BI 357: The Science of Successfully Sourcing Products From China (Ft Nathan Resnick)
March 30, 2021
On the Bright Ideas eCommerce podcast, Trent Dyrsmid interviews today's most successful eCommerce, Agency, and SaaS founders and gets them to share all their most effective strategies and tactics for growth so you can quickly figure what you need to implement in your business today to get ahead of your competition. If you are looking for proven methods to scale up your eCommerce business, increase efficiency, improve your systems, and delegate more, this is the podcast for you. eCommerce, automation, outsourcing, standard operating procedures, workflow management, search engine optimization, social media, podcasting, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.
Episode Highlights
[04:14] — Nathan shares how he started product sourcing
- His background as a foreign exchange student in China led him to import products from Asia.
- Sourcify is a B2B eCommerce manufacturing platform helping hundreds of high-growth eCommerce brands.
- Nathan is also the founder of Bubble Hotels.
[05:27] — Launching Sourcify
- They initially charged companies upfront to manufacture products for them.
- They have teams all over Asia handling supply chains of over 150 mid-sized eCommerce brands and numerous Fortune 500s.
[06:38] — How Nathan funded Sourcify
- They went through Y Combinator, which is an accelerator program for startups.
- Through the three-month program, they raised $2.5 million.
- Nathan was one of the only non-technical solo founders to ever go through Y Combinator. Most companies have co-founders and technical teams.
[09:25] — How they acquired their first customers
- Nathan used his content marketing background to put out valuable content.
- His approach focuses on providing value and bridging the content space gap instead of pitching.
- Within the first few months of business, he was writing in major eCommerce blogs. It was possible because he built relationships with the blog owners and writers.
[15:06] — How Sourcify increased its top of the funnel
- They built a software tool for product management and manufacturing.
- Their sourcing teams in Asia do the behind-the-scenes work.
- At the same time, they can also sell the project management system to the brands they handle.
[17:50] — Questions Nathan considers when building a business
- Am I going to regret not doing this in the future?”
- “Is it going to be fun and enjoyable? Is it something that I want to learn?”
[18:24] — Sourcify’s source of growth
- Sourcify’s growth is all inbound and referral base.
- Sourcify comes up as one of the top search results when you search China or Vietnam manufacturing.
- They ask for referrals from existing customers after proving their success in their service.
[19:35] — Sourcify’s customer onboarding process
- The company sends their specs and samples, which they send to their main office.
- They'll choose a handful of factories and assess which is the best fit to produce samples.
- After approval from the customer, they start the production.
- They make sure to have third-party inspections before shipping the product.
- Customers either already have specs and designs or want to improve an existing product line.
[22:17] — Gotchas and best practices
- The main approach is going to Alibaba and other global sources to find suppliers based on the same products.
- Nathan suggests reaching out to 10 to 20 factories and getting samples from two to three factories.
- Getting products from other companies or looking at bad reviews of products helps you see how you can improve — and later sell — products.
- The 30-70 payment term is the most typical in product sourcing and is where third-party’s importance comes in. The production generally takes 30 to 60 days.
- Supplier platforms have their internal advertising platform. Hence, the top search results are not necessarily the best supplier.
[28:44] — Going viral with FU
- During Conor McGregor’s fight with Floy Mayweather, McGregor wore a suit with FU pinstripes.
- When it went viral, Nathan had the idea to recreate it in other products.
- It was a success as their products went viral in a week.