Course Progress
how to choose the right
USA Aliexpress supplier
In this video, we’re going to instead focus on how to pick a supplier based in the USA to dropship from.
Because remember, Aliexpress suppliers are all China-based manufacturers. For some of these manufacturers, they store their products exclusively in China.
If they store their products exclusively in China, then their product listing will look like this. It will have no ‘Ships From’ option.
But some Aliexpress suppliers will put their products onto boats, and ship their products in bulk to the USA. And store them in warehouses. They will then let you dropship products direct from their USA based warehouses.
If they have this option, you’ll see it on their product listing. They will have a “Ships From” option, and you will be able to select which country. Since most people focus on the USA, since it’s the easiest country for beginners to sell in, and the country I recommend people focus on selling to, this is what you would look for: suppliers with USA warehouses. Something you may also have noticed is that this supplier doesn’t just ship from the USA: they ship from other countries too. So why do I keep talking about the USA?
Well it’s because when it comes to marketing, for most new store owners, I recommend focusing your marketing, such as your Facebook ads, towards USA customers.
Why the USA? Well: it’s currently the biggest economy in the world. And in the USA, there is a strong culture of buying products online.
And so, even if like me, you don’t live in the USA: I truly believe it’s the most beginner friendly country to sell too. They have relaxed laws and lots of eager customers. Even though I live in New Zealand, the USA is my main country I sell to.
And there is no disadvantage. Because I have suppliers based locally in the USA, it’s not like I have to ship products from New Zealand to my customers in the USA.
It’s my local supplier that ships them to my customers with local, ground shipping. So there is no disadvantage for me, living outside the USA, selling to USA customers, thanks to dropshipping.
Now, I can imagine another question some of you are asking is, well OK Sarah, why would anyone ever choose to dropship from China to the USA? What advantage would there be?
Well, there are two reasons why a lot of people choose to dropship from China to the USA. One reason is that the products are cheaper if you dropship them directly from China.
Because you think about it: those suppliers have to pay extra costs to store their products locally in the USA. So those extra costs get rolled into the price you pay.
And secondly, as you can imagine, not all Chinese manufacturers want to bother with the hassle of storing their items in a foreign location. So some exclusively store their products in China, because it’s easier. That means if you choose to dropship from China, you’ll have more products to pick from.
However, when you dropship from the USA, you get two big advantages.
One is faster, local, more environmentally friendly ground shipping with USA ground shipping options like USPS.
And secondly, you’ll get more reliable shipping.
During the midst of the covid-19 crisis, international flights were massively disrupted. And so China to USA shipping times sometimes took 5 to 8 weeks!
And during holiday seasons, like Christmas and especially Chinese New Year, international shipping gets disrupted due to extremely high demand, yet less people working.
That’s what I prefer: I prefer to earn less money, but have a stable business, which is why I like using local USA suppliers since most of my customers are USA based.
However, it’s entirely up to you. If you prefer dropshipping from China, my previous video focused on that, and I highly recommend watching it.
But, if you would prefer to dropship from the USA, then keep watching, because that’s what we’re going to look for now: USA based suppliers!
What I’m going to do is I’m going to be looking for suppliers that meet 5 criteria.
#1 – Must have at least 25 recent orders.
#2 – Must be at least 2 years old.
#3 – Must have at least a 95% positive feedback score.
#4 – Must have at least 10 reviews on their product listing with a rating of 4.5 or higher.
#5 – Must tell us exactly what type of USA ground shipping they will use.
Something you’ll quickly discover, if you take an item, and look for USA dropshippers after looking for China dropshippers, is that you will have a much smaller selection.
That is absolutely fine: most people prefer to save money, and dropship straight from China where it’s cheaper, which is why they have more reviews.
You may also find that there simply isn’t a supplier that meets this criteria in the USA. And if so, that is OK. Just head back to the product research video, and look for more products.
So, let’s do this: let’s look for USA based dropshippers!
1. In the Aliexpress page, click on the Location/Currency. Then make sure United STates is selected as the location. Then click ‘Save’.
2. Search for your product.
3. Clicks on ‘Ships from’ and select United States.
4. Sort the items by orders.
5. Open up the a listing of your product. As you can see, our supplier here has 31 orders. That is definitely above 25.
6. Check the product review score. Our supplier here also has 11 reviews and a rating of 4.7– which exceeds our minimum of 4.5 star rating and 10 reviews.
7. It has 96.1% positive feedback score which is above our requirement of 95%.
8. It also tells us exactly what type of USA ground shipping they will use.
9. And to wrap it up, it tells us that the store is more than 2 years old.
This a great supplier!
So do this for every supplier you’ve chosen, and identify which ones meet our criteria, and which ones don’t.
Another tip is the number of followers. This one has 5729 followers which means that I’m certain that the store has overall sold a lot more.
So let’s come and click Visit Store.
Then, come and click Feedback.
As we can see this store has 7346 ratings and is proven to have a far history in selling more products. So this is a good store to select.
And that’s it!
Now you know how to find the right USA suppliers to work with when selling your items in your store. Be sure to follow the criteria and the steps outlined above for your items.