Last Updated on diciembre 16, 2024 by Ewen Finser
Setting up your online store is the (relatively) easy part. Whether you are selling via Shopify, Amazon, or a custom website, finding quality suppliers is often the make or break point for success.
Over the last few years I’ve revisted ecommerce models, starting with dropshipping but now moving more into wholesale suppliers (now that we have some market validation).
Fortunately, the landscape has evolved in the last few years and it’s less of an arcane adventure to find, test, and validate good supplier networks.
After some trial and error, these are some of my top marketplaces and large distributors to start with.
Note: for the purposes of THIS article, I looked at large wholesale networks with products across categories. There are – of course – many specialized and niche specific brands that wholesale, but I’ll save those niche guides for different posts.
Feria: Best Overall Wholesale Platform
Mi TL;DR: Faire is my go-to, first-stop marketplace when I’m looking to start (or re-look) my wholesale sources as they have excellent selection across almost every category, including some unique deep finds, and a seamless order management experience.
Why I Like Faire
- Broad Based Market: Faire has an extremely wide selection across almost every category imaginable. As a wholesale sourcing marketplace, I can’t think of a deeper product assortment. This makes it a great starting place for almost every store looking to expand their selection.
- Unified Orders Process: After having to create team SOPs for different wholesale platforms, just to manage the ordering process, using Faire is a nice change of pace. The huge selection, but unified orders process gives me a bit more confidence to try out newer merchants or “riskier” products that I might not have otherwise ordered from directly.
- Unique Brands & Creators: While Faire still sometimes has the generic Alibaba suppliers slipping in, I’ve found the vast majority are legit, boutique wholesalers or distributors. And, there are some truly unique, only available on Faire smaller craft shops (think Etsy) that can lead to excellent supplier pipelines. In fact, it does at times feel similar to the now depcecated Etsy Wholesale.
- User Friendly: In an industry notorious for antiquated tech and process, Faire is a breath of fresh air from a usability perspective (both for buyers and sellers, by the way). It’s as easy to navigate as Amazon and the platform generally works as you’d expect a professional commercial website to work.
Faire versus Others:
Bulletin: Best Curated Wholesale
Mi TL;DR: Bulletin is a close second for me and worth considering for a more heavily curated list of high-quality artisanal brands across home, apparel, beauty, kitchen, wellness (and more).
Why I Like Bulletin
- Competitive Fee Structure for Brands: As a retailer, you might not care exactly what the brands have to pay every time you place an order…. but you should. Bulletin is slightly more competitively priced when it comes to fees, with a 15% first order fee, a 10% second (and beyond) order commission, and no flat fees or transaction fees at all! This means – all things being equal – a brand likely prefers to transact on Bulletin, especially for repeat retailer order partners.
- Curated Selection:
- Net-60 Terms:
- Unique Finds: Because Bulletin appears to be more selective in which brands they work with, the product quality and customer satisfaction tend to be higher than other platforms (uniformely) that I’ve tried.
Bulletin vs Others:
Creoate: Beauty & Health
MY TL;DR: Create is an internationally facing platform (based in Europe), but offering free international shipping for orders $300+. I particularly like their selection of health and beauty products.
Why I Like Creoate
- Boutique Brand Focus: Because Creaote makes it very easy for brands or makers to list their products, this means a broader selection of more obscure (in a good way) products that you can discover and source for a more unique product mix. This also means you may need to sift through the infrequent, low-effort Alibaba impersonation, but also some great diamonds hidden in the rough here.
- Free Global Shipping: As UK-based platform, you might expect shipping to be a friction point, but they make it free if you meet their minimums (currently 300 Euros as of this writing).
- Good Product Mix: Creaote is closer to a Faire in terms of overall vibe and product categories, but with a more European aesthetic.
- Health & Beauty Selection: They seem to have a deeper bench of health, wellness and beauty products compared to most of the other platforms that I’ve tried.
Orderchamp
Mi TL;DR: There’s a LOT I like about Orderchamp, including it’s native dropshipping capabilities, deep curated eco-friendly brands, and a guarantee that you won’t find these items on Amazon.
Why I Like Orderchamp
- Handmade Products: While not as deep as Faire, Orderchamp does have some excecllent curated brands that you won’t necessarily find elsewhere (7,000+ as of this writing, with 1,300,000+ products total). As an EU-based startup, they also tend to have more European brands and trending product lines represented, which can make them a good additional option from your typical wholesale variety.
- No Amazon Race to the Bottom: They publicly push the fact that their brands are not sold on Amazon. This is both an advantage for independent local retailers AND online stores looking to stand out with unique inventory (that doesn’t necessarily have to compete on price with Amazon).
- Eco-friendly & Socially Conscious: Many of the brands listed on Orderchamp or Organic and/or eco-friendly, with various certifications and sourcing details to please discerning customers and educated audiences.
- Supports Dropshipping Too: Dropshipping isn’t my primary model, BUT it’s helpful to have in the back pocket, especially for validating product sell thru before making larger wholesale purchases (with better margins). Orderchamp is set up to integrate with Shopify, WooCommerce, and ChannelEngine, among others.
RangeMe
Mi TL;DR: RangeMe is one of the more traditional wholesale platforms (a bit more gatekeeping), but is a good option for working with more well established “name brands”.
Why I like RangeMe
- Good Selection in the Grocery Category: Not my main category, but RangeMe is known for it’s extensive selection in the grocery and snack category (name brands).
- Industry Gatekeeper: For many brands looking to get picked up by big retailers like Costco, BJs, Walmart, etc… getting vetted and setup on RangeMe is often an important first step. What’s good for them, is often good for you as a retailer.
- Standardized Vetting: RangeMe is free for retailers, but has a freemium to premium model for brands. This means for smaller retailers or sellers looking for brands, what you see on RangeMe is often a good deal above fly by night and precarious brands.
- Matchmaker: While RnageMe still resembles a marketplace in many ways, it’s really a matchmaker platform where both sides can submit what they are looking for and the platform will suggest connections. This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, but I’ve found it helpful to have this kind of sourcing in play versus just a grab bag of marketplace diving and filtering.
Powered by People
Mi TL;DR: I love Power by People’s mission oriented platform, with products that have compelling stories behind them (perfect for upscale boutiques with discerning clientele).
Why I Like Powered by People
- Sustainable Tagging & Focus: For brands with a sustainable value prop, Powered by People is a must-add to your sourcing checklist. Other generalist wholesale platforms DO have some sustainable brands, it’s just hard to differentiate and an extra diligence step. Not so for Powered by People!
- Dropship Capability: They can dropship any of their products and ship from their landed location within 48 hours. I still haven’t seen any app integrations, but I suspect a Shopify or BigCommerce one could be on the horizon.
- No Order Minimums: Powered by People doesn’t have any order minimums, which stands out (to me, at least) as a fairly unique value proposition. They do have a free shipping tier, too, starting at just $250 orders, so this might effectively be a good threshold for most.
- Global Footprint: They have some really nice, hard-to-find picks from around the world, all with the same sustainable bent.
Alibaba
Mi TL;DR: Love it or hate it, Alibaba is “a place” to find MANY trending products (and variations) if you are leaning into what’s already selling on Amazon and other marketplaces.
Why I Like Alibaba
- Everything Under the Sun: It might not always be the best quality, and you may see dozens of basically the same product, but Alibaba does have a virtual bazaar of the world’s goods. I always at least like sanity checking prices and availability by checking what’s on Alibaba as part of my sourcing diligence process.
- Can be cheaper: Not exclusively the case, but Alibaba is often more competitive on price, especially for fairly commoditized products. Buyer beware as QUALITY can vary wildly.
- Alibaba Trade Assurance: Alibaba has a reputation for being all of the place in terms of shifty sellers and honestly just cultural barriers that sometimes trip deals up. That said, Alibaba does have their vaunted “Trade Assurance” program which – as a last resource – means you can recover your funds with this Alibaba guarantee of sorts.
So Where to Start?
Hopefully this list gives you a good idea of some places to START your wholesale hunt.
If you are struggling with WHERE to start, I nice – gentle – entry into the world is definitely going to be Faire here. It’s generally where I start to get the lay of the land before exploring deeper (and sometimes I don’t need to!).