Discovering Reliable and Stable Hardware Suppliers for Your Home Furnishing Business
Are you looking to break into the home furnishing and construction materials industry? Whether you’re a newcomer or a seasoned veteran, one of the most challenging aspects isn’t finding suppliers—it’s finding reliable and stable ones.
Finding a stable supplier often requires continuous evaluation and collaboration, which can be time-consuming. So, where can you find reliable and stable sources for construction materials?
The reliability of construction material sources is mainly reflected in the following aspects
It’s crucial to understand the criteria for a reliable source
- High-quality products. A reliable source means good materials, excellent production processes, and smooth cooperation, including aspects such as pricing, payment methods, after-sales support, and logistics.
- Fast sales. Non-business people might think that if a product is easy to use, it must sell well, but that’s not always the case. The reasons behind slow sales can be complex, such as high prices, buyers having fixed channels, or market saturation.
Fast sales can lead to long-term sales; slow sales require timely damage control, reflection on sales details, and striving for inventory-free sales initially. If market conditions improve later, you can adjust inventory quantities accordingly.
How to find reliable sources? There are seven methods
After understanding the criteria for reliable sources, the next step is to find them. Here are seven specific methods.
Your Own Brands
Finding sources through your own brands is a practical and efficient channel, yet it’s often overlooked. Paying attention to details is crucial.
Brands you use personally are well-known to you, and their product quality speaks for itself. You can easily contact the brand’s responsible person with a phone call, making procurement a natural process.
How to get in touch with the responsible person? Through product packaging, company websites, Google searches, etc., you can obtain contact information for wholesalers and factories. Smaller brands can be found on e-commerce platforms like Alibaba and Amazon, where you can send private messages to inquire. Additionally, in the era of social media, platforms like TikTok and Facebook also allow you to send private messages to customer service to get contact information.
Personal Connections
Finding sources through your network. It doesn’t have to be your direct connections; second, third, or even fourth-degree connections can be tapped into.
Review your network, make a few calls, send some messages, and you might find a reliable source! Since this method involves personal relationships, you can often get more favorable cooperation terms.
In the construction materials and hardware industry, many dealers’ sources come from their network or previous clients. After all, having cooperated before and knowing each other’s trustworthiness makes quality less of a concern.
Local Wholesale Markets
If you’re near an industrial belt, it’s recommended to start there for convenience in finding sources. If you have factories nearby, you can explore factory channels. If you have relatives or your own industry, you can also customize your own brand.
You can also visit well-known wholesale markets in various places. Even if you don’t find a suitable supplier, you can understand market trends. Compared to other methods, this approach might be more efficient, allowing you to quickly and extensively interact with various samples on-site.
Every country and city undoubtedly has such large wholesale markets, and you can also visit local large-scale wholesale markets or furniture piece specialty markets for research.
Building and Construction Expos
The recent trend at building and construction expos has been low. However, it’s still a channel worth paying attention to. Visit various booths, chat with brand managers, add a bunch of WhatsApp contacts, collect business cards, and then slowly organize the information when you return.
Where does the expo information come from? There are plenty of sources! Industry media, social media, newspapers, and magazines, etc.
Direct Factory Sourcing
Visiting factories with a bag in hand is a method for finding direct sources, but it’s not recommended for industry newcomers.
The low efficiency is secondary; the main issue is the insufficient order quantity. A small order might lead to you being denied entry by the factory security. Of course, special cases are exceptions, such as when you have your own traffic, funds, or connections, making you the right person to negotiate with factories.
Finally, I want to tell everyone that finding sources might be painful at the start, but as you become familiar with and deeply understand the supply chain, it will become easier and easier, and you will accumulate more and more reliable and stable sources.
Many people succeed because they accumulate various resources in the early stages! In addition to sources, a good product selection strategy is also key to a dealer’s booming business.
