Thread: Finding reliable Chinese or even cheap local wholesalers

Originally Posted by michael

Has anyone dealt with wholesalers for similar goods? I have tried Alibaba but it seems to be a really unfriendly site with a frustrating search and interface is there any other methods for locating wholesalers?

Well what do you know... I happen to manufacture green shirts. Thanks for the lead.

*just kidding*

Alibaba is probably the biggest wholesale especially for targeting China. I know a lot of reps use that site so maybe you could hook up with a network from there and they'll be able to help you source. You probably want to hit trade organizations for resources like that. Places you can hook up with specialty manufacturers not so much wholesaler/distributor rout.

You could post a research job on elance.com or a similar site and let them do a ton of digging and cold calling for you. Just be really specific in what you are looking for. Let them go stumble around alibaba and elsewhere. Someone there might already have bunch of leads already too.

Good luck, sounds like a nice profit potential for you.

- Dave

Hi Michael, I am from HK and you may try hktdc.com which it is developed by trade development council, a Hong Kong Government department and where you should able to find lots or reliable and even cheap supplier from china.

Hopes that help.

Originally Posted by michael

Today I stumbled across the Australian governments tender website and found thousands of tenders from government departments such as this one to supply ~5500 green long and short sleeve undershirts.

This is an straight forward need to fill and as far as I understand requires only a few steps:

• finding a supplier or producing for the product in question
• submitting the tender and waiting for acceptance
• ordering the product or beginning manufacturing
• shipping/delivering the product to the location of the relevant department

This seems like an idea I could handle but I have no idea where to go about sourcing 5000+ green shirts, some of which are to be short sleeves, others long sleeve and in a range of sizes

Has anyone dealt with wholesalers for similar goods? I have tried Alibaba but it seems to be a really unfriendly site with a frustrating search and interface is there any other methods for locating wholesalers?

I guess money is tight, but I would find a way of having a professional do that.

I have done Alibaba for the whole time I did imports myself so I am pretty skilled in negotiating and finding stuff there. I imported mp3 players, sexual pheromones and dirtbikes after all.

Why not send out a "buy lead"? You can recieve leads coming your way that way. Then it is mostly about selecting out the worst suppliers and take the best left overs.

I know you can make it, but it will take time to get that "flow" activity mindset, when you do stuff on automatic. But stay at it, or do as I suggested: Pile up some money and hire a professional on interim and get the best leads right of the bat.

Originally Posted by michael

Thankyou, I never noticed these two posts I am responding to now.

That looks like a good site to use in addition to alibaba thanks




Yes money is tight right now, I have to register a company ($700-$800) before I can even begin dealing with government tenders and because of the Australian laws I cannot be a director of a company, I will have to have someone trustworthy to agree to be a puppet director until I turn 18 as minors cannot be company directors here

That is my plan though I want to get to the stage where it is a process and not job and I think the potential exists to make some decent money if I can do this. I probably won't be able to hire a full time staff member to do this job for me but as Dave suggested above I will use elance to find have someone find me a supplier as well as using a 'buy lead' as you suggested.

If my offer gets in before the deadline and accepted I will hire friends to do the delivery and manual work for me on a casual basis

I will try a buy lead in the morning to see if any suppliers are interested and if I find suppliers I will register a company, submit the tender and hope to get accepted.

I am sure there are not to many people competing for the same tender so if I can meet the deadline I am confident I will succeed.

Thanks for pointing out the 'buy leads' that is a useful tool, +speed

May I suggest doing something like this?

You ask a friend who is at least 18 years of age to be "on paper" as Director in exchange for some shares in the company for him signing contracts etc. How much you want to give is up to you to decide.

You then form the company, you sign an employment agreement with the company where you work for stock options worth $ X every month.

See my startuppro blog about the stock option plan and how it works. You can that way still get a company up and running now and still get a majority portion of the company.

If you lack the money, which is the case here, you just hunt around amongst your friends and tell them to buy into the project. They put in the cash you need to form the company (with bank accounts, VAT etc), they recieve shares in exchange. Maybe you can ask your friends to put up some cash for some test sample purchases as well so you have something to show potential customers (what they can touch is often what sells them on the deal).

Let me put it into an example to clarify a bit more:

Say you need a total of $10,000 to have a shot of doing something wortwhile with this startup of yours. You don't have the money so you ask your friends and family to buy 100% of the shares in the startup. They pay, you form the company and hand them ownership (share certificate and the like). They now own your startup.

You now need a Director who is 18+ years old. You ask a friend to be "on paper" and be responsible to sign papers etc. Like any other Director. You give him shares based on the time he will invest (base it on hourly rates. If he he recieves $20 an hour on his current job right now, then give him $20 worth of shares for every hour he works for you and actually do work for your startup. Decide upon how many hours you will need his help every month and then have him recieve stock options for say 6 months or whatever time he is willing to commit to on paper. Every quarter you let him cash in 3 months worth of stock options for shares in the company on an agreed upon strike price).

Strike price: If you're friends and family invest $10,000 and there exists 100,000 shares, then the strike price the stock options should be based on is $10,000 / 100,000 shares = $0.1 a share. Ok? If you don't understand, then just write a post. I would be happy to elaborate further.

So if you're friends and family is the first to go in with $10,000, then the company is worth $10,000. Strike price per share is $0.1.

Your "Director" friend agrees to work for 10 hours each month for $20 an hour. A total cost per month of $200. He agrees to be "on contract" for 6 months. The total stock option contract is now worth $200 X 6 months = $1200. If you friend do all his time as agreed upon, then he shall have had his stock options converted to shares valued at $1200 when that period ends. At the current strike price, $0.1 a share. That is: $1200 / $0.1 = 12,000 shares. Or in terms of actual ownership: 12,000 shares / (12,000 shares + 100,000 shares) = 10,7% of capital. The rest is owned by friends and family (passive owners I suppose?).

Now, here is the fun part where you're piece of the action comes in. You will need to, because of lack of own funds, work as an employee in your own startup. And you do this with stock options as compensation (because there is no money to pay you a salary, the business need to make money first). Also, you need to work up some actual equity in your project.

So you agree to, example only, to get $3000 every month as you're role as the startup CEO (usually these guys asks for no less than $10,000 a month). You agree to work for a full 12 months. You agree to cash in 3 months worth of stock options every quarter at the strike price, $0.1. Total contractual value for you: $3000 X 12 months = $36,000.

If you stay on the whole period, you will own $36,000 / $0.1 = 360,000 shares. And you will own 360,000 shares / ( 112,000 shares + 360,000 shares) = 76,3% of the capital in the company.

That is a sweet deal, no?