Wholesale Supplier Validation Services
Don’t Get Ripped Off by Fly By Night Wholesalers
When Thing Go Wrong
My friend Cindy, who recently started selling on eBay had a setback when she tried to buy some goods from an oversees wholesaler, with disastrous results, well she was out $200, which is disaster enough for a small operator. I decided to take on the job of locating some reliable whole sources for her. This has not proven as easy as I first thought.
Some standard checks Cindy should have made before buying from a new supplier: Google the company/site name for both complaints and success stories, examine the site WHOIS data and the site contact page, see if they openly providing a warehouse address and contact phone number, is the domain older than one year, any domestic supplier should be researched at the BBB and the FTC. Chinese businesses must have a government registration number.
I tried searching the web for “free wholesale list”, it turned up 537,000 results, similar lists can be found selling on eBay starting at 99 cents. I found it difficult to determine the source of these lists, I did find warnings that some lists are produced by the wholesalers recommended in the list. At best these list provided a starting point for the process of identifying reliable suppliers.
Validated Supplier Lists
Searching for wholesaler validation sources, I ran across these 2 companies that specialized in providing a wholesaler validation service. Though neither is cheap, if you look at them as an insurance policy against financial loss and unneeded trauma they start looking better.
The authority site in wholesaler and drop shipper verification and te only one Certified by eBay is World Wide Brands, founded in 2003 by Chris Malta, it’s chief product is the database of 8000+ suppliers accessible to members who pay a one time lifetime membership fee of $300, rather steep for a bedroom based operation like Cindy’s, but it’s a justifiable “insurance” cost for a serious operation, providing they deliver what they promise. In addition to the wholesaler information they also provide some training information on buying smart.
WWB detail their Product Sourcing Research process. Starting with lead lists obtained from Dunn & Bradstreet and InfoUSA, World Wide Brands narrows the field by filtering out wholesalers who don’t pass an examination process consisting of multiple telephone interviews and background checks. Those that pass are asked to certify the answers given in a twenty qualification questionnaire. I was disappointed to see no indication that they actually make anonymous purchases with some of the millions in membership fees they have collected, I suppose a skilled interviewer gets good at ferreting out most scam artists.
In addition to researching the integrity of a wholesaler, the must be willing to work with small retailers and provide moderate lot sizes in order to e included in the database. Some major brand products won’t be found in the database because the manufacturer only works with large chain stores, the only source of these brand product would be gray market or counterfeit versions, sources WWB cannot recommend.
I searched for any negative contents intermixed with the thousands of glowing affiliate reviews and found virtually nothing beyond a case or 2 of people disappointed in the listed drop shipper costs who concluded they would have to direct import from China. Ebay’s review and guide turned up one report on what turned out to be a completely unrelated wholesale supplier.
They offer a 3 month payment plan, that first $99 month should give you enough supplier research time to decide whether you will benefit sufficiently from the lifetime membership
SaleHoo (the name apparently derived from New Zeland cowboy slang, rather than American rapper lingo) is a lower prices, also ran wholesale and drop-shipping supplier validator. Their lifetime membership has a permanent discount price of $67.
They advertise a similar 8000+ supplier database and more than 60,000 members.
Their verification process involves a “super-secure three-tier review system
“, employing:
- An anonymous purchase
- Independent eBay powerseller reviews
- Member comments.
Again a search of the web for reviews and complaints was made, among the pages of affiliate “reviews” often starting with A “Scam? no Way!…” verbiage. I did find some complaints, almost all from 2006 the very early days of the company, having to do with difficulty in getting a refund. A couple of references in Ebay guides turned out to be like the WWB reference, about an unrelated wholesaler with the same name.
Both of these companies have demo mode database searches you can try out to get a feel for the info provided. Specific supplier identification is removed from the demo results.