posted by moshenarte on Jul 21
Global Product Sourcing Is For You
After much thought and evaluation, you’ve decided to take the step closer towards Global Product Sourcing and Wholesale. The idea of being able to operate your own business in your own time, being responsible for all of its respective successes and (hopefully not) failures is exactly what you want from a job. But where do you start? You have chosen an industry to target (e.g. brand named consumer electronics) and have obtained a list of verified suppliers from a reputable source and now the mass of information has become actually quite overwhelming!
Comparing Supplier Prices with Current Market Prices
The seemingly overwhelming task can be easily made simple by breaking up the enormous mass of information and your ultimate goal into smaller, easier-to-tackle modules. Assuming that each of your suppliers is reputable and honest your first task will then be the compare the prices of your suppliers to find how they rate against the current market value. The goal here is to find the products that will generate an acceptable level of profit to add to your portfolio of products for sale. Regardless of the method of e-commerce you choose to sell your items through, building your portfolio of revenue generating items and selling them at the same time will increase your chances of sale due to the natural synergy of your portfolio (assuming that all of the items are different enough from each other to be competitors within their own markets).
Auction Sites versus Regular E-Commerce Websites
Keep in mind when you’re comparing your supplier prices, or performing your market research that you distinguish between market prices obtained through auction sites such as eBay and those gathered from non-auction e-commerce shopping cart sites. Whilst they may appear to sell the same product (for example Apple iPod Touch with identical packages) on both sites, prices are generally lower on auction sites because of the inconsistent warranties available, product conditions, new/used status, and general accountability of sellers trading on auction sites as compared to operators selling from there own purchased domain named website with site related guarantees. It is not to say that you cannot make a decent profit from auction sites and not grab an absolute bargain from non-auction e-commerce shopping cart sites. The point is to distinguish between the two markets because there are some marked differences in the behavior of both buyers and sellers of each.
Tracking Your Research
To keep track of your market research you should make use of available software specific to the monitoring of prices and market trends. If this is not readily available you can easily develop a spreadsheet suitable for your needs. When developing your own spreadsheet you may find it useful to list your column headings from left to right in the following order:
- Supplier
- Product
- Price
- Market Price #1
- Market Price #2
- Market Price #3
- Market Price #4
- Market Price #5
- Average Price (avg prices 1-5)
- Average Profit (Average Price – Price)
- Average Return On Investment % (Average Profit / Price)*100
Whilst simple, this spreadsheet will allow you to view all of the prices at the same time and give you the opportunity to sort the higher performing items from the lower performing ones. From here you should set a baseline Return On Investment level and choose to sell only items achieving equal to or greater than that goal (e.g. only Apple iPod Touch units achieving an ROI equal to or greater than 15%.
A note should be made that because of the price movements of any given market as well as the rate at which new products are released and developed – consequently making current items not-so-current items – your market research is only valid for a limited amount of time only. This means that once you have decided on your suitable product no time should be wasted from that point to the time of sale.
For Your Benefit
It will be extremely beneficial in your early days as an Internet Wholesale Trader if you can train your mind to think along the lines of Return on Investment whenever you think of adding new products to your portfolio. In the end, it doesn’t matter where you want to sell your products, implementing a process that systematically evaluates the ability of a product to generate a profit will mean that you can measure the feasibility of almost ANY product or service out there. This will ensure possibly limitless product options within the general scope of your business and your current product knowledge because you will be thinking more on how beneficial selling that product will be for you instead of simply how much you’d like the product for yourself, or how cool it is.
Like many professions, your success in Global Product sourcing and Wholesale Trade will depend on your ability to put into practice the good lessons you learned and learn from your mistakes. Whether or not the information you have just read will help you directly in your current business practices, it should at the very least, get you thinking in the right direction towards wholesale sourcing success.
Article Resource: http://www.moshenarte.com/business_articles/global_wholesale_product_sourcing_and_price_market_research/
MoshenARTE are the Global Product Sourcing Experts! Specializing in wholesale and drop shipping trade. For more information, visit http://www.moshenarte.com