How to Find Distributors

I believe if you are wanting to build a successful Amazon wholesale business you will need to become very good at finding authorized distributors, sourcing them effectively, and staying very organized. 

I am going to discuss finding authorized distributors and also an easy way to stay organized. I have another blog post that goes into sourcing for products so if you haven’t read it yet you should make sure to read that one next. 

There are a lot of ways to find authorized distributors but I am going to talk about a couple of my favorite ways. The most common strategy you hear people on YouTube talk about is finding high sales volume products on Amazon then figuring out how to buy those products wholesale. I feel this is one of the worst strategies. You will spend a lot of time first looking through products on Amazon. After finding a good product you will spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to buy it wholesale. After all that time you will sometimes get lucky and figure out how to buy it wholesale. After getting excited they tell you they don’t allow Amazon sellers. What a huge waste of time! I don’t search for brands or products I search for distributors that have a lot of brands then check to see if any of them will be profitable.

I believe that finding a good profitable distributor is a numbers game. The more you find the higher chance you have to actually find a distributor that has profitable products. You will notice most distributors have a lot of products that are not profitable. This causes new sellers to give up. They get approved with 20 distributors and all of them suck so they tell themselves that the reason why people are successful is because they can spend a lot of money to get the price down. This is not true because I can almost guarantee that even those who have a lot of money to spend wouldn’t spend it with those distributors. They are spending it with the small percent of distributors that actually have profitable products to sale on Amazon. All you need to do is figure out how to find those distributors and your business will completely change over night. 

My first advice for you is to create a google sheet or excel sheet and have the categories at the top say website, applied, approved, and notes. This will be a simple template to keep you organized while looking for distributors. I will talk about a couple different ways you can find distributors but each way you will want to use this template to stay organized. It’s very easy to get lost and let a golden distributor fall through the cracks. 

My number 1 favorite way to source for distributors is finding trade shows then looking for a list of what businesses attended. After finding this list you will notice most of them are random but as you look at each one you will start to find a couple distributors on the list. Every time you find a distributor, add their website to your template. Don’t worry about trying to apply when you find them or trying to see what brands they have. Just add their website to your template and move on to find the next one. This will help you be very effective with your time. 

My second favorite way is to email brands and explain that you would like to buy their products wholesale and wanted a list of their authorized distributors you can buy from. The shorter you can make this email the better. You don’t need to sell yourself to them, just keep it brief and straight to the point. I have received a lot of distributors from doing this. As you are sourcing through trade shows to find distributors you can also create a template for brands you come across and make a list of brands you will want to follow up with to ask for distributors. 

My third favorite way is Google. You can type into Google distributor for grocery stores, or distributor for toy stores or whatever you think of. You will notice that different distributors will show up on Google as you tweak what you are searching for a little bit. It's a simple way to add more distributors to your list.

After making a huge list of distributors your next step is to apply to all of them at the same time. This will help you be effective and get them done as quickly as possible. Make sure to add on your template that you have applied and the date you applied.  After you apply to them some will email you and say if you are approved or not. When you get those emails mark on your template if you got approved or not. After about a week you should have a list of distributors that haven’t responded. You will want to call those ones and explain that you applied and wanted to check in to make sure you got approved. 

As you go through this process you will have some distributors that don’t allow Amazon sellers and that's fine. You just move to the next one. You will find most distributors that approve you won’t have anything worth buying. That is why building this business is not easy. That is why most Amazon sellers give up. If you can push through and focus on finding more you will eventually find the same distributors that the top Amazon sellers are buying from. When this happens your life will change. Your next big obstacle will be finding more money to fund your business.