As an extension to retail arbitrage, consider private labeling and wholesale. Alibaba.com can help you move your business to the next level.

Alibaba, Wholesale and Private Labels

Entrepreneur Girl talks about sourcing product to resell online.  Tracy opens up her business notebooks she has full of notes.

Sourcing can be very time consuming.  Tracy uses an example of finding a pair of goggles at a garage sale for $.25 and being able to resell it for $20.  While it’s a great profit margin, it’s only limited to the one pair that you found and you have to consider how long it took you to find that one pair by going from one garage sale to another.

You could consider buying the goggles wholesale, buy a large quantity from the manufacturer for you to resell for a profit.  Tracy uses the example of buying 300 pairs at $1.50 ea.  Consider how much time you would save by not having to run around trying to find 300 individual products to resell at that profit margin.  Everyday you would be running around sourcing for product to sell.  When you buy wholesale its potentially saving you a considerable amount of time.

Private labeling.  You contact a manufacturer of the goggles.  You think up of a different design and logo and the manufacturer makes it for you.  Tracy’s example is buying the goggles at $1.75 ea with a sales price of $20.  Private label allows you to create your own brand of a product.  You would be the only one to offer it since it is your own brand and no one else can sell it.

Use Alibaba.com to source for product to sell

A great place to source for product to sell is Alibaba.com, it is the worlds largest ecommerce company.  It’s full of manufacturers and does 80% of the ecommerce transactions in China, which is more than ebay and Amazon combined.

Things you need to start doing……

1. Find your product
2. Find your market
3. Find Wholesaler/Manufacturer

Research the product you want to sell and the market that is for the product.  Then you will work on finding a wholesaler for the product. You have to make sure there is a market for the product you are looking into selling.  You don’t want to get stuck with 300 purple elephant mugs when you realize there isn’t a market for it.

When on Alibaba.com you can see if the sellers are Gold rated.  That means they have a proven track record on Alibaba.

When you find a company on Alibaba to buy product from, you can place an order and use Ali pay which Alibaba places your money in escrow and the company ships the product to you.  Once you receive the product and are happy with the order then you let Alibaba know and they will release the escrow funds to the seller/manufacturer.   This way it makes it more of a secure transaction when you are buying product.

Think outside of the retail arbitrage and garage sale product sourcing methods

This video/post is to get you thinking outside of the box of retail arbitrage and garages sale methods of finding product.  Buying wholesale and private label products is something you can scale in your business, can be an ongoing stream of income if you have a hit product that you can sell 100s or even 1000s of.  Just think of the time you would save not having to go from garage sale to garage sale or retail outlets to find product.  The product you do find using retail arbitrage or garage sales is only limited to the product you find during your outings.  Once those products sell, you have to go find other deals that are out there, you have to be on the constant hunt for product to resell.

So be sure to do your research in finding a great product that sells and has a great profit margin.

Do you have any tips you want to share or have any questions?  Be a part of the conversation and comment below.