goWholesale

Where does the store you work in buy their stuff?

Most real wholesalers are not on the net, or have passworded sites for established customers only.

Spend a day, or two, hanging around the largest independent pet store you can find and read the names on the trucks making deliveries.

Talk to the delivery people where you work, Get some ideas from them. They probably run into each other at different stops.

Forget the net. This takes time and legwork.

Hey Pete... I disagree with the statement about wholesalers. I make and sell handcrafted jewelry out of my house and offer wholesale. I don't consider myself an "exclusive" wholesaler. Exclusive meaning... wholesale is all I offer. It just sounds like your judging wholesalers by the layout of their sites.

Pendants4U, sorry, did not mean to step on your toes.

In the pet supply business, and in this case I get the impression the guy wants to open a B&M store, the wholesalers are generally regional and have both "outside salesmen" and a fleet of delivery trucks. I know in my area the closest major wholesaler is an 8 hour drive away. And I live in a major metro area on the east coast, not somewhere in Wyoming, 40 miles from town.

Just as in another post I suggested United Stationers to someone want to open an office supply store, these folks are big time. One phone call, with credit approval and they can literally set up an entire store for you. Same with hardware stores, auto parts stores, etc. These are distributors with warehouses that put a Wal-Mart to shame, as far as size.

When you buy from them you're buying wholesale. That's the ownly way they sell, and they sell who they want. As the office supply guy found out - $ 5,000 a month, or we don't want you.

Not saying you don't sell wholesale from your site, but you are not quite in the same league as what he is looking for. And most of these people do not solicit business on the net.

ANd that's why all these cookie cutter wholesale sites can thrive, because there are not many "real" wholesalers that advertise on the web like these CC sites do. It really gives newbies a false impresion of what wholesalers and a wholesale price really is.

Furthermore, it hasmade the newbie think that terrific wholesale prices can be had in small lots. Sure, there are some web wholesalers out there with great prices on small lots, but they are few and far between considering the amount of wholesalers and distros that exist in the US - millions upon millions. Most are stricly B2B and do not fool around. I used to advertise my wholesale site online. I soon came to the realization that it really wasn;t worth it for me. The vast ajority of the leads were dead, meaning they have no money and really never intend to buy anything. And the vast majority of those were looking for dropshipping or to buy one unit at a good wholesale price. I figured out that about one in 40-50 leads I got from the web were good, paying leads. While that may not sound too bad, it actually ain't that great considering all the emails I had to respond to to try and qualify folks who were not qualified buyers.

I get much better response targeting store buyers directly on the horn. My conversion rate that way seems to be about 1 in 20-30 and they mostly buy pallets upon pallets. This all depends on what you sell and who you sell to, but this is my experience.

I will once again try, however, advertising on the net. I have an idea that might seriously curb the amount of non-qualified buyers I have to deal with before finding a good, paying buyer.

Can you imagine what it's like for a major wholesaler like Ingram???!!! They must get flooded with request from non-qualified buyers to set up an account thinking they can get a handfull fo DVDs for 5 bnucks each. That can really put a bottleneck in anyones system.

Hmmm... a geocities free website and from hongkong... eekkk... don't think so.

I have been deleting all posts by "cloverjew". I will leave this one to illustrate the non-professional nature of their posts.

The fact that they are from Hong Kong, meaning Chinese.
Here's what they do.
They ( Chinese folks ) place their sell offers whenever and wherever
they want.
It really gets annoying for me. I'm American and own a company
in China.
They do alot of things backwards here as well as give themselves
headaches..........daily!!
Our clients, non-asian, have it lucky.
We give them the best service, but I personally have to go thru
the b.s. everyday with them.
If you ask them a question "A", their answer is "B".
That's how it goes and I am over it!!
I look in the "buy" area of alot of places, and I can always count
on seeing a Chinese person post their "sell" ad.
It does get oh so very annoying.
Just be glad you don't have to put up with it everyday, I do... LOL!!

ebjco wrote:

Check out: http://www.ebjco.com/dropship.htm

Every posting you make has a cheap self promotion there's a for sale section in this site too, oh sorry you stopped using that when the charge was introduced.

Oh well good luck to you anyway.