 One of the most crucial aspects in our dropshipping business hands down is our suppliers. I have a supplier. If you don't have the right suppliers, then I'm sorry to tell you, your business is probably going to fail. I know your business is failing. Having the right supplier can help you avoid any customer service issues and any supply chain issues. And honestly, it's just going to help you with any headaches overall. Having the right supplier will provide you with some of the best products and some of the best customer service. One thing that you need to remember is that our customer service is essentially going to be a reflection of our suppliers. Now, I know that might not make too much sense, but think of it this way. If your supplier takes about one week to get back to you, then how long is it going to take you to get back to your customer? Customers are going to have questions and a lot of the times we're not going to have the answers. So in this case, we have to turn to our suppliers for these answers. But if our suppliers take forever to get back to us, then it's going to take us forever and a day to get back to our customers. And honestly, at that point, they're most likely just going to be long gone. Now, this video is going to focus primarily on three PL suppliers. Three PL is third party logistics. Now, we're going to get into that a little bit later on. But right now, the first thing that you need to know is what you need to look for in a supplier before dedicating yourself to one of them. So when you're looking for a supplier, there is a few different qualities that you really need to look for. The first one needs to be quality. So you need to make sure that your supplier has quality items. This is obviously extremely important because if your customer receives a broken item or one that's severely disfigured or discolored, they're going to be extremely upset and that's going to lead to refunds, exchanges, or chargebacks. So how do you find out if a supplier has good quality? Well, it's easy. You don't have to order a sample of every single item that you want to sell. All you have to do is simply reach out to them, see how their communication is, and make sure that they have quality communication, make sure that they actually get back to you, and order one or two different samples, maybe three or four. But that's about it. You don't have to order one of every single item that you want to sell because ultimately, if the handful of items that you purchased at the beginning, if they're good quality items and it's consistent, then chances are more than likely the rest of their products are going to follow through as well. Another thing that you need to look for is scaling or adaptability. You need to make sure that your suppliers can scale along with you. They need to be able to adapt. So whether you're placing 10 orders or 100 orders or even a thousand orders, your suppliers need to be able to keep up and adapt accordingly because if they can't, then your customers are going to be left waiting for their items. And we all know that people do not like waiting. Most of the times, two weeks is going to be the max that they want to wait. Anything after that, they're going to get mad. They're going to get upset. You're going to be receiving some nasty emails. And overall, it's just something that it's better to just completely avoid. Another thing that you need to look out for is one that I covered already a couple of times already in this video alone. And that is communication, like I mentioned earlier. Our customer service is going to be a reflection of our suppliers. If our customers have a question about a particular product and they reach out to us, if we don't have the answer, we have to get it from our suppliers. If they take more than one or two days to get back to us, then honestly, our customers are not going to like that. People are used to instant gratification. And unfortunately, when it comes to things as simple as sending an email, people don't like waiting around. Maybe they'll wait one or maybe two days. But honestly, after that, people are going to forget about that they even sent you the email in the first place. And if you do get back to them, maybe three or four days afterwards, they probably already made their purchase somewhere else. You also want to make sure that your suppliers have some good amount of time in the game. You want to make sure that they have a lot of reviews. You want to make sure that they have positive reviews. And overall, you want to make sure that they're experienced. You want to make sure that they know what they're doing. And they didn't just start a week or two ago, because if you start getting some crazy orders and these people just started maybe one or two weeks ago, maybe even a month or two ago or even a year, then chances are they probably won't fully know how to adapt just yet. Of course, everything takes time. You never know. They might actually end up being better than some other suppliers. But honestly, for best results, always make sure that you look for suppliers that have at least two or three, maybe even five years in the game. The more time a supplier has in the dropshipping business, the more they're going to know how to overcome certain obstacles and potential supply chain disruptions, which supply chain disruptions happen. Sometimes they're not that long. Sometimes they take a lot longer than others. But if you have a quality supplier, they're going to know how to get around them. And the last thing that you want to make sure that you have with your suppliers is some sort of trust. You want to make sure that you trust your suppliers. And how do you build that trust? Well, simple by pretty much establishing a business with them, establishing a long term partnership with them, making sure that they fulfill orders in a timely manner, and that they get back to you with any inquiries. Also, you want to make sure that they're friendly. You don't want to deal with the cringe or the grouch, because honestly, that just makes working with a supplier that much easier. Now, how do suppliers work? Well, I'm pretty sure we all know this, but a supplier works by simply having items and fulfilling the orders for you. It's pretty much it. In dropshipping, you receive an order in your e-commerce store. That order then gets rerouted to your supplier. Your supplier fulfills that item, ships out the item, sends out the tracking number, and that's pretty much it. You collect your profits, they collect theirs, and until the next transaction. But that's your regular supplier. What about a third-party logistics supplier? Well, this is where things can start to get pretty interesting. So a third-party logistics supplier is simply a supplier that is going to hold your inventory for you. So when you work with a third-party supplier, you're essentially outsourcing your supply chain management. So they're going to be taking care of the warehousing, the transportation, the order fulfillment, any inventory management, and a lot more. Now, when is it best to use a third-party supplier? Well, from experience, the best thing for you to do is start off with a basic supplier. See what items start to sell, see which ones are actually gaining some traction, which ones are making you some money. In which case, then you can start looking for a supplier that provides third-party logistics. Now, what's going to happen here is, instead of you placing an order with your supplier, you're going to place a larger bulk order with your supplier, and those items are then going to be sent to your 3PLs warehouse, where whenever you get an order for that particular item, they're going to fulfill the entire thing. Now, with AutoDS, you have something pretty similar with the AutoDS warehouse. So AutoDS has a warehouse that has a ton of different items in there. All of those items have been imported from different suppliers, and we're essentially working as a 3PL supplier. So if you're using AutoDS, if you have an account with us, and you're automating your entire dropshipping store, then somebody's going to place an order in your store, that order is going to be automatically rerouted to your supplier. In this case, of course, your supplier is going to be the AutoDS warehouse. And from there, the order is going to get fulfilled 100%. The best part is, is that you're going to have some of the quickest shipping in the entire game. So right now, we're checking out the AutoDS suppliers. Here, you're going to find items from the AutoDS warehouse, as well as AutoDS private suppliers. But just to give you a quick example, as far as shipping, here you can see that this one ships between 6 to 9 business days, some are between 8 to 11. Here we have one that's 4 to 6 business days. And the best part about this is the fact that that's not how much time is going to be in transit or how long it's going to take for the supplier to actually ship out the item. That's how long it's going to take for your customer to receive the item from the moment they place their order. Some of these items are even going to rival Amazon with 2 to 4 day shipping. That is absolutely insane for a drop shipping supplier. Now, another thing that you can benefit from when you're working with a third-party logistics supplier is white label products or being able to brand your own products. So in this case, you have a lot easier access to white label products or being able to customize your own branding on the packaging itself. This can be extremely helpful if you're starting your own brand. And even if you don't want to start your own brand, this is still an awesome feature simply because it adds a personal touch. You can simply just put a thank you note in your customer's packaging. It gives it a nice little personal touch so that your customers are going to remember. Now, looking back at the AutoDS private suppliers and warehouse, we also offer customized branding. So what happens in this case is anything that you see here that says customizable branding, it's going to ship with a custom thank you card. That thank you card is going to have your logo on it and it's going to have a nice little thank you message on it. Now, being able to work with these suppliers has a few added benefits as well. For one, it gives you the ability to test and launch different products a bit easier. Also, if you're paying for warehousing, then you don't have to worry about that either because your supplier is going to be taking care of that entire aspect of it. Now, not having to worry about warehousing also frees up a lot of capital that you can use to reinvest into your business. Another major benefit to this is you can have your inventory or all of the products that you're going to be dropshipping more localized. So if you're going to be dropshipping in the US primarily, but your supplier is located in China, of course, shipping up from China is going to take a lot longer than if you had a warehouse in the US where your items are going to be shipped from. Now, I know I keep talking about the fact that you need to order in bulk and have that sent over to your warehouse or to your supplier's warehouse. A lot of the times that is the case and some of the best times to do this is when you know a particular item is working. When you know that it's trending and you know it's getting a lot of sales, one of the best ways to scale is order it in bulk. You're going to get better pricing. You're going to be making a higher profit and you're going to be having a lot faster shipping. But not all suppliers are going to require you to order a huge bulk of items. This is really all going to vary from supplier to supplier. So your best bet in this part is simply to contact the manufacturer or contact the supplier and see what their policies are. See how it is that they work with it. And you never know. Maybe they have their own warehouse in the US or whatever country it is that you're dropshipping on that you can source your products from. But in short, that's pretty much what 3PL suppliers are. That's what third party logistics suppliers are for. And if you want a little bit more information on that, just go ahead and check out the description down below. There's going to be a link to a relevant article down there. As always, huge thank you for watching, especially if you made it all the way to the end. If you made it this far, that means you absolutely love the video. You found it helpful. So make sure you smash that like button. Aside from that, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Make sure you ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. Remember on this channel, we cover anything and everything dropshipping related to help you succeed in your business. With that, my name is Mario with AutoDS and I'll catch y'all next time.