How to buy Wholesale Supplies

wholesale supplies

First off, I expect that if you’re buying wholesale you are a store owner or an entrepreneur – basically, that you should have the ability (with confidence) to sell whatever product you're buying.
A few pieces of advice - take a look at your competitors - a real look at your competitors. Go into their stores, go to their online marketplace - see what they are selling off the racks, or figure out what the "hot" item is online - and see what they're putting in the sale bins. That will give you a pretty good picture of what you will want to acquire in bulk. And remember to see what you have in stock! Know what your similar items are, as well. You don't want to buy in bulk an item that you have a similar one of already. You'd be surprised how many people forget this.
As well as knowing what stock you actually have on-hand - don't jump into buying wholesale before you really understand your slow and busy seasons. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there who buy an item that they think will sell in mass quantities, only to be sitting on the product for years. Don't do that. Be a little bit more conservative, and take the time to have a slightly more mature business before jumping into buying wholesale. This is not the time to be optimistic and overreach. Realism is more important here, if you wish to maintain a sustainable business model.
These days the virtual marketplace allows you do to much less work - trade shows don't have to be in your annual plan and warehouse tours are no longer necessary.
But buyer beware! The internet allows anyone to publish their listings for "wholesale goods" - you can't always be sure of the quality or the truth of the product - whereas with the old service you were always sure of what you were getting - you could touch it, hold it in your hands and feel the quality and weight of it. You can't always do that now.
At the bottom of the wholesaling situation the most important thing you need to consider is what it always has been - your relationship with your wholesaler. It's just got a different face this time around; emails rather than handshakes, and images rather than a warehouse walk-through.
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Jade Evans is a freelance writer who works most frequently with an international shipping company. When considering buying wholesale, they can ship it! Everything from a man and a van to car shipping and long-distance movers. Jade has been a professional writer for the past few years, but has always enjoyed traveling somewhere new.

Efficient Racking and Shelving Can Improve Wholesale Distribution

One of wholesale’s largest appeals is its ability to give customers access to large amounts of stock at hugely competitive prices. It’s rare someone would shop within a wholesale environment unless they were looking to buy products in volume. Fulfilling the customer’s stock requirements is paramount to success and as such an effective stock replenishment system has to be in place. There are many aspects to a modern day supply chain and one of the most important ones is maintaining efficient time scales. It may seem obvious to some but even effective warehouses with warehouse management systems in place still rely on racking and shelving at their core. Here is a look at how racking and shelving still form the cornerstone of distribution and how choosing the right systems can directly impact wholesales effectiveness.

Access to Stock:
Individual wholesale environments differ greatly depending on their specific marketplace, however many choose to have a large open, almost warehouse like, shop floor, whilst keeping good levels of stock in the actual warehouse, to replenish diminishing stock lines as needed. Using this wholesale format as an example highlights the need for effective stock distribution. Starting at the first point of onsite distribution which is the arrival of stock via a lorry, racking and shelving begins to play its essential part. Many wholesalers choose to use forklift trucks as pallet deliveries are common place in modern wholesale. With the wrong racking in place, not only are potential health risks greatened, but not being able to sufficiently rack stock can be very time consuming. There have been examples of racking systems buckling under stock load, and this can not only lead to injury but damage valuable stock. Sturdy efficient racking, chosen specifically to hold a desired weight is an almost mandatory requirement in the modern day supply chain.

Making the Most of Available Space:
Having the correct racking in place is a good start, but it’s also essential to choose a racking and shelving system that will maximise you floor space. You need to carefully measure the entire space to give good forklift truck and trolley access, remembering that some stock will be held high on the racking. This will also enable pallets full of stock to be taken to your shop floor for distribution. This principal of space management can be repeated on the shop floor as well, in turn increasing the speed to of stock replacement.

It’s surprising how many business underestimate the humble racking and shelving system, but used effectively it can dramatically reduce distribution times, which will have a positive effect on your profit margins.
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This post has been written by Martin. Martin has a great experience in wholesale racking and shelving.

Dropshipping Business - Benefits of this home based profit generating buisness

In the past years, Dropshipping has appeared as one of the most profitable businesses. It is defined as such method of selling in supply chain management in which the retailer or any other person, does not keep products or commodities in his warehouse as the stock. Infact, the dropshipper keeps sample of products or list of catalogues of products in which he is dealing in. When customer orders goods to dropshippers, he forwards customer’s order to wholesaler, distributor or manufacturer, who delivers the product to customer direct from their inventory. Some time earlier Dropshippers were mainly retailers but now-a-days many other people have also started practically dropshipping business.
Dropshipping is a very simple business as anyone can do it as long as he has fare knowledge of supply chain management and general awareness of market trends. Dropshipping is a home based business and can be operated from any part of the world; the dropshipper only needs a system (computer or laptop), internet and a website to start his business smoothly. Dropshipping is now considered as one of the most profits accumulating home based business which can gather high profits easily without any investment.
There are three kinds of dropshipping which are widely known. “Blind Shipping”, in this type of dropshipping no return mailing address is sent to customer, so that the customer cannot contact the wholesaler. The second type is “Private Label Shipping”, in which product is delivered through wholesaler but return address of dropshipper is also sent. The last type is “Customized Packing Slip” in which dropshipper’s name, company logo and contact information is sent as a return address.
The greatest benefit of dropshipping is the inventory reduction. The capital of dropshipper is hoard and in case if dropshipper has to pack up the business then he will be at safe end as he has nothing to lose. This business has no set-up costs; means that the dropshipper has to pay nothing from his pocket to start this business. Dropshippers never face risk to face expiry date products, loss inventory or risk of damaged or broken products as he has nothing to store in his own warehouse so there is no need to spend costs on preventing these.
There are also no chances of frauds or delayed payments as dropshippers have direct contacts with the wholesalers. The only thing to consider while doing dropshipping business is to remain up to date with your wholesale supplier and his inventory.

How to Use Twitter for Your Wholesale Business (Part- II)

Here is the second part of the post how to use twitter for your wholesale business. In the first section we discussed

How to Tweet

Time Difference in Your Tweet

Who to Follow

Now we will discuss further more about usage of twitter for the improvement of your business.

Value of Keywords in Your Tweets:

Value of keywords can not be neglected in any search engine either it is Google, Bing or Twitter. All work on the same criteria that revolve around the same algorithm. Twitter also search for your those keywords in your tweets and also in your urls you are looking for. I  have examined this my self when I was searching for the a keyword I found the such tweets where my desired keyword was not in the tweet while it was in the url. And now I am gong to tell you how you can use your desired keyword in your tweet while staying in the limited words.

Have you ever heard about http://9mp.com. Yes it is the URL shortener service provider. This site provides you the option of branding your URLs with any sub domain you wish. It also allows you to tag on keywords at the end of your URL.

EXAMPLES

Company Branded Url's - company.9mp.com

9mp-Modified Url's - 9mp.company.com

Group Url's - group.9mp.com

Vanity Url's - 9mp.com/inputname

Mention And Direct Messages:

To use twitter effectively you should have knowledge about mentions and direct messages.

Mentions are normally sent to those who are not following you back, it can be send by adding “@” in the start of your tweet then writing the profile name of the person you want to target.

While direct messages are sent to those who are following you. These messages appeared in their inbox, while mentions are shown in live streaming and in the mentions tab.

Value of Retweet:

Value of Retweet is really really important to keep your link alive. Once you get the Retweet you get the life again on twitter. And this life time depends on number of followers of the person who retweeted it. If you get this Retweet from a star or a brand then its worth increases even more than it was once when it was tweeted by you.

Importance Of List:

If you are a manager and want to have a look what your sub ordinate are doing on twitter can be easily done on twitter. You can easily see their tweets by just going on that tweets rather to go on every one’s profile one by one. Similarly you can have a look on the tweets of you favorite twitter users and on brands of your niche. Do you know how to make list on twitter, it is so simple have a look here

To create a new list, follow these instructions:

1. Visit the profile of the first user you would like to add to your list
2. Click the person icon. This brings up a drop-down Actions menu.
3. Select "Add to list"
4. Enter the credentials of your list and choose whether others can see it or whether it is private
5. Check to see if the user you wanted to add was successfully included in that list: to do this, click the person icon and select "Add to list". A checkmark will be added next to lists in which that user is included (shown below under "Adding or Removing People").

Tell us in the comment section about your reviews about this post and your experience on twitter.

Online Networking and Marketing Tools for your Wholesale Business

 

Don’t be hesitant to establish an online identity for your wholesale business. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to set up an accessible profile for your company on the web, and you’d be even more surprised at the business it could bring in for your company. Whether you’re looking out for retailers to buy from your company or you want to export products overseas, the web can be a great arena for attracting new interests to your wholesale business. What follows are a few resources you can rely on to successfully market and network your wholesale business.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for businesspeople and entrepreneurs of all areas. It’s free to start a LinkedIn profile for your wholesale business or for yourself as a representative of the business. Simply follow the instructions on the site’s homepage to set up a basic profile. LinkedIn gives you a completion graph that encourages you to make a “complete” profile. A “complete” profile entails more than just entering your company’s information: LinkedIn counts adding connections and contacting other profiles as necessary to building a healthy profile. It’s clear that this site emphasizes networking, so you know the profiles you encounter here will mean business.

You can use this profile as a springboard into other wholesalers’ business networks which might be able to give you tips and insight to the industry’s current climate. The breadth and depth of professional resources available on LinkedIn are staggering: thousands of professionals join the site every day, so there’s always a chance that you’ll encounter a new valuable resource for your business.

Blogger or Wordpress:

Believe it or not, you can get good exposure for your wholesale business by keeping a company blog. Many businesses maintain blogs to issue releases on current events within the company or regarding news relevant to a business’s trade. With wholesale, you could blog about new products in your inventory, changes in your business’s organization, or personal stories about the staff at your company.

Customize your business’s blog to accommodate your target audience. Blogging is meant to familiarize a reader with the author, and in this case the reader will likely be someone in retail. Focus on writing about items that will interest potential buyers.  Write regularly about daily activities and news relevant to the business. Readers who become familiar to your business’s happenings may be more inclined to contact you as a customer.

License for photo: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.en

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This is a guest post by Susan Wells. Susan is from insurance quote guide, she writes on topics including health/car/life insurance, mortgage, real estate.