goWholesale

Hi. This is a good post i think. This comes up a lot of times in these forums, and there's never a clear answer. Hopefully this thread should hopefully clear up some of the questions out there.

Personally, I think i'm a big buyer. I normally purchase 3000 items per month for retail sales myself (not including wholesale). I think this classifies me as a decent size buyer.
Well i normally acquired a new supplier recently, and things are looking good so far. But here are the steps I normally take to acquire a supplier :

For Large Purchases
1- Google search there email, or name of business, or first & Last name
2- Contact them by email and see how fast they respond
3- Call there business number and ask dumb questions. Don't let them know that you were the one that emailed them. Call them back the next day and see if anyone is still there. (Just remember the time difference. You wan't to call during there business hours.)
4- Get a product list with pictures, and make sure they're not the manufacturer pictures, you wan't the actual pictures of the products they claim to have in stock. Even if this takes 1-2 days for them to get, this is ok.
5-Order samples (I normally tell them up front i'm looking to buy 3k/month so they give me samples for free. I just pay shipping).
6-Review the samples, take pics and ask partners, friends for there opinions. If no one can clearly say they're fake, then they're most likely real.
7-Place an order of 100 pieces (@ $10 a piece, thats $1000 USD). Slowly, every week, order double what you ordered the previous week until trust is built. If you're a big buyer, suppliers want your business. Offer them a different way of sending money. But most will not accept paypal. They want to protect themselves from the crooks who pay, then file fraud through paypal, and paypal freezes the funds in the guys account.
8-One rule i have is i don't wire across seas. Try to convince the supplier to either get a bank account in the USA, or you can wire it to someone he knows here in the USA then have them wire it over to the person across seas. You have some more protection this way if you're in the USA.

This is what i do when i work with a new supplier. This plan isn't 100% Full proof, but i've grown acustomed to it and it works best for me.

For Small Purchases
The smallest purchase i've done was 500 pieces. That was my first order i've ever done and almost lost $5000 to some guy in India. After 6 month's I did get my money back, but it took 6 months to get it.

For small orders, I would recommend purchasing from brokers, or people who are reputable in your country. There is always a broker for every product, it's up to you to find them. This is what i would do though through them :

1- Google search there email, or name of business, or first & Last name
2- Contact them by email & by phone and block your number when you call. Business should answer phones that have a blocked number. Most times when business's won't answer a blocked number its because they're trying to hide from someone they probably screwed (this is not 100% of the time though).
3- Most cases on small orders of 100 pieces or less, they won't send you a sample. But if they do, definitly get one.
4- Get the product list with actual pictures
5- This ones very important - Ask for references. If they won't/can't give you references, then I would cut them off. People ask me for references all the time, and i always give it to them.
6- Expect delivery through a broker to take 3-4 weeks. Even if he claims "10 days!". Especially if his costs are high & he's drop shipping. When you place your order & pay, your order goes through atleast 2-3 people, and that can take 2 full weeks alone(because of the bank wires going through 2-3 people takes a few days for each). Then to actually ship it out it should take 2-3 weeks for shipping if coming from across seas.

On small orders you WILL pay a higher price only because theres more middle men (and woman hehe), but you will have the security of dealing with a reputable person and thats what you're paying the extra cash for.

Another thing with small orders is that shipping from across seas into the USA is more expensive per piece than large orders. So this is another reason why you pay more on smaller orders.

I hope i answered your question. I might've gotten off topic. If you need clarification on anything, let me know.