but I probably should learn Chinese at some point it just seems like a big uh you know it's it's gonna be difficult but I think I'm gonna try it hopefully in the future okay okay the next option for finding products is to actually use a sourcing agent so this is a dedicated person that is specifically helping you find manufacturers the best thing about sourcing agents is that they can kind of deal with that language barrier right especially if you're trying to find like some of the best manufacturers sometimes they don't speak English and you know you might not speak their language and so a sourcing agent can really help deal with some of these language barriers and then also kind of vet manufacturers beforehand and so that's probably the best benefit to them there are some downsides to sourcing agents I would say the biggest one being that you know there are a lot of backdoor deals just being totally honest we've seen it happen in the past where you think you're connecting with a sourcing agent who is you know setting you up with a manufacturer uh and you know they said that they've vetted them but in reality maybe the manufacturer is just giving them some cash on the side to recommend them so there are backdoor deals with sourcing agents I have a couple friends who are sourcing agents and they're very legit so I think my recommendation for this is that if you do go with the sourcing agent just make sure that they are vetted by maybe some of your friends who are also doing e-commerce or who have used them in the past just to kind of get some referrals for that sourcing agent um but yeah they can be really great they you know work for you they tend to have your best interest in mind because they want you to have a great manufacturer and create a great relationship so that you can refer them to other uh e-commerce sellers or just sellers in general so sourcing agents are certainly an option now let me give you an option here for kind of first-time sellers or people who are just looking to kind of test out products and that's using something like dhgate so dhgate it's not for you know private labeling it's not for finding manufacturers to buy things by you know like 100 000 units or something it's really meant for kind of testing products so we do this every time we're thinking about launching a new product we'll go on to dhgate and we'll go into things like AliExpress and we'll just buy a bunch of different products to test out the features see which ones we like the most and then see if we can find a way to connect with those manufacturers um but yeah great for testing the market great for beginners um there is no minimum order quality on most things on dhgate so you don't have to you know worry about you know having like 100 000 uh minimum order or something like that um and there are millions of low-cost products on dhgate uh so it's worth checking out especially if you're kind of like just in that product research phase um then you would want to look at something like that okay the next one is Thomas net so Thomas net uh this one's pretty cool because it's actually mostly US based um so there's a lot of American uh manufacturers on Thomas net it's been around for a very long time and so you can find suppliers inside the United States there's a couple of reasons for this you know sometimes customers actually it's weird but like sometimes customers will pay more when they see some things uh you know manufactured in the United States and then also uh there are you know like there are benefits to Thomas net but one of the downsides is that uh there tends to be a little bit more expensive as well because you know Manufacturing in the United States well it just ends up being costing more right land costs more uh labor costs more everything else involved with that tends to be higher cost and so sometimes the products can be higher cost as well um you know just from my experience I've actually never connected with a supplier on Thomas net just being totally transparent here because you know a lot of the manufacturers on there tends to be more of a unlike the industrial side rather than the Consumer side so that's why I've never uh really gone through any transactions on Thomas net but I do have friends who use it and they do really seem to like it quite a bit so it's worth checking out especially if you are in that area of like more industry like industrial uh maybe like restaurant equipment something along those lines really does make a lot of sense especially like those bigger items the ones that kind of you know can't like you're not going to manufacture restaurant equipment and then in China and then ship it all the way across the world just like how you're not manufacturing cars in China and then shipping them to the United States like the bigger items you can see why it makes more sense to have American manufacturers so so if you're selling an item if you're thinking about selling an item that's like an oven or a dishwasher or something along those lines then something like Thomas Nat actually would make a lot more sense compared to you know Global Sources or some of the other ones but it's just massive big Behemoth items of like 600 pound items you're probably not gonna you know have a manufacturer over on the other side of the world because shipping would be astronomically expensive so that's why we like Thomas dead for those specific types of products um so there's one more that I want to share with you actually two more I know I said seven in this video but there's two more that I want to sneak in here one of them is called made in China we like made in China it's kind of similar to Global Sources it's also been around for quite some time as well um and you know it literally looks identical like if you just go between these two sides Global Sources and made in China like it looks like the same site so you're going to get a lot of the same benefits to it um it's it's almost as large as Global Sources and almost as large as Alibaba it's been around for a long time and you'll actually see a lot of the same manufacturers on made in China as you would with Global Sources and Alibaba you'll start to see some cross over there because you know if they're trying to get the best business as possible now the final one I just want to sneak in here is actually what are the best ways that we found manufacturers or even trading companies in the past is just through Google and like this is a simple one but really there are a lot of Manufacturers um when you can just search specific items on Google like if we're looking for um an egg cooker we can just type in egg cooker manufacturer and my favorite thing to do is like I will go through every page but sometimes the best ones are on like page like seven or eight or far back and you have to really scroll through Google to find some of the best manufacturers for egg cookers like you can see right now you know Home Depot Best Buy some of these other ones but if we keep going through here we might be able to find some of these manufacturers so I hope this video was helpful in some way uh don't forget to check out the supplier database on Jungle Scout it really is a game changer um I don't think they have a free trial they might have a free trial for like a week um I will leave all those details Down Below in the description but at the very least you do get a pretty heavy discount when you use that link so uh thanks for watching the video I really hope you found this to be valuable and I'll see everybody sometime in the future let me know if you have questions leave your questions Down Below in the comments and I'll try to respond as quickly as possible uh go ahead follow me on Instagram as well I try to answer some questions on there if I have some time so thanks for watching and I'll see everybody sometime in the future

Channel: Santrel Media

Views: 37,079

Keywords: nate o'brien, mike o'brien, santrel media, amazon fba, amazon fba sourcing, private label sourcing, alibaba alternative, how to find a supplier on alibaba, alibaba alternative china, best alternatives to alibaba, find suppliers for amazon fba, best alibaba alternatives for amazon fba, alibaba suppliers, global sources, amazon fba tips, alibaba.com how to buy

Id: fmH6CX_Tvvo

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2023