[Sourcing for Online Stores] What to Sell in Your Online Store? Sourcing Tips and Channels!

What to Sell in Your Online Store? Sourcing Tips and Channels!

Opening an online store has become a popular industry. Although it's easy to start, the sourcing process for online stores is undoubtedly a challenging issue for many entrepreneurs, such as: Where to source goods? Where to store goods? Which products to source? How much to stock? Here are some sourcing guidelines for online businesses that you must consider!

1) Shelf Life

The entire online store shopping process is longer than physical stores, involving sourcing, customer browsing, ordering, logistics, and more. Products with short shelf lives are not suitable for startups to sell, such as fresh ingredients, beverages, etc., unless you have dedicated storage space and logistics support.

2) Sourcing Costs and Selling Prices

General people's confidence in online stores is slightly lower than physical stores, and they cannot directly touch or try products. As a result, the amount they're willing to spend is also less. When sourcing for your online store, consider choosing categories with lower costs and that are easily repurchased regularly, such as snacks, daily necessities, fashion, jewelry, etc., and operate on a thin margin high volume model.

3) Are Your Products Suitable for Self-Service Ordering?

There are many types of online store products. Try to choose products that can support self-service ordering and direct payment. These are usually simpler products, such as cosmetics, fashion, snacks, daily necessities, etc., which can save you the trouble of processing orders.

4) Where Should You Source for Your Online Store?

The most common method for sourcing for online stores is to go to large wholesale markets to select products. In wholesale markets, you can not only touch or even try the actual products, but also source at the cheapest wholesale prices.

However, affected by the pandemic, it may not be possible to physically source from overseas wholesale markets currently. Therefore, some online store owners have turned to e-commerce platforms for sourcing, such as eBay, Amazon, Korean Gmarket, Japanese Rakuten, etc., and then use overseas logistics to ship products to Hong Kong.