When starting your new dropshipping business one of the most important decisions you can make is who you purchase your stock from. With the dropshipping business thriving there are more options than ever for who to go with, so how can you choose?
This article will discuss one such supplier – ChinaBrands – and weigh up whether they are a trustworthy business, and their different pros and cons.
It is important to bear in mind that every business has different needs and preferences when it comes to their supplier, and this article should help you make an educated choice.
What is dropshipping?
When acquiring stock most retailers will buy a bulk amount of their products and store them so they have them immediately available for their customers. When that season or trend is dying out, any remaining items will be put on sale to clear the warehouses to make room for new products.
With dropshipping, however, businesses only carry the products they know they have already sold or are about to – which cuts down the need for unnecessary sales, meaning less loss of profit. Dropshipping businesses work as a sort of ‘middle-man’ in the buying process. Someone will buy an item from their site, that site will then order said product from a dropship supplier at a lower price, and then have that product delivered to the customer.
This removes the need for unnecessary storage space keeping a huge backlog of products that may not sell, and therefore reduces expenditure on extra stock and space.
Many people have been moving to dropshipping as a business venture due to the vast variety of dropshipping platforms and suppliers. It’s been a good way for people to make money whilst at home due to the pandemic, so the demand for good dropship suppliers has increased.
ChinaBrands is one such supplier, so who exactly are they?
Who are ChinaBrands?
ChinaBrands are a wholesale company based in China which has been gaining popularity as a dropshipping supplier outside of Asia. This is in line with the current trend of China dominating the e-commerce supply market, where it is projected that they will represent 64% of the overall total retail market by 2023.
They are a subsidiary of GlobalESource, which is one of the most successful eCommerce companies in China. This has meant ChinaBrands has a long list of connections and has access to various warehouses across the globe.
These connections have meant that ChinaBrands is able to do business in over 200 countries and is projected to grow even more in the upcoming years.
ChinaBrands is clearly a successful company with a large customer base, but are they a better option than other suppliers? Now we’ll look at whether ChinaBrands is a trustworthy company and what pros and cons there are to working with them.
The Negatives
As with any supplier, there are always associated risks.
ChinaBrands has proved itself trustworthy enough to stay in business and continue to have a user base of loyal customers. However, they currently have a rating of 1.8 on Trustpilot, showing that despite their success there are some issues with the company.
One of the main issues customers are seeming to have is the low quality of the products supplied. This can often be an issue with dropshipping suppliers, especially if you are trying to get your products for as cheap as possible. It is still noteworthy, however, that people are finding issues with quality despite knowing this going in; this could imply that the discrepancy in quality to price is even more than with other dropship suppliers, but that is down to personal opinion.
Another issue that people have found with ChinaBrands is that they have long shipping times when purchasing from them. This is a common issue when it comes to purchasing from China, and is to be expected. Although common, it doesn’t make it any less of an inconvenience. Many people are moving to dropship suppliers based in their own country or the US to avoid such long waiting times, but this often also means higher product prices. So there is a trade off you must weigh up, of whether the long delivery times are worth the cheaper prices.
Anecdotally it has also been said that despite their large array of products available ChinaBrands doesn’t often restock their products and doesn’t update their sites to reflect any shortages. This can prove bothersome if you have customers wanting to buy from you, and you’re unable to follow the order through because of their lacking.
If there were only negatives to ChinaBrands as a company no one would use them, so it stands that there are positives also which keep people coming back.
What are the positives?
It would be remiss to not discuss the positives to ChinaBrands – if there were no redeeming qualities people wouldn’t purchase from them, so there must be some reason people keep coming back.
Some of the main positives when it comes to ChinaBrands as a dropship supplier are their lack of Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ), low prices, and large range of products.
One of the biggest appeals to dropshipping is not needing to hold a lot of stock at once, and only being able to order what you need. With ChinaBrands there is no MOQ meaning that you are still able to only order what you need and don’t need to hold onto any unwanted stock due to minimum requirements.
With any business, but especially when starting out you want to keep your running costs low so you can maximize profits and grow as a company. A way to do this is to not spend unnecessary money on products and to try and get them at wholesale prices. ChinaBrands offers cheap wholesale prices for their items meaning you are able to have larger profit margins on your products and grow your capital.
Additionally, ChinaBrands offers a large array of different products, so whatever niche you’re deciding to go into ChinaBrands will likely have something for you. So when you’re deciding what products you want to sell, ChinaBrands will have a lot of different options for you to decide between.
Conclusion
People have been finding numerous problems with ChinaBrands as a dropship supplier, including but not limited to the low quality of items and the long delivery times. With so many other successful dropshipping suppliers available you shouldn’t have to deal with bad products unnecessarily.
There are still some positives to ChinaBrands, namely their lack of MOQ, low price, and their variety of products available. Meaning that it can be a good option when you’re starting out, trying to figure out your niche, and don’t have much money to spend on products up front. So there are still merits to ChinaBrands.
The best advice is to weigh up these pros and cons and see where you are on your dropshipping journey to decide whether ChinaBrands is a good supplier for you.
