#087 - Amazon Wholesale 101 with Flips4Miles and Garrett Goral I The Amazon Wholesale Podcast

#087 - Amazon Wholesale 101 with Flips4Miles and Garrett Goral I The Amazon Wholesale Podcast Speaker 3: What is up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Amazon Wholesale Podcast. So this week's episode is one with a couple of guests, one of which I've sat down with before on this podcast and the other of which a lot of you probably know but have not had the opportunity of sitting down with yet, at least not on this podcast. So today's podcast is actually an episode that I stole from the Buy Box Bandits podcast. And now the Buy Box Bandits podcast is hosted by Miles Longstreth, otherwise known as Flips4Miles and Garrett Goral, otherwise known as All out Amazon. And so if you guys have been following me for any amount of time, you're definitely familiar with these two guys. They're both experts when it comes to online arbitrage. Garrett has been doing quite a bit on the wholesale side, specifically when it comes to distribution over the last year or two. In fact, my mastermind buys, I think we bought over, it was like $1.2 million worth of product from Garrett just in the last year alone. So they know their stuff when it comes to, like I said, miles with online arbitrage. And Garrett with Wholesale and with Distribution. And so the topic of today's conversation is more along the lines of Amazon Wholesale for Beginners. How should beginners start? How should they transition to wholesale if they're already doing something like arbitrage? And also some strategies for helping arbitrage sellers transition directly into wholesale. So for those of you that have been listening for a while, this is definitely one of our more tactical episodes. And we talk about specific things you can do Either to, like I said, transition into wholesale or to start your wholesale journey if you're a newer seller. So I want you guys to pay attention here. Listen to this one twice if you have to, take notes, and be sure to go and subscribe to the Buy Box Bandits podcast as well. Again, this episode was originally posted there. Miles and Garrett have a lot of cool guests on there, all Amazon sellers talking about everything from wholesale to arbitrage to private label. And I've been lucky enough to be a guest over there two or three times at least at this point. You'll also hear a cool story about kind of how I got my start in the social media space and on Twitter in particular. Garrett was actually the one that I originally reached out to on Twitter, looking to get featured on the Buy Box Bandits podcast and they had me on. This was almost two years ago now. And it was after that recording, January of 2022, that Miles and Garrett both convinced me to start posting on Twitter and to start getting a lot more active there. And building relationships with people in the community and building my personal brand. So I really have a lot to owe Miles and Garrett because they helped me get my start when it comes to the social media thing. If it wasn't for them, you guys would not be listening to this podcast. And I would probably have a much different life for the worse, right? If I hadn't met those guys to begin with. So enjoy this episode. If you enjoy it, leave a rating or review on Spotify or Apple of five stars. And if you're watching this on YouTube, give us a thumbs up because it helps other people find The video and find the podcast. So thanks so much for watching, guys, and enjoy the episode. Speaker 1: What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the Buy Box Bandits podcast. Today we're joined by the man, Corey Ganim, and we're going to be talking all things Amazon Wholesale and specifically how to transfer from doing online and retail arbitrage to doing wholesale or even just starting to mix some wholesale into your business in 2025. A lot of you guys had a big Q4 and are looking to turn those big numbers into really sustainable numbers, maybe delegate a little bit more. Outsource a little bit more and mixing Amazon Wholesale into your business is a great way to go ahead and do that. If you haven't yet checked out Boxum, make sure you get a two-week free trial on our website, boxum.com, for all your listing, shipping and analytics needs. We just went over some of the new pages we're bringing out soon, which we're super excited to show you guys as well. But Corey, good to have you here, man. Let's talk all things wholesale and specifically making the transfer from online and retail arbitrage to wholesale in 2025. Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me back, guys. It's been a while since I've been on here, right? Speaker 2: I think you're our most frequent guest at this point. Speaker 3: Yeah, really? I want to say this is my third or maybe fourth because the first one we did was back in like January of 2023, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, tell the story with that too. That's one of my, like, honestly, probably my favorite Buy Box Bandit story, honestly. Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was kind of just looking for any Amazon podcasts out there. This was late 2022. I stumbled upon a Buy Box Bandits episode with Chris Potter, who is the man when it comes to finance and bookkeeping, like he's my bookkeeper. And I know Chris Potter, but I didn't know you guys. So I hit him up. I said, Hey, Chris, like I saw you were on this podcast. These guys sound smart. I think I have a story to tell about my wholesale business and help educate their audience because they seem like young guys just like me. And so I asked him to connect me to you guys and Garrett, that's when he put, I think he told me to DM you or like he put us in a group message or something like that. And I remember I hit you up and you blew me off at first as you should, right? Cause I literally had zero followers, zero following. Speaker 2: For context, if anyone wants to get on the Buy Box Bandits podcast, this is inevitably what happens. I call Miles. I'm like, Hey yo, do you want to interview this dude, Corey? He instantly pulls up your profile. Speaker 3: Literally no tweets. Speaker 1: That was true though. It wasn't because there was nothing there. Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: I get it. Like that's a good filter, right? Like people, and that's really a good lesson for the people watching is like, if you want to get, you know, if you want to be on podcasts like this, or if you want to get to know people that are at a higher level, a great way to do that is just to be posting about it on Twitter or on Instagram, literally just documenting what you're doing day to day. Speaker 2: Be vulnerable, like show vulnerability in your content. Speaker 1: Yeah, show what you mess up, show what's not working, show what's working, right? That's just like a formula, like algorithms are good, like algorithms got all of you guys to listen to this, like algorithms will bring good people to your life that are interested in what you're doing if you give yourself a chance to get to it, basically. Speaker 3: Exactly. And just to close out that story, I mean what Garrett, I think I DM'd you once and then you kind of blew me off and then I DM'd you again and it was basically just like, hey man, like just wanted to check in one more time. If you're not interested, no worries. I think I could bring some wholesale value and yeah, and you guys had me on and kind of the rest is history. So that was like January of 2023, I think. So just exactly two years ago. Speaker 1: I think you were even, weren't you sitting at the desk too? You were like. Yeah. Speaker 3: Cause that was, I remember that was in my old apartment where the desk was for the first year. So like I was in a completely different like setup, apartment, everything. So yeah. Speaker 1: And you were like, Yeah, I think I'm going to get super active on LinkedIn and I was like, yeah, maybe you can do that, but you should definitely do Twitter as well. That was when you had the AI, remember the AI profile picture? Speaker 3: The profile picture, yeah, I had that for a minute. Speaker 2: And you had the notorious Apple headphones, like the over the ear headphones. Speaker 3: The AirPod Maxes, yeah. God, I miss those. I miss those. Speaker 1: You got new ones on that match the background as well. Okay, but break down what Amazon Wholesale is and for the person that's selling retail and online arbitrage right now that maybe is in their first couple of years, Let's talk about why wholesale can make a lot of sense for them in terms of long-term sustainability and upside. Speaker 3: Yeah, so wholesale, think of wholesale as kind of like just a bigger league arbitrage, right? We're doing the exact same thing that we're doing in arbitrage. We're finding brand name products that are already selling well on Amazon that people are already searching for. But instead of buying them from a retailer like a Target or a Walmart or a Dick's Sporting Goods, we're going and buying those products in bulk, sometimes directly from the manufacturer themselves, directly from the brand. And other times we're buying through these big authorized distributors who sometimes carry a hundred different brands, right? So not only do we have access to that brand that we were originally looking for, We have access to other brands just like it. So that's wholesale in a nutshell. And as far as, well, you know, I'll kind of pause there, right? And let's maybe dig in on the model itself. That's kind of what you guys are going for. Speaker 1: Yeah, please, man. Absolutely. Speaker 3: Yeah, so when it comes to the wholesale model, like I said, it's just arbitrage on steroids and the people who do really well with wholesale are those people who aren't afraid to get on the phone. They're not afraid to cold call a supplier and have just a conversation about potentially working together. The people who are proactive and what I found is to be like the most serious arbitrage sellers are the ones who absolutely crush it in wholesale. Speaker 2: I feel like the stereotypical wholesale seller is our good friend Joe, right? Joe can talk to a wall for hours. You know what I'm saying? He can talk to anyone. He can build a rapport with anyone and that's essentially what is the And today we're talking about the sixth skill with wholesale. It's not necessarily data-driven, not necessarily someone with a big pocket. It's people that can have conversations, can interact with sales reps and to develop that relationship because that's ultimately what it takes to get that extra 5% off, 10% off, which all we're going to talk in this episode. Speaker 3: Right. And a point I want to make though is, yeah, wholesale comes a lot easier for those people who are just natural extroverts, right? But I would say the majority of wholesale sellers, myself included, are not that type of person, right? Like I'm an introvert and there's plenty of wholesale sellers out there who absolutely crush it, but they might not be that most extroverted person out there on the planet. And neither was I when I started. It just takes putting in those reps and having those conversations just a few per day to really help you come out of your shell and get a better feel for what you're talking about, which will make it easier to approach more suppliers over time. And it's kind of like a snowball effect that compounds on itself. Speaker 1: That was some game right there for sure too. So the big, like the big, big first thing is like, okay, what are the actual first steps though? I made 12k profit last month with retail arbitrage. I feel like that was unsustainable. I was driving around. I was doing pickup orders all day. I was doing merchant build. That looks a lot different than what I see from your content online, Corey, talking about prep centers and delegation and virtual assistants. So what are those actual first steps to get into wholesale stuff? Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's actually pretty simple when you break it down. And so there's a lot of people out there that try to overcomplicate this process or they tell you, Hey, you've got to go call a hundred suppliers a week, or you've got to go send 500 emails. And the reality of the situation, that's just not the case. So if you're an arbitrage seller and you're already successfully selling products in an arbitrage business model, the easiest way to transition to wholesale is to simply We're here to help you start sourcing the products that you're already selling in your arbitrage business, but start sourcing them at wholesale, right? So really, again, to keep things as simple as possible, I like to separate brands into two categories in my mind. You've got your big brands, right? Which are anything like your Head & Shoulders or your Oral-B or your Procter & Gamble products, that type of stuff. Those are big brands. And on the other end of the spectrum, you've got your small and mid-sized brands. Even though 98% of people have probably never heard of them, they still sell really well on Amazon and there's still a lot of people buying them on Amazon. So if you're an arbitrage seller and you want to add wholesale to your business or you want to transition to wholesale, literally just look at the brands that you're already selling and Separate them into one of those two categories that I just mentioned. And then for the big brands, you call them up and you ask to be put in touch with their distributors because the chances of landing a direct wholesale account with one of these big brands, it's just not very high, right? And then for the other category, your small and your midsize brands, you call the brand and you ask for a wholesale account directly with them. All right, so it's those two actions. That's it. Speaker 2: And it's actually extraordinarily simple to find those small, medium-sized brands. If you load up Keeper Product Finder, pick any category, sports and outdoors, tools, automotive, arts and crafts. Speaker 1: Corey loves tools and automotive. Speaker 2: Oh yeah, big time. Speaker 3: Yeah, they're great because they're people to sleep on them. Speaker 2: You load up a category, right? Three or more seller filter, right? You want to avoid a lot of the PL brands. You want to spend your time looking at and calling brands that are highly reseller friendly and resellable, right? Throw any sales rank maximum on there. Probably avoid Amazon, filter out Amazon, and that's your list, right? Any category, you're gonna have 5,000, 10,000 products that represent brands based on that criteria. Then it's a simple, load up the Amazon listing, find products, what the brand is not on, right, that are stable, that represent all the macro characteristics of the products you're looking for, and call them. And then keep calling them and keep reaching out until they tell you to screw off, You get the account or they put you in contact with a distributor they can work with that they can refer you to. Those are the three options. There's only three things that can happen. You don't get the account, you get the account or you get a distributor that no one knows about that was referred to directly from a sales rep within the brand. Speaker 1: Right when you find one good one that lets you buy it wholesale, storefront stalk those sellers and immediately you'll find other ones with the same model too. And that Keepa search Garrett was mentioning, what you could do too to get the brand list really easy of every brand and tools in automotive that has three plus sellers and has listings for the good sales rank, you could download that CSV of brands. And then I don't know how to actually do this, but you would ask ChatGPT to make the columns How Excel would become one unique thing per column to take a list of like A, A, B, B, B, B, B, C, C, D, D and make it A, B, C. You know what I mean? To get those names unique one column per, right? And then you'd instantly have that for analysts as well too. No, that made sense though. That does make sense. Speaker 3: No, I hear what you're saying, right? Because with Keep A Product Finder, it just gives you so much data and using something like a ChatGPT to kind of filter down that list. Works wonders. And there's a lot of other use cases when it comes to AI and selling on Amazon as well. Not to go off on too much of a rabbit hole here, but one thing I like using ChatGPT for is to find trade shows and a specific niche. So something, you know, we were just talking about tools and automotive products. Really within the last, I think it was like a week or two ago, just for fun, I typed into ChatGPT. I don't remember the exact prompt, but it was something along the lines of show me large trade shows in the US that are focused on tool brands and distributors. And it gave me a list of five shows. And I looked those five shows up and they're perfect fits for shows that we would like to attend as wholesale sellers. And then you go look at the exhibitor lists of the brands that are attending those shows. And then there's a list of, you know, 1,000 sometimes for these bigger shows up to 2,000 different companies that you just look them up on Amazon, see if they're selling well on Amazon and then call them up. So that's just another kind of niche strategy for finding a lot of really qualified suppliers quickly is by looking at trade show list. Speaker 1: Yeah, trade show model too as well for people who might be unfamiliar because Statistically, in America, most people live near a major metropolitan and most major metropolitan areas are going to have trade shows they can go and attend as soon as, you know, the next couple of months. Speaker 3: Yeah. And this is probably one of the biggest tip for people that are trying to get into wholesale, right? Maybe they are beginners or maybe they're doing arbitrage, but they're like, all right, what's the quickest way to get into wholesale? The quickest way to get into wholesale is by attending a trade show in your area, just like you said, Miles. The thing is, is there are trade shows happening all around the country in every city and town all the time and a great website that somehow is completely low-key. I didn't know about this website until like within the last few months. It's called 10times.com, the number 10times.com. And it is basically a huge trade show list and you can filter by country, you can filter by state, you can filter by like industry. So if you go on 10times.com, you can look at every tool trade show happening in the Southeastern United States from, you know, January 25 through July, right? And it's literally thousands, no exaggeration. Just find a trade show in your area. It doesn't really matter what niche or what category it is. Chances are no matter how small the show is, there's going to be at least one or two or three brands there that you could sell on Amazon. And it's as simple as walking up to the booth, introducing yourself, telling them what it is that you do, which is you're an e-commerce, retail and distribution business owner. And you have a conversation with them about carrying their products on your digital shelves. Speaker 2: That's huge. Part of our job here on Buy Box Bandits as your loyal host is breaking down all those limiting beliefs. We do it every week. We're here for you guys. A lot of the people that are listening to this are going to be like, oh, I only have $5,000 to go to a trade show. Should I go? Or I only have $3,000. You know what I'm saying? And so with that being said, what are some of the prerequisites for someone to take the time out of their day to actually go to a trade show? Maybe sales requirements, maybe spending power, those sorts of things. Speaker 3: So really there's no hard and fast requirements that I would say like, hey, until you have XYZ, don't go to a trade show. I mean, if you're at all interested in the wholesale business model and you have some level of Amazon selling experience, even if you've only been selling for a month or two, Really, it doesn't take a ton of capital to make a convincing case to a brand or to a distributor at a trade show. A lot of these brands and distributors, they don't have any minimums at all. The ones that do, sometimes it's 100 bucks or 500 bucks. In general, the amount of capital I recommend to people who are interested in getting started in wholesale is at least 5K. Right, so you've got to have at least 5K in cash for inventory. And assuming you have 5K in cash for inventory, then you can make a convincing case to just about anyone on why you should be able to buy from them. And that doesn't mean you spend all 5K at one time. If anything, it means you spread that 5K as wide as you can among as many different products and as many different suppliers as you can so that you're not you're not taking too much risk with any one product or any one supplier. Speaker 1: Corey looks like a tight end at the combine with that shirt on. Speaker 2: This is like a dry fit like Brack Bauer from last year. Speaker 3: I came to the gym this morning. Speaker 1: So when you're actually initially building those relationships right whether it's cold calling brands, cold emailing brands, approaching them at trade shows for example too, I'm looking at the name of the person or the address of the distributor on the back of the soap I can see over there that I think literally has address on there. When you're doing outreach, what do those conversations look like and what are the common objections you come across to as well and how to handle them? Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll tell you what those conversations look like for me for the first two, maybe even three years that I was doing this. And it involved me calling up these brands or calling up these distributors and saying something along the lines of, Hey, my name's Corey Ganim. I sell on Amazon or I own an Amazon business. I want to open a wholesale account with you guys. Can you send me your price list? Right. Sometimes if they didn't hang up on me right away, they might respond with, well, okay, well, what are you guys looking to buy? And every single time my answer would be, well, we buy anything that's profitable. So can you send us your pricing? And we'll just, we'll find something. And that is the, like everything about that approach is wrong, right? So that's how those conversations went for me in the early days, the way they go now, now that I know the right way to do it. And now that I know the right way to position myself, Is something along the lines of, you know, I call one of these brands or one of these distributors and I say, Hey, my name's Corey Ganim. I am the buyer for a retail business based here in Charlotte, North Carolina. I see you guys carry brand X. There's actually a specific product from that brand we're looking to buy. I actually have an order here in front of me for 500 units of that product. So assuming pricing makes sense, I'm happy to send this over. So can I maybe talk to somebody there in sales? And when you just say that line, right, you position yourself as somebody who's a serious buyer and you're gonna get 50% of the time you're gonna land that account, like no exaggeration. So that's kind of like the evolution of having no idea what you're talking about and positioning yourself poorly to positioning yourself as a serious buyer with confidence and then being able to open a lot of accounts as a result. Speaker 2: And there's a couple of things to dig in there. First and foremost, right, Let's be honest, there's no CEO, there's no president, there's no owner of a company that's going to be out hitting up trade shows talking to sales reps, right? That's just not how it would happen. And so that positioning aspect of simply just kind of portraying yourself as a sales rep, as a manager, as an account manager, as a buyer of a company in a department, You establish that bit of a facade. You add a little depth to your company, which in turn is really what you're trying to accomplish, right? Because you're trying to lower that barrier of the people you're talking to. You want to distance yourself from all the Amazon sellers that walk up to a booth and say, hey, I want to buy some stuff. What do you got? We're trying to disassociate all of those preconceived notions of what an e-com seller is and establish ourselves as a retail seller, as a professional business person that's willing to do and wanting to do some pretty serious and some pretty big numbers. Our first job in these conversations is that disassociation from the notorious and negatively perceived Amazon seller, which rightfully so has earned a certain reputation over the years. Speaker 3: Exactly. And it's crazy because that is, it's probably one of the most common DMs that I get on Instagram. It's of people saying, Hey Corey, I've been trying wholesale for a while and I've contacted all these distributors, but I just can't seem to get an account open. Or if they can get an account open, it's I just can't seem to do it more than once. It's like they got lucky one time and just opened one account. And I swear, I'd say 95% of the time when I ask them, well, okay, what are you saying to these suppliers? How are you positioning yourself? Almost every single time, the answer is, well, I send a quick email and I ask for their price list. And then, you know, sometimes I follow up, sometimes I don't, and I'm just not having any luck. And the issue is twofold here. One, they're sending an email. They're afraid to pick up the phone. And two, they're not following up properly and they're not positioning themselves properly. And they're not saying, hey, I'm a buyer for a serious retail business here. We have products we're looking to buy. I have budget that I need to spend. So if it's not with you, it's going to be with somebody else. So it's probably smart for you to return my call. That's kind of the approach that you want to take. Maybe not saying it that exact way, but you get the idea. Speaker 2: It's also important to know exactly what you're looking for. To come in with specific SKUs and a target price point of what you're trying to accomplish and let them determine how much you need to do to meet those sorts of quantities. Having an actual idea of what you are looking for is massively huge, is massively impactful to getting off on a good foot. Because it shows that you've done your due diligence. It shows that you've probably worked with other suppliers before and it shows that you mean business. Even if you approach it like, hey, I'm currently buying products XYZ from a couple of your competitors. We're looking to see if you can get competitive with them. We're currently buying at $9.55. Can you beat their price point? If you can, let's get it on. You know what I'm saying? Speaker 3: Right. Exactly. No, it's a great point. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And so it seems like it's really two parts of the equation, volume of contacts and then quality of interaction, right? Speaker 2: Quality over the volume though, for sure. Speaker 1: Okay. Well, that's very true, right? Now I think about it because it's like most of these guys we talk to, they're big wholesale sellers, have like a couple accounts they hammer. Speaker 3: Right it's really it really is it's quality over volume right and I've I've actually been saying this quite a bit recently in my content Garrett I know you have been as well. And that is, again, it's just another big misconception that a lot of newer sellers have about transitioning to wholesale. A lot of people are afraid to make the jump to wholesale because they think that they've got to call a hundred suppliers a week or send 200 emails a week when that's just not the reality of the situation. It is all quality over quantity. And to give you an example of that, right, I told you guys I'm working on a YouTube series where I'm trying to sell 60K In 60 days from scratch, so calling new suppliers, making calls every day, documenting that whole process. And I'm literally looking at my statistics on my whiteboard right here. Guys, in about a four-week period, it didn't even take 60 days, but in a four-week period, I only contacted 38 suppliers. Of those 38, I submitted 10 applications. Of those 10 applications, we had nine approved. And of those nine accounts that we opened, I haven't updated this in three weeks. So it says that we placed five POs total. Now, three weeks later, it's closer to I think eight or nine total purchase orders with nine different suppliers. After having only contacted 38, but it's because I got really crystal clear on the exact type of supplier I was looking for. So I made sure they were high quality leads. And then I made sure I followed up with them relentlessly. Some of these didn't pan out until week three or week four or week five. So that's the nature of this business, right? Is really more consistency and follow-up than anything. Speaker 2: And really the reason why There's so fewer contexts than a lot of you may think is because a lot of the filtering and pre-qualifying happens on the beginning of the process. The value of going directly to the brand is we can qualify the products and the brand before we even reach out. The drawback of reaching out to simply distribution companies off the bat is Google's kind of your best friend there. You Google Philadelphia grocery distributor and the unfortunate reality of that situation is you're going to get a catalog. But you don't know the pricing, you don't know the products, you don't know the brands, you don't know whether even if they're on Amazon or not. But using sort of like that Keeper Product Finder method or Smart Scout or however you want to do it, you can filter on listings that sell a certain amount of times, that have a certain price point, We're the brand is not on the listing. So you know, they have to be willing to at least talk to you if they don't look like they have some sort of like exclusive agreement already in place and the Amazon's not in the picture. So it's not, it's never going to be a scenario where you reach out to someone and their products suck because you've done that in the beginning. Your short list of brands you're reaching out to are all pre-qualified based on the data you're looking for. Same thing with reverse sourcing from an LA perspective that a lot of you guys are used to. We're not going on to Nike.com and then mapping that to Amazon. We're in a storefront and mapping it back to Nike.com, Kohl's, et cetera, et cetera. We're using all the Amazon data to reverse engineer the brands we reach out to. And at that point, then it's just a numbers game, a contact game to actually get those accounts opened, in which case we already know the data is true. So at that point, we're golden. Speaker 3: That's a great point to reiterate is that really the old way of doing wholesale and the way that I did it for years, spinning my wheels for weeks at a time, was looking for a supplier first and then trying to find a needle in the haystack, trying to find the one out of 10 profitable products that supplier carries out of the 10,000 products in their catalog. That's the old way of doing it. The way that I do it, the way that Garrett does it, the way that we teach is essentially the reverse sourcing process. So instead of us just calling 100 distributors and opening a bunch of accounts and then starting to search for a needle in the haystack, Let's flip the process on its head. Let's find products and brands that are already selling well, that other people are selling. So that way we know they're profitable because if other people are selling them, that means we can too. We've just got to find them at a good price. And then let's go direct to the source, right? Let's go straight to the brand and ask to buy it from the brand. And if the brand says no, Then we asked the brand to connect us with one of their distributors, which is probably where the other people that are selling those products on Amazon are sourcing them. So it's just a much, honestly, easier, obviously, much, much simpler and just much more straightforward approach because you're taking a direct path to good products instead of having to generate good product leads out of thin air. Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you're initially starting out doing those distributor, you know, Googling the distributor method, for example, what are the green flags and red flags in those websites and like suppliers as a whole? Speaker 3: Yeah, so qualified distributors really just come down to three simple criteria. So the first criteria is they've got to be B2B, right, which means business to business. So if they have a wholesale division or if they sell products in bulk, right, that's what you're looking for. We're looking for a legitimate distributor. Second criteria is they've got to carry brand name products that are already selling well on Amazon. That's why the reverse sourcing method that we were just talking about is superior because we find the products that are selling well and then we go and find suppliers for those products. So basically all the suppliers that we look for, they already meet that second criteria, right? And then the third and final criteria is they've got to sell to retailers. Now the reason that I added this criteria over the years is because there was a supplier that I talked to for a while and I was trying to get the account with them. They met the first two criteria, right? They were B2B and they carried brand name products that are already selling well on Amazon. But when I talked to the sales rep on the phone, he told me, he's like, well, Corey, you know, yeah, we carry brand name products. Yes, we sell to other businesses, but we mainly just sell to healthcare companies and the government. We don't really sell to like retail businesses. And so that's when the light bulb went off in my head. I'm like, oh, okay. So I should be targeting suppliers that sell to retailers as one of their main customer types. Because if I'm working with suppliers that know how to work with retailers, which is what I am, then we're both going to have an easier time. They're going to know what I need. I'm going to understand better how they work. And it's just a better relationship. So that's when I added that third criteria that they've got to work specifically with retail businesses. Speaker 2: And the other cool thing, right, and you didn't mention this as a criteria, but it comes hand in hand with the process, is the whole supply chain verification, authenticating the products. And in 2025, 2024, unfortunately, this is something that has to be top of mind. But the cool thing is we haven't really spent time talking about it because the process leads directly to that supply chain verification. If you're buying products directly from the brand, you're golden. If you're buying products directly from a distributor that was referred to you by the brand, well, that is a direct arm of that brand. That's a direct extension of one supply chain level apart from the brand. Automatically can map directly back to that brand. And so that alleviates a lot of the headaches that come with having to worry about Amazon account health issues as opposed to buying from a random distributor from Google, which you don't know at all where those products are coming from, how they're coming from the other companies, et cetera. Speaker 3: And I'm glad you mentioned that because, I mean, honestly, that is probably the biggest benefit of this method and of this business model in 2025. I almost completely glossed over it. And the reason this is such an important point is because like you said, I mean, everybody I know at this point has gone through a section three review, or they've gone through a supply chain verification review, or they've gone through a brand review. And guys, you're pretty much 99.9% of the time gonna be perfectly fine and pass these reviews with flying colors if you're following this method that we just laid out. Because if you're following this method, you're only buying from one of two places. You're either buying directly from the brand, in which case you're perfectly safe, or you're buying from an authorized distributor of the brand, in which case you're also perfectly safe, right? Assuming that is a large established distributor that's been around for a while. Which it probably is because that's why the brand recommended them. So this is a great way to kind of safeguard yourself from some of the account health issues that are running so rampant that we're seeing, it seems like on the Twitter timeline every single day, right? We're seeing some sellers running into this issue who are either buying from sketchy websites or maybe buying from a supplier who's not authorized, who they didn't realize until it was too late. Speaker 1: Yeah, and the big red flags for the unauthorized stuff is like Discord and Telegram and like Instagram. You know, you want like old school suppliers, you know what I mean? Speaker 2: A lot of times when they're offering an ASIN along with their offer, it causes for concern as well. Speaker 3: Yep. That's a good point, right? There's a lot of... A lot of suppliers out there who market to Amazon sellers are huge red flags and we should probably touch on that, right? Because that's a huge pitfall that a lot of newer wholesale sellers fall into because they don't know necessarily how to vet suppliers properly. So they end up buying from some guy off Telegram or from some guy off WhatsApp. And three months later, their account suspended because they got hit with a Section 3 and they can't verify where that product came from. So guys, if anything, the best suppliers We have websites that are on page 15 of Google that look like they haven't been updated since 2001, right? Because those are typically the old school distributors that have been in business for a really long time that have like longstanding relationships with some of these brands. So obviously that's not the case with every distributor, but that is a general rule of thumb to keep in mind. Speaker 2: As we kind of like chronologically work through our process, right? We talked about finding leads, reaching out, Now, at the end, you're inevitably going to get prices, right? You're inevitably going to get products or product offerings at a particular price point. And believe it or not, a lot of times that pricing is not going to be good off the bat, right? We could send them three different SKUs, four different SKUs, and then the pricing received off the bat is a couple dollars higher than what we would anticipate, what we would want. What's that next step? What's the follow-up? Speaker 3: So a perfect example of how to approach this is something that we went through literally yesterday. So there's a new distributor that we just opened a couple of weeks ago. We sent them over a couple of products and a couple of part numbers of products that we were interested in. And we just said, hey, we're looking at 300 units of this one, 100 units of this one, 200 units of this one. What does our pricing look like? So they respond with pricing. They respond with, I think it was about $6.50 per unit. And we really needed it at $6 a unit. It didn't make sense at $6.50, but it made sense at $6. So what we did is we responded and we said, Hey guys, thanks for the quote. How many would we need to buy to be able to pay $6 per unit? And they, this is what happens when you ask, right? You never know when you ask. They actually shot back and said, well, hey, uh, we'll actually give you, it's $5 and 86 cents per unit if you buy at least 168 units at a time, which we were, we were planning on buying way more than that. So like literally just by asking it's like, okay, well we exceeded our $6 target. We're buying at 5.86 and now our margin just went from 8% to now 14%, right? Or something like that. So, A lot of times by saying that phrase that I just mentioned, like, how many do I need to buy to get X price? You would be shocked. The vast majority of the time, you at least get a better price than they quoted you. I can't always guarantee you're going to get the price you need, but 80% of the time, you're going to get a better price in some way, shape or form. Speaker 2: The key to success there is to allow one of those factors to be on a sliding scale. Where people lose in the wholesale negotiation process is trying to dictate price and quantity. It doesn't work like that. The way I typically do it is lead with a target price point and let them dictate quantity. A lot of times, if you have your certain price, if you have an ideal price, you could probably afford another 10, 15, 20 days of stock if that is the case. I'd rather have a good price rather than have the quantity I want. You can't dictate both. You either have to leave one of them on a sliding scale for the sales rep to dictate what that is. The cool thing is though, when you allow the quantity to be on a sliding scale for the sales reps, It gives them more motivation to ask for that discount because it gives them more money. A lot of sales reps don't make more money if the price is lower. However, if the volume is higher, a lot of them are going to make more money because they're commissioned on the revenue basis. And so keep that in mind, right? These sales reps are heavily monetized on the overall volume of their business. And so that's something to use to your benefit and leverage on. Speaker 3: Yep, that's a great point. Very good point. Speaker 1: So yeah, so we've clearly seen that this stuff's doable. As we finish up, can we just go through like bullet point checklist for first steps, two minute synopsis of what people can go ahead to do? Because now's the perfect time to get going on this stuff. Sales reps at these companies are excited to make some cash. Speaker 2: It's the new- Finally back at work. Speaker 3: Yep. Speaker 1: Finally, man. Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean really a quick and dirty action plan for somebody. So before you get started, you've got to You've got to have a business entity of some sort because suppliers will only work with you if you're also a business. So of course, talk to a CPA, talk to an attorney, but for 99% of people, a simple LLC will work. So you're going to set up your LLC and then you're going to start calling really only two to three brands per day. It doesn't take hundreds, like we said. So you'll use a tool like Keep a Product Finder, or you'll use a tool like SmartScout to find two to three qualified brands per day. You'll call those brands and you will ask them to open a wholesale account. And if they say no, then you ask to be referred to one of their authorized distributors. And once you open an account or once you receive pricing, then you look for those products that are profitable. And if you can't find any, then you start asking that question of, well, hey, how many do I need to buy to get X price? X price being a price that you can buy at and be profitable. And it's literally rinse and repeat. It's those four steps over and over and over again. And if you do that every weekday, even for 30 days, like it doesn't take months and years. Like a lot of people say, if you stay consistent for 30 days, you'll have a pipeline of six figures worth of products to buy. You're going to start needing to look for more capital because you have so many profitable opportunities. That's how this works. If you just hang in there for about 30 days. Speaker 2: And you notice Corey specifically specified weekdays. So we shouldn't be working on the weekends. He made that very clear. Speaker 3: Yeah. And also suppliers are open on the weekends, right? If you want to do some sourcing or if you want to look through some catalogs on the weekends, go for it. But when it comes to doing outreach, two to three new suppliers per weekday, is all it takes for 30 days. Assuming you're following up with those two to three that you've called, right? It's not, Hey, I called three today and I'm never calling those three again if they didn't answer. It's I called three today. I talked to one. I've got to call the other two that I didn't talk to tomorrow and I've got to call this one back later this week. I'm going to call three more new ones tomorrow. You see what I mean? That's how this stacks up. That's why I'm doing only two or three. Speaker 2: Are there any certain maps on Call of Duty on the weekends to prepare for Babylon Monday? Speaker 3: Absolutely. I would say Babylon is by far the map that you're going to want to practice the most on. It resembles real life the most. It just makes the most sense. Speaker 1: That's what's up. Cool. Where can people find you on social media, Corey? Speaker 3: Guys, if you want to find out more about me, really the best place to go is my podcast. It's literally called The Amazon Wholesale Podcast. Speaker 1: I wonder what it talks about on there. Speaker 3: I have no idea. It's odd. I've had Garrett on there before. Miles, I don't even know if I've had you on there yet. We need to do an OA versus wholesale. Speaker 1: I was just thinking that. We should do the debate on that for sure. Speaker 3: But guys, go check out the podcast. Like I said, I've got, I think, 82 or 83 episodes going back for about a year and a half now. You can binge from episode one and learn a lot from a lot of other really successful wholesale sellers. Speaker 1: That's what's up. Appreciate you guys watching. Get going on wholesale. If there's something you guys are interested in, make sure to subscribe to Buy Box Bandits, follow us on socials, and we're on YouTube Live every Monday at 5 p.m. Eastern for Money Monday. Appreciate you guys watching. See you guys in the next one. Speaker 3: See you guys.