 So you want to start your own brand. You want to be the next Nike or maybe you want to start your own general store and you want to be as big as Target. Maybe you want to be the next Walmart. Maybe you want to be the next Foot Locker. Did you know that most major brands or major stores out there right now incorporate dropshipping in one form or another? It's true. There's a lot of different companies out there, a lot of different big name brands that all incorporate dropshipping into at least one part of their business. Of course, they're all going to have their own stock and their own warehouses where they ship everything out from, but for every few products, some specific products, maybe some limited edition products, they actually dropship them. So whenever you place an order with a particular company, by the way, Foot Locker being one of them, they place their order with their supplier and then their supplier ships it out to you. So if you ever wanted to start your own brand through dropshipping but you didn't really think it was possible or you thought there was too much competition or you just thought major brands don't dropship. Well, I'm here to tell you that that is 100% not true and you can totally do it with the guidance of this video. I know you can. Now before we continue any further, let me know down in the comments below what kind of dropshipping store you want to start. Do you want to focus on just one product? Do you want to focus on a particular niche? Or do you want to start a general store? Let me know down in the comments below. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. And with that, let's go ahead and get started with how you can start your own branded dropshipping store. Let's go. So the first thing that you need to think about when it comes to starting your branded dropshipping store is what kind of store do you want to open? Do you want to have a general store? So do you want to sell a little bit of everything? Do you want to have a niche store? So do you want to stick to one particular category? Or do you want to have a one product store? You want to just stick to one particular product? For the most part, most branded dropshipping stores are either going to be niched or single product stores. There's not a lot of general stores out there that are branded, but that's not to say it's not possible. So once you figure out what kind of store that you want to start, then the next thing you need to do is figure out what you want to sell. So in this case, you need to start doing some market and product research. Remember, a lot of the times, if you're super passionate about a particular item, if you like a particular item a little bit too much and you really want to make that item or niche your entire dropshipping business, always remember that there needs to be demand. If there's no demand for that particular item, then no matter how passionate you are about it, it's not going to sell. People need to want that item. People need to want the niche or the service or whatever it is. There needs to be some sort of demand before you start getting any sales. If there's no demand, you're going to be wasting time and money. Now, how do you know whether or not there's demand for an item or niche? Well, there's a few different ways to find this out. For one, I'm going to show you my favorite way of doing it and that's by using Google Trends. So here we're over at Google Trends and we're going to look up a particular niche. So let's say you want to start a swim war business. You want to start selling swimsuits. All you have to do here is simply just look up swimsuits, press enter, and by default, as far as a timeframe, you're going to get the past day. I like to switch this over to the past five years because this can give you a clear trend of the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows. Now, as you can see, this is a five year span and there's always a bottom and a top. So what this means is simply put in between the months of November to about December. Nobody's really looking for swimsuits online. Nobody's Googling that. But a little bit after that around January, the Google searches start to rise and they peak right around summertime, June 2nd to June 8th. Then around the time it starts to go down and it finishes off around October to November. And then once again, just like the year before, it starts to rise around December to January, peaking once again at June. Now, as you can see, this is a clear trend every single year for the past five years, even going on to 2023 where it peaks at May to June. Now, what does this tell us? This tells us that we don't want to start listing our swimsuits in June. We want to have everything already set up for June. So we're going to start looking for these particular products and we're going to start listing them around the beginning of the year or end of the year. So between December to January, because that's when the searches are going to start increasing and that's when people are going to find your drop shipping store, because that's when there's more demand for this item. Another way of doing this is by simply using the AliExpress drop ship center. These are all items that have been trending and selling on AliExpress. Now, when you click into the website, you can see a few different things. So for one, you can see how many of a particular item I've sold. So these test lines have sold over 3000 and it actually has a seven day growth rate of 72%. That means in the last week, people have been looking for this. Aside from that, if you keep going, you also have star reviews. So you can see that this one has a five star review and only four have sold. But this right here, this extension nozzle actually has a 4.8 star review and over 9,000 sold. Aside from that, you can also find trending products on the AutoDS marketplace and handpicked product section. Now on here, you have tons of different products that have been proven to sell in the past and are currently trending. All of these different products have been hand selected by expert drop shippers. So these are people that have had years in the game and they know the ins and outs of the entire business. Now on the marketplace itself, what I like to do is I like to switch the supplier to AutoDS suppliers. Here you also have products from Amazon as well as AliExpress. But my favorite is always going to be the AutoDS suppliers because for one, they have the fastest shipping and two, you have the ability to brand some of these items. So taking a look at some of the items on the marketplace through the AutoDS suppliers, the first one that we're going to see here actually ships between six to nine business days. Now that's not six to nine business days for them to ship out the item. That's actually six to nine business days for your customer to receive their item. So as you can see, that's some pretty fast shipping. Aside from that, what I wanted to show you is the customizable branding. If you see any one of these that says customizable branding, what that means is that this item will ship with a custom thank you card with your logo on it. This adds a little personal touch that trust me, when I say customers are going to remember and it really makes them feel a lot more appreciated as a customer. Aside from that, another really awesome tool that you have here is the TikTok ad spy. So the TikTok ad spy, what this does is it gives you every single ad for pretty much every single product that there is on TikTok. And we all know that TikTok is the number one place to find trending items and to go viral. So that way you can start making some sales. But the way that you would use this is simply by navigating over here to the TikTok ad spy section. And me personally, what I am the doing is I just scroll through all of these different ads and I see which one of these items actually catches my eye. If there's one that catches my eye, let's say this one, for example, I'm going to go ahead and click on see TikTok ad and let's see what this is. Better get ready for the winter. Looks like he's advertising beanies. Yep, that's exactly what it is. So down here, you can see product info, one piece, warm neck protection, headwear hat. Now this item right here could potentially be a very popular dropshipping item. Now let's look at the impressions. So over 166,000 people have seen it. 6.5,000 people have actually liked the post and 140 people have commented. So giving this information that you see here, you can start to make decisions whether or not you want to start looking more into these particular items. So the easiest way to use the TikTok ad spy is by simply going on there, searching through the different videos, see which one of these items catches your eye and see if it has good interactions. If you see that a lot of people are interacting with it, if you see that it has a lot of positive comments, then that particular product might be worth doing a little bit deeper research into to see if it's worth you actually selling it. So once you figured out what you want to sell, and you figure out the products that you want to sell, then the next thing that you need to do is figure out where you're going to source your products from. Now I already gave you two different suppliers I showed you at the express with their dropship sensor, and I showed you the out of the S marketplace and private suppliers. Now aside from that, you also have a few other suppliers that you can choose from that are very reliable, one of them being CJ dropshipping. CJ dropshipping is primarily located in China, but they do have warehouses all around the world. So regardless of where you're going to be dropshipping to, you can rest assured that you're going to have some pretty quick shipping. Aside from that, they also have a sourcing request, which I think is absolutely fantastic. If you find a particular item in another supplier that you can't find on CJ dropshipping, you can reach out to them and they can source that product for you, so you can purchase it from their platform. And another thing I like to mention about CJ dropshipping that I really like is the fact that they have print on demand printing. So what print on demand is simply put, you get to design your own merchandise. You can put your designs on cups, t-shirts, mousepads, phone cases, towels, you name it. Aside from the typical Chinese suppliers, another option that you have is retail suppliers. And one of the best ones has to be Walmart. Walmart always has different robux, they have different coupons, they have different savings. At Walmart, you're always going to have some fantastic pricing. And on top of that, you have amazing customer service. And my favorite feature of using Walmart as a supplier is the price match guarantee. Now, what the price match guarantee does is it gives you the ability to take advantage of savings after you've made a purchase. So let's say you source a pair of shoes from Walmart for $50. And the next day, they go on sale down to $30. So right there, you're thinking, oh, if I had just waited one day, I would have saved an extra 20 bucks and essentially made an extra $20. Well, what the price match guarantee does is it lets you call into Walmart, you tell them what happened that you make your purchase. And the very next day, the item went on sale. They'll go ahead and give you back that difference. They'll honor the price from that day. All right. So after you found what supplier that you're going to go with, or which suppliers you're going to go with, because honestly, I always suggest that you go with multiple suppliers for the same item. Reason being is if one day one of the suppliers runs out of a particular item, or they increase their prices by two or three folds, then you always have a different supplier to go to to save your butt. So that way you don't miss out on any profits. So the next thing you need to do is figure out where you're going to sell. Now, this is pretty important because depending on the platform that you're dropshipping on, it can be either easier or harder to actually start a brand around it. Now, typically speaking, when it comes to starting your own brand, the best platforms are going to have to be Shopify and Etsy. You can still drop ship on other platforms such as eBay or Amazon. But when it comes to actually starting a brand, starting your own store, trying to get some brand recognition, Shopify and Etsy are going to be your best friends. The reason being is because on Shopify, you can create your own custom website. You can design it however you want to be relevant to your brand. You can adjust all of the colors, the logos, the names, the button colors, the fonts, everything. And when it comes to Etsy, Etsy is known for small businesses. Etsy is known for handcrafted items and Etsy is very well known for boutiques. So you can start a boutique, which can ultimately end up being your brand. Now, the reason I say that a platform like eBay won't work as well to be able to build your brand is because most of the people that go on eBay, whether it's a sell or to purchase, they're looking for particular items. A lot of times those items are going to be used, a lot of times their items are going to be new. Sometimes they're going to be secondhand items. It's a little bit of everything on eBay, which makes it a lot harder to build brand recognition. Essentially, there's just too much going on there. Now, this is the part where a lot of people get lost when actually starting their brand. A lot of the times people just brand absolutely everything, but that's not necessarily always the best thing to do. The best and easiest way to go about this is simply by starting a somewhat general store where you're going to be able to sell a little bit of everything, or you can still start your niche store. But the whole point is sell different items, sell whether they be in the same niche or in different niches, and see which one actually starts to work, which everyone's actually started to get sales, which everyone starts to get recognition. The products are going to be the most popular and the most trending in your stores. Then that's when you want to start focusing on those products. And then you can decide, do I want to build a brand around this particular product? Or do I want to build a brand around the niche of this product? You need to test out all of your different items and you need to see what works. You can't just go with your gut feeling and go with the product that you like, because just because you like it doesn't mean that everyone's going to like it. It doesn't mean that it's going to provide value to everyone's life and that will ultimately lead to you losing time and money. Now when you finally find that product or that niche that you want to start building your brand around, that's when you really need to hone in all of your focus to this brand. One of the most important things that you're going to need to do is create a logo. Now one of the easiest ways to create a logo is simply by going to Canva. On Canva you can find anything and everything when it comes to design and you can customize everything. It's super easy to use. So the first thing you're going to do once you're on Canva is you're going to go to create a design and then you're going to click on logo. Once you're on here, then you can start designing whatever it is that you need. Now if you don't know how to create a logo or you don't know what name to use for your business, which again that's another thing that's extremely important, your logo and the name of your brand. So if you don't know what you want to do, simply go on ChatGBT and ask it. So random niche and topic but what are some brand names for a store that sells modern-day kitchen items and then let's just see what it tells us. So here's a few different ones that it gives us. Kitchencraft provisions, urban kitchen innovations, trendy kitchen essentials, mod kitchen store, contemporary cookware co. I actually really like that one right there. So we're going to go with contemporary cookware co. Then we're going to run over to Canva and we're going to choose one of these different texts. These are super easy to use and all you have to do is paste it on here. So contemporary cookware, take off that co, put it down here, co, switch this to C, switch this to C and that's it, contemporary cookware co. It's pretty simple yet pretty elegant. But to add a little touch for of course the kitchen, let's add something like maybe a frying pan or something like that. So we got kitchen and let's see what it comes up with. Okay, so I'm actually really liking this one right here. But that's an entire template. So I'm just going to go ahead and add it as a new page. And all I really want is that right there. So I'm going to cut that and I'm going to paste it here. Let's make it a little bit small and put it somewhere where it's not going to bother us. There you go. It's pretty simple. Honestly, it's straight to the point and it's not anything too crazy too fancy. It gets the point across. Of course, you don't have to stick to just this. There's a lot of other easy ways to come up with some really good logos. One of them is simply by going to Fiverr and looking up logo creators. There you're going to find a bunch of different graphic artists or graphic designers all ranging from five to $500. Of course, the more expensive they are, the better and more experienced. But that's not to say that the cheaper ones are going to give you some bad results. A lot of people on Fiverr are just starting out and they're really good at what they do. So they start off with lower prices so that way they can increase their portfolio. Another tip that I'm going to give you when it comes to your website and your branding is to stay consistent with your colors and your color palette. So if you decide to go with green and black, let's say for example, then make sure that everything that you do going forward is green and black. Your company colors, your company font, your company logo are all going to be tied together. So whenever somebody sees, let's say, your particular color scheme, they're going to think of your company as a whole. And that's what you want. You want people to associate your brand with these particular colors, with this font or with a particular niche. Now, once you have everything set up, the next thing you need to do is start marketing your store. When you start marketing your store, that's really when you're going to start building your brand recognition. The way you market your store is extremely important. And it's also very crucial that the way that you market your store is relevant to your brand and what it stands for. Now, there's a lot of different ways that you can start marketing your store. And it's very important that you diversify the ways that you do. So don't just stick to Facebook ads. Facebook ads are fantastic. But Facebook ads are only going to target a particular demographic that's on Facebook. If you stick to only running Facebook ads, then you could be missing out on millions of potential customers on, let's say, TikTok. So in this case, what do you do? Well, you do Facebook ads, you run a few different ads, you test to see what works, but you also create content based around your brand, based around your different products. And you go crazy posting on TikTok. You need to establish an online presence. You need to be on TikTok. It is extremely important because nowadays, if you're not on TikTok, you're missing out on tons of money. TikTok is the easiest way to go viral. And if you're able to go viral once or twice, you need to start taking advantage of that. A lot of people go viral a few different times, and they just let the hype die down. You need to keep that ball rolling, and you need to keep posting, you need to keep working, and you need to keep hustling. Now, aside from that, there's also other ways like influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is fantastic because that means you don't have to create your own content. What you can do is you can have an influencer do it for you. Either you pay them to do it or you send them a free sample. Each influencer is going to be different. So what you can need to do is find one that's relevant to your niche or your brand and reach out to them. Let them know what you're trying to do. Let them know that you're an up and coming company or an up and coming brand. And you want to work with them by sending them a free item or by paying them to make a short video on your products. Quick tip. If you do decide to do this and go with influencer marketing, always tell the influencers that you always want the right to post those same videos on your channel. So on top of having the influencer posted on their profile, you're also going to post it on yours. That's going to help you gain traction. It's going to help you gain brand awareness. It's going to help you gain more followers. Now, once you've got that down, you're pretty much good to go. At this point, you need to focus on scaling and growing. The more you can scale, the bigger your brand is going to be. Now, what's the easiest way to start doing this? Well, the easiest and most efficient way is going to be by implementing automation. Now, what is automation? Well, simply put, it's pretty much becoming hands off with your business. When you implement automation, certain aspects of your business are going to be automated, meaning they're going to start taking care of themselves. So let's say, for example, you want to sell this tire inflator in your store. Now, one way that you can implement automation is through your product importing. So I'm going to go ahead and show you how we do this with AutoDS. And all you have to do is simply click on the link and copy it. Now, once you're at your dashboard over at autoDS.com, which by the way, if you're not signed up to AutoDS, you can do so right now for the trial period for just $1. But once you're on here, all you simply have to do is head on over to add products, and you can either go single or multiple products. For this, we're just going to do one. So we're going to go with single and just paste in the URL there. As you can see here, it switched over to AliExpress and the region that's shipping from is China. Now, all we have to do is click on edit now, and you can change and optimize whatever it is that you need, all from this same page. So we can optimize our title and we can even do that using AI. Then if we're using Shopify, we can add it to any collections. We can add also any different tags so that way we can keep track of this item. We can change the shipping methods. For this, my favorite is always cheapest with tracking because it's, for one, the cheapest. And two, you also get tracking with it. The cheapest will just go with the cheapest option and that's not going to guarantee tracking. But aside from that, you can also go to the description and you can edit your description through here. You can also optimize it using AI. You can go ahead and change any different variations on the variations tab, and you can go ahead and edit the pricing as well. Aside from that, there's also an image editor where you can add or delete any images. And as the name says it, image editor, you can edit any images on here as well. So as you can see, you can save a ton of time with importing your products through automation. Now, it might not seem like a lot with just one or two different products when you do it manually, but when you start to get into 15, 20, 30, 50 products, you're going to be all day in front of your computer, simply saving all of the different images, copying and pasting all of the different titles, descriptions, variations. It can take a long time. It really does add up. Now, not only can you automate your product importing, but you can also automate your order fulfillment. So any orders that come into your store will be automatically rerouted to your supplier. So that way you don't even have to spend time on that. And all of the orders that come in through your store that are connected to AutoDS and all of the items that have been ordered through your Shopify or Etsy or whatever platform that you're selling on and whatever items you've sold will appear here on the orders tab. So here, as you can see, there's a few different orders, most of which have been delivered and one was just shipped. Now, this is where you're going to see any updated information on all of your orders through your drop shipping store. Now, after all of that is said and done, the very last thing that you need to focus on is providing fantastic customer service. As drop shippers, remember, we're going to be getting a lot of different questions regarding people's orders regarding different products. So it's up to us to give them the best possible service so that way they can either one, finalize their purchase or two, come back and purchase again. And that is how you can start your own branded drop shipping store. If you made it this far, then I'm pretty sure that you enjoyed this video and you found it helpful. So if that is the case, please make sure you smash that like button and also make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on any future videos. On this channel, we cover anything and everything drop shipping related, starting from some of the best tips and tricks to help you succeed in the game, all the way to some of the most popular items for some high profits. So if that's something that interests you, just make sure you hit that subscribe button. Once again, huge thank you to everyone for watching, especially if you made it all the way to the end. My name is Mario with AutoDS wishing you all nothing but success in your drop shipping stores and catch you all next time.