Our Town — Sourcing Products Locally By Chris Malta & Robin Cowie At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Get Creative with Community Resources

If you’ve ever picked up a trinket for $4 at a yard sale and sold it for $65 on eBay, you know how exciting translating your treasure hunts into cash can be. But yard sales are not your only local source of goodies. Dennis Hester of http://MillionDollarDeals.com has built a successful online business using local providers almost exclusively. Flea markets, antique stores, auction sales, craft shops — Hester attends them all.

One particularly useful — and unusual — avenue he urges E-Biz retailers to try is calling trucking companies, and asking where they get rid of their OSD (over, short, and damaged) merchandise. Explains Hester, “Trucking companies sometimes get caught with a lot of merchandise. So they send it to a central area to auction, or they have their own outlets where they have auctions and retail stores.” Often these auction sales are open for the public to buy wholesale.

Tips for Networking

The people you meet in these places — the junkyards, the pawn shops, the estate sales — are all in the resale business. You can learn a lot from their knowledge and experience, so talk to them. Ask questions: How did they get started? Who are their sources? Where did they get their products?

Hester has built up an impressive list of suppliers with this simple method and he offers the following insights:

• "Be friendly and polite in dealing with people," counsels Hester. “People don't want to do business with someone who's obnoxious or demanding.”

• Be persistent. Not everyone will want to share their sources with you. Some will even be rude about it. But you just have to keep asking and trying, because there are people out there who are willing to share their insight and expertise.

• Be open. Don’t just ask questions. Listen to what they have to say — they’re the ones with the experience. And listen to discern their needs as well; you can form mutually beneficial relationships.

Why Shop Local?

There are a lot of good reasons to find product suppliers in your own community:

• You get to know your sources personally and build relationships and trust with them.

• You can physically view and examine the items you’re purchasing ahead of time.

• Doing anything locally is going to be easier on your budget, at least in the beginning. You save on the cost of having merchandise shipped to you, and on travel expenses — the price of gas alone makes that a point worth considering.

Local sourcing may not be the full solution for your product sourcing needs, but it's a great way to get started. And as your business grows and you branch out into other product sourcing methods, it provides an excellent avenue to locate loss leaders and keep your product line-up injected with unique finds.

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