How’s it going, everyone? this is Tomer from Sourcing-Monster.com. Today I have a very special and relevant blog to share on how to find and source products in the US.
I will share the pros and cons and also two strategies that they use on how to find products in the US one is to an online search to www.Thomas.net. It’s like Alibaba or the equivalent for Alibaba in the US.
Another strategy I would like to share is going to expos trade shows and finding physical products. Just to share, I traveled recently to Las Vegas to the White Label Expo.
I will share the pros and cons of each method and strategy.
Advantage of sourcing items from the USA
I would like to share what are the advantages of sourcing from the USA.
Communication
Easier communication. When you deal with suppliers’ factories and people in the USA, obviously the language barrier is not there.
Also, the lead time is not a problem. You don’t have to really care about the 30 days that it takes for shipping for the item to arrive because it’s gonna be like 30 days.
Shipping is not an issue
As the shipping, no matter where the item that you’re sourcing here in the USA is located, it will be way faster than 30 days, even if using the ground shipping shouldn’t be more than a week.
The freight costs are very cheap. So that’s a really big advantage here. Also, there is no really this pain in the ass dealing with freight forwarders and having that liability on them DDP shipping all these terms, you eliminate all this stuff. So that’s a very big advantage.
Zero Liability Issue
Another point comes with all the certificates and also zero liability issues.
Obviously, there are some products that you cannot source in China or overseas, like food items. Technically you can do it but it will be a very easy and faster process if you do it in the US.
You’ll let the factory or suppliers deal with all the certificates, liability issues and everything that is involved.
For example, cosmetics will require lab tests. Food obviously needs FDA approvals and all of these certifications that you don’t want to deal with or do all the legwork for a Chinese factory or supplies.
I don’t have enough experience doing it overseas, I only did it here in the USA because I see it was too complicated a dealing with this kind of products.
So obviously it will save you all this hassle and work and products that are not available overseas. Some products like cosmetics and food products, they will not be available outside the USA because of all the certificates and liability issues.
The manufacturers and factories don’t really have the incentive to deal with these kinds of products because most of the buyers will not really deal with them because they don’t have certificates and all these approvals.
So the variety of items and products that you will have is lower comparing to other products like tools, clothing, and others that don’t really require any specific approvals or certificates or requirements.
When you actually decide to source in the USA, imagine that most of the people or sellers that you’re competing with won’t really do it. They’re just going by a simple method sourcing from China, sourcing from India, and they are not really familiar with that method yet.
I’m sure in the next few years and months because of this China outbreak and issues that you have, people would want to diversify and get more into sourcing in the USA, but it’s still less competitive.
That’s a great opportunity for you if you decide to source in the USA to differentiate yourself and find the products that might not really be that expensive.
Another big advantage is it can help you market it by having the Made in USA tag, you can put it on the packaging, you can put it in the bullet points, you can put it through your copywriting which is a big advantage that will increase your sales and you can also sell it at a higher price.
Because that really shows that it’s a more high-quality item. It gives people more trust. They’re more likely to buy from you because it’s a USA business.
Thomasnet.com
Now let me show you the two strategies that I tried and I will share the pros and cons of each method.
So the first one, the first strategy would be through Thomasnet.com. It’s a website you can check if you’re looking for sea salt, food, and other items and it will show you a bunch of suppliers that you can contact.
You can contact suppliers and that’s a really easy process. One of the cons here is that the response rate is not that high. When you connect suppliers here they get probably thousands of messages and they will just, you know, not really reply realtime.
One advantage here is that it costs nothing. You don’t really have to travel to tradeshow or expos on spending money on flights or hotels and your time and it’s just cost nothing.
You can outsource easily. If you have employees, you tell them a product that you’re looking for and tell them to find suppliers on this website.
You can also do it on a tradeshow. But it will require more trust, more expenses. And it’s something that normally you would want to do yourself to travel to an export tradeshow.
Basically, that’s a very good method, you should definitely try it first. If you can’t find your product and you can’t find a supplier in the USA for that product, only then consider the second option.
Tradeshows and Exports
In my opinion, it’s great going through trade shows and exports, but we’ll share here the cons and pros as well.
First of all, and it costs more than doing online research. You have the hotel, you have the flight, you have to lose some days at work and that will be a loss of money. So that’s something to consider and only if you couldn’t find product suppliers online.
Conduct your research, only then consider this option.
Because most of the people, if they couldn’t really find it in online research, they will not take the time and go to expos, trade shows all of that.
Last week, I went to the Las Vegas Expo, it was about one specific product. It took us like three weeks of research to find a couple of suppliers. And even then we didn’t really get anywhere.
So I decided to go to the Expo and try to find that product. It took me one day three to four hours to find. It was like the variety of suppliers was crazy. It was like 40 or 50 booths.
And I found easily in a couple of hours three or four suppliers that made my price that I was like even cheaper than China is second thing is faster sourcing. They will take you seriously so easy. When you actually come to a booth and you show yourself the conversion.
The actual option for you to close a deal is very high, they see you in front of them. They know that you’re serious. If you took the time to flight a couple of hours, stay in a hotel and come to find that product.
So that’s something that you can’t really do online. Online, the trust barrier is higher, they don’t know who you are, where you’re contacting them from China, India, not from the US. And it will require more time to gather or create this trust.
More tips on How to find USA suppliers
Let’s say you’re into cosmetics. You can search in Google, “cosmetics, trade shows, B2B, something like that in Google and you will find you can find trade shows like that.
And so you can also check their website. This website is the top 10 wholesale trade shows, you can put your category. And you can also do it by car by category.
You have so many trades that shows that you can go and attend and find products fast. That’s all about speed. In one day, you can do some work that will take you on online research for weeks. So that’s a really big benefit here.
And if you’re not a beginner and you have like a couple of items, that’s really something that will scale you and take you to the next level as far as growth because you’re limited with the time and opportunities or you doing the online research and that will open you to new markets.
And the second thing is to open your mind to other niches and ideas. When you go to a tradeshow, it’s not just finding the product that you’re going after, most of the times you will meet other people that doing the same thing as you so you can grow your network of people you can hear and listen and get more ideas from other people from suppliers as well.
Let’s say you come to a booth and you explain about what you’re looking for, they can open you and tell you Oh, you know what, why you won’t do that or when you add this product, or we have also these kinds of like items in our catalog or maybe you’re interested in those. So it really opens your mind to something that you can really do online.
So I hope you get you got some value from this content. I know it’s not that long, but it’s right to the point and I hope you got some value for it.
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