With the development of economic globalization and the progress of Internet technology, it’s becoming more and more convenient to do business with each other. Then it seems much easier to source products than it used to be for major institutional purchasers and small individual buyers. But is that really the case? Actually not in reality. We will explain in this article as a long-term textile supplier specializing in hotel linen industry.
Concept of Product Sourcing
Firstly let’s talk about product sourcing.
The term of product sourcing is the practice of sourcing from the global market for products nowadays. It aims to improve, re-evaluate the purchasing activities and lower the total cost. To put it simply, product sourcing is to find raw or finished products that can used in the downstream manufacturing industry or directly sell through your business. It is an essential procurement process related to part of constant work of buyers in the early stage before any purchases in modern supply chain management. Sometimes there are dedicated staffs would do this work in very large enterprises or it may be in charged by a few key persons in small companies.
Main Purpose of Product Sourcing
The main purpose of product sourcing is to find right products for your business. No matter what measures and strategies you would take, it can be summarized to two points that you aim to achieve continuously anyway.
- Discover and partner with trustworthy vendors and suppliers
- Obtain ideal products with resonable prices and decent quality
The Competitive Product You Always Pursue
We will take common hotel linen products as examples. The ideal product must be that you are look for and demanded by the market related to your business.
If you are a downstream article manufacturer, trader or storefront owner seeking for raw materials such as fabrics, then these features below could be what you are sourcing.
- Competitive prices
- Pretty fine quality
- Supplied by an original Manufacturer
- Allow customization
- Capability of mass production
- Fast lead time
When you want to deal with finished linen products as a seller, project bidder or even the man in charge of some hotels, restaurants, institutions, you are supposed to think about points listed here all the time.
- Great market demand
- Affordable prices
- Scalable order quantity
- Well-designed products
- Exquisite workmanship
- Delivery on time
- Attentive customer service
Then how can these goals be reached in real business?
A Typical Process of Product Sourcing
There are some pratices to implement the process of product sourcing. And here are the 7 exact steps that you could follow to conduct a product sourcing.
- Determine the demand and prepare detailed specification for products
- Get quotation from qualified suppliers and sort out the results
- Request samples from suppliers and conduct inspection
- Engage with shortlisted suppliers and make assessments
- Supplier selection and negotiation
- Place a trial order and evalute the supplier
- Develop with the selected supplier and manage your future plan
Some Approaches of Product Sourcing
So, you have already known how product sourcing works and wonder how to take the critical step for your business demand. Alright, it’s time to talk about where to find those product sources.
Finding the right products provided by the ideal suppliers can be a challenge and time-consuming, while here are several common ways could help you to find the qualified suppliers.
Attend Some Events
You can attend the expos, fairs, trade shows and other industrial events as a buyer. Though it’s an old way to source products, but it does actually provide something unique and benefits.
- Have an actual impression of products and potential supplier
- Collect contacts and product brochures from qualified supplier
- Face-to-face interaction and build a warm relationship othen than cold calling or emails
- Negotiate directly to lead to securing deals
- Learn about new developments and trends in your industry, and gain more knowledge
Search for Suppliers’ Websites
Search for desired materials and products on the suppliers’ official website using seach engines like Google, Bing, Yandex. This works perfectly in some technology industries and emerging areas as they attach importance to the Internet and put much resources on it.
It’s easy to start a basic keyword search for products on Google, but it does indeed need skills to filter and identify the options to find the right products from thousands of results.
Online Directories and B2B Platforms
There once were numerous printed telephone directories of businesses, also known as yellow pages. Most of them are dying or alreay disappeared and the rest would be fully digitised online. While in this article, we are mainly take about another directory type, B2B marketplaces.
The popular B2B marketplaces like Alibaba, ThomasNet offer a huge product catalog contains millions of products from different companies. You need to do a bit of research to find the right supplier for the product you want to buy. You can check out for the suppliers within their online stores.
Online marketplaces may be also the best option to find the right product supplier for you. But it would be a time-consuming process, so don’t get discouraged. You will want to check references for the mnufacuturer or wholesaler in consideration. As with any business, you need to make sure you are dealing with someone who is legitimate.
Online Communities
Social media is a valuable source of information for anybody with the development of mobility, real-time interactive Web.
The Web today is more and more organized around user-generated content produced by online communites. There are some popular major online communities, and social networks like Facebook or Linkedin are commonly known as the most successful and visible part of online communites.
You should know online communities like Facebook is not just a place people are connected to share interests and activities and Linkedin is not just about recruit and hire nowadays. You could take advantages of them to source products and suppliers on these online communities.
I would like to add Instagram, even Twitter and Youtube to the list. They work differently by conduct sourcing methods on them.
Use A Credible Agent
Product sourcing could spend you much time and attention make you feel frustrated sometimes though it is worth waiting for suppliers you can trust. What if you don’t have much times, have no idea to verify suppliers or lack of experience when starting a new business? It is possible by hiring someone to do this work for, use a sourcing agent.
A sourcing agent is a regional representative who performs outsourcing activities on behalf of the employer.
Wikipedia
A sourcing agent could leverage your company for greater potential growth and success. They will help you find a reliable supplier, negotiate the best price, take care of documentation, oversee the production process, inspect factories, fire-fight problems that crop up in the factory during production, review quality control and see to it that your products are shipped to you within the promised lead time.
But you need to be really careful in choosing independent sourcing agents and check their business credentials.
