Optimizing Your Supply Chain

Amy Wees.m4a Hey, I'm Amy Wiese, and I'm here at the second BDSS Market Masters event at the Gatsby Mansion in Austin. It's been so cool. And today I want to spend a few minutes talking about something that comes up here all the time, which is optimizing your supply chain. So many of us Amazon, TikTok, e-commerce sellers struggle because we do not have an optimized supply chain. What does that mean? Maybe we're not getting the best price from our suppliers. Maybe we aren't ensuring quality control, and maybe we haven't protected our products. And all of this can shut our business down very, very quickly. So I'm Amy Wiese from Amazing at Home e-commerce consulting, and I am a TikTok, Amazon, and sourcing expert. And today I want to talk to you about how do you optimize your supply chain? So how do you optimize your supply chain? How do you get the best price, the best quality, and the best protection for your products? First, the best price. So most sellers that I talk to, they don't actually know their supplier. They maybe found their supplier on Alibaba . com, nothing wrong with that, but they're talking to a sales rep. They really aren't sure who their supplier is, what their capabilities are. And whether or not they're even talking to a decision maker that can help them get the best price. So, in order to get the best price, I need you to know who your supplier really is. You need to learn how to vet your suppliers. Next, you need to understand, and part of vetting your supplier is understanding what are their capabilities, right? What capabilities do they possess that can help you? So many sellers that I talk to have never even talked to their supplier, visited the factory, or even gotten on a video chat with them to actually tell their supplier. So you can actually see, is this just a trading company who's outsourcing your factory production? Is it a factory that isn't even making your products, but is charging you and sending your products to another factory? If you haven't seen the factory, either on a video call, or you don't understand the capabilities of what it takes to make your product, then you are probably missing out, and that goes into the pricing of your products. So then next, who are you talking to at that factory, and are they a decision maker? Many people have just been accepting the prices that they have, they haven't been negotiating terms from the beginning, and they don't even know who they're talking to. So if you aren't talking to a decision maker, you are not going to be able to get the best price, or the best quality, or the best protection. So you need to do these three things in order to make sure that you're getting the best price. Next, best quality. Alright, quality control is hard, right? We do inspections, and we hope that we have the best quality control. But this comes back to owning your process, understanding your product and your product's needs. So you need to own the spec sheet. If your supplier doesn't understand what goes into making your product, and what quality control markers they need to meet along the way, and what they will be inspected for, they're not going to be able to ensure quality control of your product. If you've vetted your supplier, you know their capabilities, you understand their quality control, you are going to be able to ensure that you have better quality. So what does that mean, owning the spec sheet? What I want you to do is go to your inspection company, and ask them for the AQL standard inspection for your category of product. Take that inspection sheet, and then add in your requirements. Because your product probably has certain things that you want to test more of. For example, as a part of my product was a canvas bin, that needed a 40 pound, needed to be able to hold 40 pounds. So I looked at the inspection sheet for these types of canvas bins, but then I added my own side of things in order to ensure that the handles were double stitched, that they tested it, a weight test to ensure that it could hold 40 pounds. So that's what you need to do. You need to write up the specs, and then you need to provide that, ensure that your specs are communicated to all important parties. Think about it, your inspection company and your supplier. Your inspection company needs to know what to inspect, and your supplier needs to understand and be able to communicate to the workers that are on the line, oh, this is what we're being inspected for. This is what matters for this product. So that's very, very important. That's how you ensure best quality. Finally, protection. So many of you are sourcing products, and your suppliers are either knocking you off, giving your ideas to other people, you have no contracts, no protection, and this is not good. This is not good for your business, right? In order to protect your products and protect your ideas, you need to ensure first that you're not giving your ideas away from the start. Don't go up to a supplier at a trade show and be like, 'Hey, I want to do this.' Source what's called a decoy. So if you are sourcing a similar product, you can find that similar product and talk to the supplier about what could be changed about it without giving up your idea. That allows you to test out pricing, test out scalability, understand all of, you know, all of the things that you need to know about your product, and then you're ready to go. That supplier's capabilities without giving up your idea. Once you've vetted that supplier, it goes back to all the other points I just talked about. You know who they are, you know what their capabilities are. You now have vetted them and you know that they have the capability to make the decoy, and now you can have the proper contract with them. So, whatever country you're sourcing from, whether that's Mexico, India, China, whatever country you are sourcing from, you need to use an attorney in that country to help you draw up your contract and ensure that all of your points are protected about your product and your, all of your requirements, your inspections, what happens if you fail an inspection? That should be in your contract. What happens if they do not deliver on time? All of that should be in your contract from the very, very beginning. And you can work with an attorney in the country that you're sourcing from to make that happen. So once you have those contracts in place and you've vetted your supplier and you haven't given up your ideas from the beginning, that's how you protect your products from the very beginning. If you want to master all three of these things and so much more, you can join me on any of my sourcing trips. I have companies in the Middle East. I have trade shows in Latin America and I host trips to China. Speaking of China, our next 10 day sourcing trip is coming up in April. We do these twice a year, but you can join us for a 10-day sourcing trip. And we teach you all of these things. You get to learn them firsthand. This will carry over no matter where you're sourcing from. I hope you'll join us. You can visit amazingathome. com/ China and amazingathome. com to find out about any of the events, any of my coaching services, anything we can do to help you master your supply chain and your product lines from here and into the future. Thank you so much.