The high level of competition at the retail level, whether on eBay, at a flea market, or at a shopping center, means that success is often dictated by who has the lowest price.
Customers can easily see who has the lowest price by conducting a simple search on eBay, walking around at a flea market, or visiting a few stores in a shopping center.
Long gone are the days when a consumer had to limit his choices to a few local stores.
Today, in large part because of the Internet, dollar stores, flea market vendors, and eBay sellers, all have access to many different types of products.
In the past when the wholesale business was based on connections, a reseller would have to endure a difficult and time consuming search to find suppliers of merchandise.
But today any retailer, flea market vendor, or eBay seller can simply go online and order pretty much any type of wholesale merchandise.
So to make money the seller needs to ensure that what he is buying will give him a good profit margin while charging less than his competitors.
To accomplish this the seller needs to be able to pay the lowest possible wholesale prices.
So how can you as a reseller pay the lowest wholesale prices?
For starters you need to know the market wholesale price of the merchandise you are looking for.
You find this price by calling a few wholesalers that deal with the wholesale merchandise you want.
At this point you will know what the actual wholesale price of this merchandise is.
Your next step is to obtain the lowest wholesale price by calling each wholesaler and telling them what their competitors’ prices are.
It is important that you quote them the actual prices, otherwise the wholesaler will know that you are fabricating the numbers.
Once these wholesalers see that you are serious, and honest, they will compete amongst themselves to earn your business.
While they might already be at the lowest prices that they can offer you, you might benefit by receiving a discount in the shipping, or extra merchandise thrown in for free.
Once you find the wholesaler that will give you the best price on the wholesale merchandise you need to move to step two.
In this step you ask him how much he can lower the price if you increase the number of units that you are buying.
It is usually worthwhile buying 5% more wholesale merchandise that you need right now, in exchange for obtaining a 5% discount on the wholesale price.
You can always sell the extra merchandise in the future.
And you will benefit this way since you will now have paid a lower wholesale price than the majority of your competitors.
Donny Lowy is the CEO of http://www.closeoutexplosion.com, an online wholesale and closeout business.
Closeoutexplosion.com supplies brand name wholesale and closeout merchandise to dollar stores, flea market vendors, and eBay sellers.
