If you follow our blog here, you know we don’t buy wholesale using any of the traditional methods.
The traditional ways people buy wholesale involve going to tradeshows or signing up for accounts with distributors and wholesale companies. They will then go through those companies’ giant catalogs of branded inventory to find products they can buy to profitably resell on Amazon.
What we do instead is cut out the middlemen (wholesalers and distributors) and try to open accounts directly with the brands we want to sell on Amazon. Our method is much harder since brands take a lot of convincing to let you open up direct accounts, but we have found it to be more profitable, consistent, predictable, and efficient once you get good at it.
BUT (and this is a big but) that doesn’t mean you can’t make money right now buying wholesale the traditional way. In fact, if you want to eventually work your way up to the way we sell wholesale, starting the traditional way is a great opportunity to get your legs under you and earn some profits while doing it.
And that’s what we are going to be showing you today!
Well…sort of.
Instead of just showing you how to do traditional wholesale, we are going to show you a ninja tactic to do it better. I’ll even make it easy for you to get started.
99 Wholesale Sources – Reference Builder Tool
Here are two lists of different wholesale suppliers. You can easily open up accounts with a lot of these companies and then go through their large catalogs of inventory to find profitable products to sell on Amazon.
“There’s no profit in this supplier’s entire catalog!”
There is a good chance that this is exactly what you’ll say after going through those catalogs.
But what if I told you there is a way to find profit from over-competitive products AND own the listing so you’re the ONLY seller on it (at least for a while)?
TWF-alumni Barbara Drazga knows how to do just that. When she scans a supplier’s catalog and finds a low-rank product with a lot of competition (or with Amazon as a seller), she doesn’t just discard that supplier and move on. She adds one more step to her research to pull out profit where MOST other sellers simply give up.
Here is Barbara demonstrating one of her bundles. A skull necklace with a coffin jewelry box. Pretty neat!
Instead of discarding products with too much competition and no profit, she looks at the consistent demand for a product (rank or BSR), then builds a bundle of products that target that same niche market where the demand is.
So let’s talk about how you can look at these “unprofitable items” from a different perspective. Barbara uses 2 ways to increase profitability and keep competitors at bay and she was kind enough to share the summarized version of her processes with us for this article.
Barbara Drazga’s Wholesale Bundling Process
Bundling Overview
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Evaluate company catalogs using tools like Price Checker 2, and identify low-rank items that sell consistently well.
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Identify products that rank consistently below 50,000 over the previous 6 month period. Look at Keepa for a longer period to identify products that sell constantly year-round. Don’t be fooled by seasonal sales spikes.
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Identify how many a month are selling FBA (using Jungle Scout or Market Intelligence tool).
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Look at reviews to see common complaints and wishes.
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Look at the items under “also bought” and the “related items” slider to find items complementary to the item you’re reviewing that have low, consistent rank.
The first approach involves bundling items all from the same brand. Barbara has 3 brand owners who do all of this for her. Here’s how it works:
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Set up account with brand owner
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Contact brand owner and tell them you’d like to put several of their products together
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Inquire with the brand owner if you can include a “value-add” item to that bundle that you send to them.
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Ask if they can build that bundle FOR you at the warehouse or factory level, reducing your prep costs.
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Ask if they can then ship that finished bundle directly into Amazon for you (have Amazon affix FNSKU labels).
Here’s the second approach Barbara uses:
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Look for 2nd and 3rd items under the ‘also bought’ section that also have decent, consistent sales rank.
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Identify suppliers for 2nd and 3rd items.
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Create a final item that makes your product bundle “custom”, and adds perceived value to the bundle for the customer.
When building a bundle, the keys are:
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Put items in bundle that people want as identified by rank.
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Put value-add pieces in the bundle.
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Avoid “bundle stuffing” – throwing junk in a bundle that does not meet customer desire or need
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Create an optimized listing with great photos, strong keyword research.
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Run your own traffic to the listings.
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Lockdown the listing with custom items and packaging to make it impossible for other sellers to recreate your bundle.
TIP: Ordering all products from the same supplier gives you the ability to leverage higher quantity orders, so you can negotiate a better overall cost.
