How to Source Products for Amazon FBA (Local Suppliers vs. China — What Actually Works)

How to Source Products for Amazon FBA (Local Suppliers vs. China — What Actually Works) Speaker 1: How to find the secrets to local suppliers that can be launched in just one day. So here's the big problem with most sellers. They're buying from overseas because that's what all the gurus are telling them like, oh, go buy from, you know, overseas. Well, here's the issue with that. When you ship it by boat, it takes months to arrive. So I've got a solution for you. No need to, you know, wait months to build your business. Buy from local suppliers and buy today. By buying local, you can get your product today. So here's why you shouldn't use overseas suppliers. And this is why most gurus out there are wrong. All these gurus out there that are claiming go buy from overseas, they're wrong. And here's why. Slow shipping times. And what this happens is called opportunity costs. If all your money is put into a product and it takes three months to get here, How much money could you have made during that three months had you bought a local product? That's what's called an opportunity cost. It's costing you money by having your money tied up because you can't be making money when it's tied up. So you lose that opportunity. Number two, expensive. You got shipping, tariffs, taxes and all these fees, all those things add up that when some people think, oh, it's cheaper to buy overseas, not when you add everything together. And then also too complex, right? You got to do freight forwarding, you got to fill out forms, you got import laws, it can get pretty complex. And then on top of that, communication. All right, some of you may have experienced this, or if any of you have tried buying overseas, where you go reach out to someone, maybe they're, for example, I'll use China as an example, you ask them a question, And then they respond back. And there's a little bit of a language barrier there. And they're not quite understanding the question. So then you have to explain it further. But because you're awake, when they're asleep, and when they're awake, you're asleep, you have to clarify, and they have to wait till they wake up. And then by the time they respond back, you're asleep. And just to get like a simple conversation going, it takes like a week. The other thing too is major delays. You know, I remember I was talking to someone that they had spent $800,000 on Halloween costumes. They just, that's all they do is they sell just during the month of and then they take the rest of the year off. It was around September and they were panicking because they said a lot of their inventory was still stuck on a ship coming from China because they bought multiple. And then holidays. Here's what's interesting. So for those of you that aren't aware of this with like China in just like I think like in a week or two, they're gonna have their Chinese New Year. They shut down for like three to six weeks. It's not like the US or Canada or UK when you have a holiday, you celebrate it for a day and then you go back to work the next day. Over there, they shut down for weeks. So that creates another problem. Now, let me give you a few examples of people who've ordered from China. So this is right there. The seller said to the supplier said, can I order iPhone cases? And this is what they sent. This right here. Then they said, I did a Google search and I read that toilet paper is popular. Can I buy toilet paper? Here's what they sent. Rolls of Google. I don't think Google would be happy if you were selling this. Then they said, I want to create toothpaste better than crust toothpaste. So what did they send? Crust toothpaste. I can imagine the commercial for that, like crust toothpaste. We get the crusties out. This is what they said. I don't think too many people want to buy toothpaste called crust, right? You're trying to get the crust out, not trying to get it in. And then someone said, I want an effective mop to clean up children's messes. This is what they sent. Stupid child efficiency mop. I know that for some people if you were to go buy that and give it to like your wife and said, hey, look what I bought you. She probably wouldn't be happy if she saw that was the name of the product that you bought. So moral of the story is, the big point of the story is don't buy from China like all those gurus are telling you. Buy local. And here's why you want to buy local. One, it's cheaper. No tariffs, no shipping, no taxes. It's local. You can just go pick it up. Two, better cash flow. Your money's not tied up for months while it's sitting on a slow boat from China. And you get an instant business because you can pick it up the same day, which means you can start selling it the day that you pick it up. Then easy communication, right? When you're awake, they're awake and you speak the same language. No issues there. And then it's safer. You don't have to worry about trade wars, turmoil, weather, closes, viruses, holidays or any of that. And they don't have to worry about fraud, right? Because when you're dealing with someone local, you don't have to worry about fraud because you can go knock on their door and talk to them. They're not going to take your money and run. And then also to your supporting local. Folks, this is what's so important. This is why I like buying local. Just think about this for a second. When you take your money and you send it off to China, for an example, it goes to China, it stays in China, it doesn't come back. But when you take your money and you buy from a local supplier, here's what happens. They pay that local employee, And then that local employee goes out, has lunch. They then pay the restaurant. The employee at the restaurant, she then comes home and she's able to pay her landlord and pay for groceries and help her kids. And that money from the landlord then goes to pay for their kids to be in ballet lessons locally. And as you can see, the money just stays local. It helps your local community. If you haven't noticed this about me, I'm all about helping people. This is why buying local is so important. You need to help your local community. Stop sending money off overseas. Help your local community, whether you're in Canada, the UK, Australia, the US, wherever you are. Buy local, help your local community. It creates jobs. It helps your community's economy. And the other thing too is you're going to get your products fast, right? It's not going to be stuck on ships. So you might be wondering, okay, great. I understand I need to buy local, but how do I find these local suppliers? Let me show you how. Number one is local chamber of commerces. So a chamber of commerce, what their goal is, is they want to take one local company and another local company and connect the two of them together so they can both help each other and grow the local economy. So many cities, many counties will have these. So you can look up to see what your local chamber of commerce is. Go to them and say, hey, I'm an online seller. I'm looking for products to sell. Is there a company that you can connect me with that I can buy their products from and sell it online? Then you've also got these city business lists where you can go to your local city and you say, can I get a list of all the different wholesale companies and distributors in the city? Because when someone goes to apply for a business license to open up a warehouse, a retail store, whatever it might be, they have to apply for a business license. The city's gonna have a list of all these different type of companies and you can ask them for it. Then you've got industrial zones. This is a fun one. I enjoy going to these industrial zones. I look for, oh, there's big warehouses there. I'm going to go there and I'm going to go and talk to these different companies. I have found some great suppliers doing this. Be careful. If you live in somewhere like Chicago, you know, you probably don't want to be roaming around these warehouses, you know, when you're like dodging bullets, you know, you know, you're, you're somewhere unsafe. So if you're in an area where it's not safe to go to industrial zones, don't do it then. But if you live in an area that's pretty safe, it's pretty cool going there and meeting some of these companies face to face and talking to them about their products. Another fun one is networking events. Now here's the thing, people who attend networking events, they're very well connected because in their mind, they hear that saying your net worth is your network. So they are all about networking. Well, when you go to some of these events, since when you talk to someone, they're probably connected with a lot of businesses, you can ask them for referrals. So let's say you go to the networking event, you say, hey, I'm an online business. I'm looking for more companies to work with. What do you do? Oh, I'm an insurance agent. Oh, you're an insurance agent. Great. Do you have any companies that you recently I started providing insurance for that maybe I could sell their products. You go talk to someone else. Oh, hi, I'm an investor. Oh, you're an investor, that's great. I'm looking to sell products online. Do you have any companies you've invested with that I could sell their products online? So when you go to these networking events, you get to meet other businesses and they're usually connected with other people who they could refer over to you. Then trade shows, this is one of the fun ones. I'm probably gonna be at a trade show in March called ASD. If you're able to attend, great. I would love to see you there. It'd be pretty cool. But at ASD, they have thousands of wholesalers and you get to talk to these suppliers and see the products that they sell. One of my favorite ones to go to It's called CES. Over 100,000 people attend it. It's huge. It's pretty huge. In fact, I just went to another trade show two weeks ago here in Florida. So trade shows are awesome. I see Arthur says, me too. So it sounds like Arthur, you'd love the trade shows too. And then Google Maps, go to Google Maps, type in like wholesale, supplier, distributor in Google Maps and you'd be surprised in your local area how many companies that you can actually find that you could work with locally. And then even Google, type in like, let's say you live close to Seattle, you can type in like Seattle wholesalers, Seattle suppliers, Seattle distributors and see what suppliers you can find there. And then local directories, there are different directories of businesses, you can go look in there and try to find some that way. So here's how you can even use AI to do it. You can go to ChatGPT and say, hey, ChatGPT, what's the contact info for the Chamber of Commerce in Seattle? As you can see, ChatGPT provides it. You can ask ChatGPT, what are networking events in Seattle? As you can see, ChatGPT provided a bunch of networking events. You can type in trade shows USA and it will give you a list of different trade shows. You can ask it for what are some custom toy manufacturers? As you can see here, it gives you a list. You can also ask it how to find distributors in the USA. It'll give you a list there. So you can ask ChatGPT about those things, but what you can't do is don't ask ChatGPT or don't ask your cat about your catnip supplier. I love this picture of the cat. Unknown Speaker: I'm not gonna ask you again, who's your catnip supplier? Speaker 1: So funny, funny images. If any of you have cats, you probably understand that one there.