[ULTIMATE GUIDE] Winning Tactics For Finding Manufacturing Companies 2/3

In this multi-part article, we will explore how to find suppliers for the goods you want to market. This is part two of the series. We will continue to discuss how to find and source products from the USA or other countries. The method we are presenting here has been tested by numerous large companies and is currently used by top e-commerce giants to find and source products worldwide. If you're serious about this job and want to approach it professionally and thoroughly, let's proceed with the steps. You can use this method to find suppliers not only in the USA but also in any country you prefer.

For the purpose of this article, we will provide examples from the USA. Later in the series, we will invite an expert to guide you through the step-by-step process of finding and sourcing products from China.

If you want to search for players in this business, the best starting point is Google. While there are other sources available to find suppliers, it is advisable to begin with Google when searching in the USA. The first step is to create a spreadsheet in a program like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Excel, or any other tool that suits you best. Name the spreadsheet "Potential Suppliers" and add four columns: NAME, WEBSITE, CONTACT INFORMATION, and NOTES. Once you have set up the spreadsheet, go to Google and start looking for suppliers. For the purpose of this example, let's search for suppliers that provide face masks, as it is a market many of you have likely considered.

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As you can see, you should put your search term it in quotation marks like in the screenshot. You should do it in quotation marks because you want Google only to pull up results that have the words "face" and "mask" up together. So you don't want just face suppliers or mask suppliers, you want face mask suppliers.

We want face mask suppliers, and now you want to include “private label” as your next two words. Moreover, you are not going to put that in quotes because you want Google to give you anything that this considered to be private label. Google knows what works related to one another, so it is going to pull up people that are face mask suppliers or people that have on their website face mask wholesalers and is going to put all of those things up.

Now just go and Google search that and what you want to remember when you are looking at this results is that your goal is to make a 2 seconds snap judgment call on whether or not there is any possibility at all that this could be a potential supplier. Don't spend 15 or 20 minutes looking at those websites. Just make a quick snap judgment call based on the website that you see on the URL or maybe just look for another second or two to decide whether or not it might be a good fit and then throw it on your list. So remember that this is just a quick judgment call on whether or not that supplier is going to be good.

As you go through the list, click on any link that seems promising and could potentially be a good fit. If the website looks great, take note of the name and URL and add it to your spreadsheet. Don't be too strict with your selection criteria. If a website looks decent and seems to meet your requirements, add it to the list.

During your research, you may come across different results that appear slightly different. Not all the results on the first page may be actual e-commerce sites. That's why I suggest going at least 20 pages deep in the search results. Many suppliers have poor search engine optimization and struggle to rank for their desired keywords. So, by going through at least the first 20 pages, you have a better chance of finding potential suppliers, even if they may not appear on the first few pages. Additionally, keep an eye out for files such as PDF or Excel files, as they may contain relevant information.

You also might encounter some other types, but probably these results are not going to be relevant for you. So you just skip them. However, any results that kind of look good for you just take a look at them and throw the website on your list.

Have a look at this example:

This website is on the 12th page of Google and as you can see they have a really bad design for their website as a lot of wholesalers, suppliers and manufacturers do. They are just like a company and they make a good product, but they don't know anything about how to do build a good website, but that shouldn’t stop you at all. Put them on your list.

So remember: you are not trying to examine anyone on the website that you have found yet. Just take anything that looks like it could be good, and you just click on the link, and if it looks like it is something eligible, you grab it and you put it on your spreadsheet. Now go ahead and go through at least the first 20 pages of the results and drop anyone who looks any kind of decent and put him on your spreadsheet. Remember not to be too strict about it, just look for websites and companies that may be private label suppliers for the product that you are searching for and add them to your list.

Now let us continue into the process of finding suppliers.

Now let's dive a little deeper into search engines to refine our search queries and obtain even more relevant results.We suggest starting with the main query enclosed in quotation marks, as I previously demonstrated for private label searches. However, we want to equip you with additional tools to dig deeper if the initial search within the first 20 pages didn't yield the desired results. Let's explore how you can further enhance your search using Google.

One approach is to modify your search terms. Begin with the product you are looking for, such as "face mask," and add the modifier "supplier:" to specify your search intention.

Now, let's observe the results and see what we obtain. It's possible to come across different outcomes. Another search query you can try is "face mask" wholesalers because manufacturers sometimes use the term "wholesaler" when selling their products in bulk. Additionally, you can include "OEM" in your search, which stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. This term is another way to refer to manufacturers in industry jargon. Utilizing these variations can provide you with diverse results for potential suppliers of your main products, which you still have in quotation marks. Remember, you are specifically seeking suppliers, wholesalers, or manufacturers of the actual product, not general face products or China-related mask products. If you remove the quotation marks, Google may display any content with the words "face" or "mask" in their titles.

Furthermore, if you are pursuing private label opportunities in the United States, you might encounter results from Alibaba, AliExpress, and other Chinese manufacturers when using Google. To avoid including these manufacturers in your search query, you can utilize negative site commands.

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So you just add | -site:alibaba.com |  Now if you put this query where you’ve got | “face mask” – supplier –site:alibaba.com | you are still searching for a face mask, but you are telling Google to not show you any results from alibaba.com.

Basically that is going to show you the same list, except that Google is going to make sure that there are no any results from alibaba.com. You can also put in the same query that you want to do a negative site for AliExpress, and is not going to show you anything from AliExpress. This is how it looks -> | “face mask” supplier –site:alibaba.com –site:aliexpress.com | And this will remove from the search query these two website results. This type of negative site searching is extremely useful when you are searching for products that are typical in china. You might find products in the search engines that seems to be only from AliExpress or Alibaba, but when you add the negative site search query, then the search engine will be more likely to pull up results from USA.

You can do that negative site | -site: | query for as many sites as you want you just need to put a space for every negative site. You are now familliar with what is a negative site command, which will help you drill in and make sure that you will get the results that don't come from the main websites that are China-related which is  Alibaba and AliExpress or others.

Next, let's look at another very cool command that Google allows you to do is the “all in title” command.

By using this command in your query, Google is only going to show you results where the terms “face mask supplier” that are in the actual title of the web page. The title of the web page is this thing that shows on blue text in your results.

Now when you are searching for you will get a bunch of results that have in the title “Face mask supplier”.  So for the purpose of this article, I will exclude Alibaba and Aliexpress | allintitle: face mask supplier -site:alibaba.com -site:aliexpress.com |

By employing these refined search methods, you will obtain highly relevant results consisting of potential suppliers that can be added to your spreadsheet. You can see the clear advantage this approach offers over your competition. Feel free to utilize more precise and targeted search queries in Google to discover additional supplier options and include them in your spreadsheet. By this point, you should ideally have compiled a list of at least 20 suppliers, or possibly more. However, if you are searching for a particularly unique product, your list may contain only ten entries.

Now if you just did that – then please,  take a break!

Seriously! Once You have gone to all the search result pages and gathered everything on your spreadsheet, please take a break. Just do it! Wait until the next day, because you will be tired and you do not want to narrow the field when you are tired. So make sure that you are rested before you start with the next part, where you will narrow the field.

And after you did your break, go to your spreadsheet and check out every website on the list.

It's time to click on every link and actually go to the website and try to find real information that leads you to believe that they are true potential suppliers. Sometimes it is not really possible to tell whether a website is a good supplier and in that case just make a judgment and decide for yourself whether or not they are eligible. And if you decide that they are eligible and just go in the notes and just put “maybe” and continue. Of course, later you will contact these people, and you will find out if the are eligible. You might also disqualify the people that have nothing for private label even if they did show on your results for private label.

For the suppliers that you didn’t disqualify - search for contact information.

Now don’t disqualify suppliers because their prices are high or they have bad information about high minimum order quantity – none of that - because all of that can be negotiated. The thing that you care the most is whether on not they are actually suppliers if they are, then grab their contact information and put it on your list. They may have some specific email address or phone, just put those in the contact information column of your spreadsheet. After you do that then you can disqualify all the people that don’t look like good suppliers, or their websites are totally broken. Moreover, to the point where you think that their products are junk or there is no contact information at all - then disqualify them.  

But any website that looks good and has all the right signs - put it in your column with contact information. And my last suggestion is NOT to get too involved in the details. You don’t have to read every single line on the website of the suppliers. Just read enough and try to narrow down your list to just a few suppliers. Hopefully, this step will take you one hour, and you have got your list down to no more than 6 or 7 of potential suppliers. Some people have narrowed down their list to 3 potential suppliers which is amazing. Or if you have a whole bunch then is perfectly well, you can contact all of them.

That's how you find your suppliers, select them and then narrow down your list. Having this information, just go ahead, narrow your sheet down by inspecting each website. In the next part, I will be showing you how to reach out to the suppliers and contact them so you can be confident that you will know how to communicate with them and negotiate with them.

Until then have a nice research and let’s get to the real deal. To be continued...