Finding Items with Product Locator
If
you need merchandise that you have been unable to find, give the Product
Locator Service a try. Wholesalecentral.com’s Product
Locator Service helps you, the wholesale buyer, to locate
hard to find products or specialized situations by delivering your
requests directly to the suppliers who can fulfill them: the registered
suppliers listed in the Wholesalecentral.com directory.
Easy
to Use
It is easy to sign up,
post and track requests, protect or disclose your identity, and deal
with legitimate, pre-qualified suppliers who are eager for your business.
- To use the service you must be a member of the free Buyers Network.
If you are not already a member, click here to join.
- Login to your Buyer Account and go to the Product
Locator page (this page). Click the POST A REQUEST link.
- On the request form, type in the name of the product you are
seeking, and offer as much detail about it as you can. Then choose
from the 41 different product categories.
- Click the Send button and you are on the way to finding what you seek.
What
happens next?
After you click Send, we email your request to all of
the suppliers on Wholesalecentral.com who have subscribed to receive
requests in
the category you selected. Your request is also posted on
the public Product Locator Board
for 60 days. When suppliers respond, Wholesalecentral.com
emails the replies to your private email, as well as posting them
on the public
board. Replies to your requests are also stored in your personal “Message
Center” in your Buyers Network account.
It
is important to note that the sellers have not seen your email address
at this
point, unless
you have included it in your request. Your personal information
is kept private until you decide to disclose it to the
sellers
you are
interested
in working with. This is an excellent way of preventing
you from being spammed.
If you
have made several merchandise requests, your personal Message Center is probably the best place from which to track seller responses. Your message center lists all open product requests and lets you track requests within specific date ranges,
a very helpful feature
for high-volume buyers in particular.
A Safe
Haven
Security is a high priority at Wholesalecentral.com. Once
you make a request for merchandise on the Product Locator,
only suppliers who are registered on Wholesalecentral.com
can compete for your business. Each of these suppliers has paid a
fee to be
listed
in the directory. This alone eliminates most of the scammers
who are looking for a free place to list their company. The staff
of Wholesalecentral.com contacts every company listed, and if
a
company
ever becomes unreachable at the contact information in their
listing, they are removed
from the site.
Such
diligence helps the site maintain its strong reputation in the wholesale
industry, and keeps the quality of suppliers very high. However, if you feel that a supplier is either spamming or scamming
you, it is an easy matter to report them to Wholesale Central. Every
report is promptly investigated and abusers are banned from the system.
Tips
and Tricks for Buyers and Suppliers
Regardless of what you need to buy, the best way to use the Product Locator is to be as specific and realistic as possible. The more you tell your potential suppliers, the easier it is for them to gauge their readiness to serve you. The merchandise requests with the highest quantity and quality of responses on Product Locator typically offer a lot of information.
It is
also important to have a real world idea of supplier limitations, you probably will not find Nintendo Wiis at half price! Also, if you
want to buy many different kinds of merchandise, take the effort to post each request under the appropriate category, rather than requesting many different products in a single post.
The
same principles apply to suppliers. If you believe you have the right
product
for
a reseller,
offer
as much detail as possible in your
Product
Locator reply. If you do not have exactly
the right product, you should be careful
about
replying, because the buyer
could flag your response
as spam. Also remember to include your
website address and other contact information, but
do not
assume
that just copy-and-pasting your URL
is sufficient to close a sale. If the reseller
has specific questions, e.g.,
if a specific item is your main product
line, answer these up front before providing the
URL.
POST
A REQUEST
Wholesale Central Asia