Designing your very own branded product to sell online is one of if not the best way
to start an online business today this could be anything from your own branded athletic clothing
or a desk mat through to an electric toothbrush or even an entirely unique invention we've yet to see
so if you've ever dreamed of selling your very own product at scale then this video is going to
help you out i'm going to show you the basics to sourcing and customizing your very own products on
alibaba.com step by step with two strategies the rfq method and the rts method so let's get into it
hey friends andrew here hope you're all well what i'll be sharing in this video today
is something i wish i had watched when i first began building an e-commerce business years ago
and these are the steps you need to follow before you even open up a shopify store it's a good idea
to watch this entire video until the very end before you continue building an online store and
by the way it most definitely is not too late to start an e-commerce business just take a
look at this year-on-year chart right here it is truly ridiculous the growth has been constant
and we're expected to reach over 6 trillion dollars in total online sales in a single year
so there are for a fact hundreds if not thousands of individuals out there on a daily basis
designing their products from scratch and going on to create successful lucrative businesses that
also provide value to this world and as i always say on this channel you just need a small slice
of this gigantic pie to generate a life-changing amount of wealth think about it just 0.01 of 6
trillion dollars is 600 million dollars so how are we going to take your product idea
from your brain and turn it into something that you can see touch maybe even smell and sell
it to the world it's all going to be done with alibaba.com which almost everybody uses when they
first begin to build their custom product business alibaba.com is essentially the world's largest
business to business platform it allows you and i to connect up to manufacturers across the world
instantly so we're able to work with them to create our products in bulk and have them imported
into our country where we can then of course sell them it really is home to high quality suppliers
manufacturers and millions of customers that use this platform to grow their very own profitable
business so before we jump into my laptop now and show you the right step-by-step strategies to
finding the best suppliers to create your custom product i want to firstly thank alibaba.com for
sponsoring this video i'm very fortunate to work with not only one of the largest companies in
the world but a company that i've used myself over the years to build my very own business
so it's amazing to see it come full circle and i'm now able to work with them to help you
to build your dream business with alibaba.com so let's get started by clicking the link down below
in the description box then you'll land on this page here it may look overwhelming if you haven't
yet used alibaba.com but it's totally okay that's why you're watching this video and that's why i'm
here so what we're going to do first is we're going to create a new account you can see i'm
already signed into my current account but what i'm going to do is sign out and then create a
new account with you so you can follow on step by step so once you click on the sign up button
you'll enter this page here so make sure that you fill this all out so of course we're going to be a
buyer enter your email address your password your company name which is really important your full
name telephone and then verify yourself so once we've created our account there's three strategies
to find the right supplier the first strategy is of course just direct search this is actually a
method that i don't recommend but i'll show you anyway so in the case of this video let's assume
you want to create a men's parker code so what you do is click on the categories go over to apparel
then men's clothing and so what we're simply going to do is click men's coats or men's parkas or
whatever it might be and scroll all the way down and find the appropriate item that you might want
to sell so in this case let's click here we've got this specific parker and of course you go through
and look at the supplier information ensure that everything is okay i'll talk about that more later
in this video and then you click contact supplier then a pop-up oh actually let me sign in first
so as i was saying once you click contact supply there's a pop-up that comes up and this is just in
query form so ensure that you fill out everything as is and enter in all your information here and
you can imagine that it's going to be pretty time consuming you're going to have to find
the products separately and then you need to mail and in query form to each and every one of these
suppliers so this is definitely something you can do but there's two more strategies that i'll go
over that i recommend you use so the first one is ready to ship as you can see here there's low
minimum order quantities moqs so you can just order you know one or two items and you don't
need to bulk purchase the other benefit is you can order directly from the supplier and they'll ship
it directly to you and it's also overall a fast dispatch time so this is great if you just want to
essentially buy a couple items drop ship potentially um how how you do this is you click
source now so you can see you can get away with just purchasing two pieces sometimes one piece
and just drop ship essentially from there so that is essentially the rts method through alibaba.com
that's ready to ship but now i'm going to go over the rfq method which is the one that i recommend
you use and the one that i use personally so what we're going to do is propose two
suppliers out there what we want to create and so suppliers will come to us and then essentially
give us their quotes so we can get a range of different quotes we can see which supplier we
want to work with talk with them and this is the most time efficient cost efficient way
to go about finding supplies in my opinion so i would go down here click on source on
alibaba.com and click submit rfq so once you come here extremely important that you fill this out
in clear detail and now what i'm going to do is i'm going to number one guide you
through exactly what you need to fill out when it comes to the quotation then number two i'm gonna
fill this out myself and then we'll see what sort of uh what sort of replies we get from suppliers
and how to find the right supplier once we do get those quotations let's start with product name
that's pretty self-explanatory then you go into category right if you don't select the correct
category you're going to lose out on potentially great suppliers that are not within the niche
so in this case i'm going to click men's clothing and let's just go with men's codes click ok
and then going back up here click sourcing type so in this case it's going to be a customized product
because we want it completely customized then it's going to ask you what do you want to customize so
click here you can select multiple so in this case i might want to add a custom logo on the shoulder
of this coat and i also want custom packaging and i also want customized function so for instance
i might want to add in a different material within the inner layer of the coat for warmth
insulation for instance so this is a great perk of alibaba.com you can completely customize the
product to a tee and work with your supplier on that and then sourcing purpose go ahead and click
wholesale you can see that it's not compulsory here but you want to give the supplier more
information than less quantity let's just go with two 2 000 in this case trade terms okay so
i won't go over every single trade term but you can see that there is a short explanation if you
scroll over them the most popular two are fob and exw so fob is essentially uh as you can see
free on board what this means is the suppliers responsible for shipping to the area that you're
in or wherever you want to ship to essentially exw x works is really popular among suppliers because
they mitigate all their risk they don't they're not in charge of anything except the creation
of your product so you're as the buyer you are responsible for everything from shipping you know
taxation whatever is involved between getting that product over to your warehouse or where you need
it to be so those are the two most popular let's go with fob for now and preferred unit price so i
actually like to keep this pretty clear so i don't like to add in a pricey because that's something
i want to discuss with the supplier later but everything else i do add in like show material
features whatever this might change depending on what product you're selling the lead time is
totally up to you it depends on if you need the product pretty quickly or you need a sample at
the very least pretty quickly so when it comes to details this is the extremely important part
so what i like to do is of course introduce myself first and then give them background about
the company that you represent so for instance i might say um hey i represent you know xyz company
from new york give them a little spiel about your company and the point here is you want
to ensure that you're telling the supplier that you are a legitimate company you are
not there to waste their time and you are very interested in creating a partnership with them
to create products that you're going to sell so give them a brief background about your company
who you are and tell them that you're looking for a long-term partnership with a supplier
and so you're firstly creating credibility there first to pique the interest they receive so many
uh requests every single month and mind you they are only able to respond depending on like what
type of supplier plan they're on they're able to only reply to a select number of uh weekly and
monthly rfqs so just be wary of that and then what i'd do here is describe the product but beyond
just describing the product okay so product you also want to add then this is incredibly important
product spec sheet so a product spec sheet is where you tell them everything from
the dimensions of the product the material images of the product mockups that you might have all in
a pdf document multiple pages this is so so so extremely important because number one it gives
them a better idea of if they're able to work with you then number two it shows them that
you're extremely credible and that you are very serious about this product you can get away with
not having product spec sheet you just need to be a bit more detailed with uh your what you give
them up front if you don't have a pro expect sheet now i have a i always use a product spec sheet
but if you uh if you're looking for a template let me know down in the comments below i always have a
product spec sheet available but um i might give that out so beyond that actually underneath here
i will translate what i said in english to whatever language is relevant to them just
by google translate actually so i'll copy and paste it in google translate and paste
it back into here this just shows them that you know you're empathetic and that
you are trying to work against language barriers and that you are trying to cater to them as well
it just gives them you know a personal connection and i find that your response rate is higher if
you do so now supply capability this is also very important so let's say if you're planning to sell
a protein powder well then you need a specific certification to be able to sell in the states
the united states for example this differs depending on where you are but you want to make
sure that you're working with a supplier that has the capability to provide those certifications so
let's say and there's a lot of certifications i'm obviously not going to go through all of them but
iso 22000 for example is an international standard for food safety that can be applied to
any organization in the food chain so something like that you'll definitely need to sell food
products you want to work with a supplier that is able to give you those certifications
moving on to shipping and payment the seafright air freight express land flight so obviously if
i'm shipping to australia for instance depending on where the supplier is i'll have to go with air
freight lead time i actually like to keep this completely empty because again this is something
i want to discuss with the supplier later on and then payment term i'm not going to go through all
of them but i'll tell you that the most popular is tt again depends on what you're trying to achieve
here but tt is essentially a y transfer it's the one that i go with usually so once you have that
all filled out what i'm gonna do now is i'm gonna fill it out myself and then we'll see what sort of
offers that we get rfqs that we get make sure that the completeness is at least at great um because
again you want to give them more details than less so i'm going to click uh submit once i've filled
this all out so with the power of editing i'll see you in a few seconds all right it's been a
couple hours i went to the gym came back and we've received four quotes so you can see on screen here
let's click view quotes so you can see the four options here so there's two from china one from
pakistan and even one from india so a good range though there are a few things you need to keep an
eye for when it comes to great suppliers and some of that is how many years have they been using
alibaba.com so you can see here almost all of them have been here for two years except this one
here who has been on alibaba.com for a year you typically want at minimum a two year duration on
the platform so if i click view quotation on this one for instance you can see that the shipping
details their port is from shanghai take a look at where they're based for instance if they're
based in shenzhen in china then that is obviously a very tech heavy space a tech heavy city and so
those uh some of the demographic or geographics i should say that you should take into consideration
when you're purchasing from the suppliers do note that these images or these examples
that they provided they are able to create this from scratch so they are not providing you with
products that are already made but they are able to create this from scratch so they've quoted 39
per piece here almost 40 dollars a whole range of features with this one again this can be
completely customized they are a manufacturer and not just a trading company unlike the first one
and they specialize in jackets parker coats outward down jacket so out of these four and i
will most likely receive more quotations overnight but simply out of these four i would probably
contact this one if i click view quotation over here you can see that the communication is pretty
decent what i would do from here is i would click contact and initiate that conversation with them
you won't know for sure which supplier you want to go with simply by looking at these rfq quotations
but you will need to talk to them have a chat with them if possible um get on the phone with them
that being said there's usually language barriers if you don't speak their language then it can be
difficult but you know messaging them back and forth can do but it's obviously best if you hop
on to uh wechat or have a call with them if you're also wondering how to create an ecommerce store
from scratch to now sell your product that you just created like this pocket code on screen here
i'm going to leave a link down in the description box below where i teach you
to do exactly that but before you leave this video and start reaching out to suppliers
let's wrap up with some bonus tips that i'll share with you right now now submitting an rfq is by
far the most efficient way to find your perfect supplier but as you've seen in this video so far
you'll want to submit your rfq correctly so make sure that you number one over communicate in the
rfq proposal suppliers only get a maximum of 30 rfqs per month so far so you want to make sure
that yours count just like a job resume you don't want to send a boring and short resume because
you know companies receive hundreds of resumes a day so spend time on crafting that perfect rfq
number two make sure you audit your supplier look at their company info ask for the compliance
documents such as reports technical files company certificates clarify general purchasing terms like
your minimum order quantity and ask for an oem sample number three clarify payment terms this
is also very important before you make payment you need to check out this tutorial here if you
want to learn a little more about payment terms uh incredibly important to ensure that you're
paying correctly number four is build up that relationship you have with your supplier you
are going into a business partnership with the supply you choose and it's an important mutually
beneficial relationship that has a potential to grow so communicate with your site player
be friendly go above and beyond and a pro tip is learn how to use wechat or offer to use wechat
when you talk to your supplier because it's almost always their go-to platform to communicate on and
they'll appreciate you for offering that option to talk to them on wechat so overall the more rfqs
you send off the better you'll get at crafting the perfect request which means receiving more quotes
better suppliers and lower prices which ultimately means higher profit margins for your business or
at least more wiggle room to play with to spend more on business costs like your team or facebook
ads what i recommend you do now is check out the link below in the description box create
an account and start filling out the rfq form to practice communicating with suppliers until you
find the one that's right for you it's always a good idea to network with suppliers so they can
become contacts you can reach out to whenever you have a product you want to create so go ahead and
use the link down below and let me know how you go with your own rfq submission in the comments below
and by the way if you're still here at this point in the video drop an ecommerce empire comment and
i'll like it since i know you made it to the end of this video alibaba.com seriously is the
single platform you'll need to start building an e-commerce empire and business that'll bring you
cash flow and hopefully deliver value to this world i'll leave on screen here a follow-up
tutorial that you should watch after this video if you're looking for the next steps and wanting
to build out your shopify store with your new products if this video tutorial has helped you
out then drop this video a like and subscribe to this channel with notification turned on we're all
about online business digital marketing and tech gear here and as always thank you for watching