As the source of product production, factories are the most ideal channel for merchants to develop products. However, factories are generally unable to cooperate well with the purchasing needs of Wish merchants for the following reasons.
(1) The number of products in factories is usually not too large, and they are accustomed to orders for fixed-point production. Few factories will take the initiative to prepare safety stocks for products. Even if they do, many merchants distribute them at the same time, so it is difficult to guarantee inventory.
(2) Factories usually need economies of scale to produce products. It is difficult to immediately determine the order quantity of Wish products in the early stage, so scattered orders will make factories less willing to cooperate.
(3) Factories update products relatively slowly (especially for products with complex molds such as electronics and LEDs). Wish merchants need to constantly develop new products to meet store sales, so it is difficult to have stable cooperation with one or two factories for a long time.
However, since 2014, more and more factories have begun to contact the cross-border e-commerce industry and are becoming more and more familiar with the procurement model of cross-border e-commerce platforms. After three years of production line and business model adjustments, many factories have begun to cooperate with Wish merchants through Alibaba. However, if merchants want to have more advantages in the products operated by Wish, they need to develop more stable factory suppliers of their own so that they can have their own unique product line.
If you want to cooperate with factories, you can first establish contact with suppliers and start by introducing the model and characteristics of the Wish platform. Of course, the most important thing is to gain the trust of the other party with your familiarity with the other party’s main products. Imagine if a person tells the factory owner that he needs a batch of products to distribute, but he doesn’t care what the product is, what characteristics it has, and who to sell it to, I believe that no boss will have confidence in such a customer, and it will be difficult to carry out the next step of cooperation.
The first thing we have to do is to fully understand the products and scale of the target factory. Factories with more than 1,000 people are basically not our consideration, because the factory is too large, everything needs to go through the process, it is difficult to cooperate with us flexibly, and the minimum order quantity is often required, which makes it difficult for merchants to bear. Our target factories are those with 30 to 200 employees. These factories are usually more willing to accept new channels and try to cooperate with customers. They also have a certain amount of manpower to cooperate with customers to complete product information sorting, after-sales training and other matters.
The second is to sort out the cooperation model. The Wish platform generally requires the factory to provide product listing information and prepare safety inventory. At this time, merchants need to prepare docking templates.
The template usually needs to include product code, weight, color, material, instructions for use, purchase unit price, sales model, etc., which can be adjusted according to the complexity of the product.
If the merchant also opens a store on other platforms and has demand for factory products, it can first prepare batches of stock or fixed-point production for several confident styles, so that the factory’s cooperation will be much greater.
The third point is more easily overlooked by merchants, which is to regularly feedback sales to the factory and explain the safety inventory requirements, because after all, they are two companies, and communication will not be smooth all at once, and long-term contact and communication are required. At the same time, we should also note that factories usually quote higher prices for such scattered orders, which may be higher than the prices on Alibaba. We need to remind suppliers to make adjustments regularly according to our own market sales situation, and try to exchange attitude for support in the early stage and quantity for price in the later stage.
The last point is that on the basis of relatively smooth cooperation between the two parties, we can further apply for exclusive sales on the Wish platform for some new products and patented products of the factory. In this way, our own store can slowly build some barriers in terms of products.