How to Find UK Dropshipping Suppliers Who Want to Work With You (Episode 154)

👉 Ready to start your own online store? Start here: https://dropshipunlocked.com/online-event?el=podcast-154-find-uk-suppliers

🗣In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley dive into one of the biggest questions for new e-commerce entrepreneurs: how do you actually find UK dropshipping suppliers who want to work with you? 

With over £7 million in combined e-commerce sales, they reveal the proven strategies they and their members use to sign high-quality suppliers and avoid the common mistakes that get beginners ignored.

👉 Prefer to watch this on YouTube? Check it out here ➡️ https://youtu.be/J7iDKs2JgK0

Topics Discussed:
 ★ The Right Type of Suppliers: Why working directly with UK brand suppliers (not AliExpress or middlemen) is the foundation of a successful high-ticket store.
 ★ Preparation is Key: The professional setup—company registration, email, phone line, and polished store—that makes suppliers take you seriously.
 ★ Where to Find Suppliers: How to reverse-engineer competitor stores and identify the brands already working with dropshippers.
 ★ Why Suppliers Say Yes: Understanding why many UK suppliers prefer to partner with retailers rather than selling direct to customers.
 ★ Common Pitfalls: The crucial mistakes beginners make when contacting suppliers and how to avoid burning bridges.

Links and Resources Mentioned:
 Pick up a copy of Lewis’ book: https://dropshipunlocked.com/book
Get Shopify for £1 a month for 3 months: https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Get a free trial with a professional phone line: https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle

Key Takeaways:
 ★ Work With the Right Suppliers: Focus on brand-direct UK suppliers who hold stock locally for fast delivery and premium customer experience.
 ★ Professionalism Wins: Suppliers want to partner with retailers who have a professional setup that aligns with their brand values.
 ★ Follow the Data: Reverse-engineer what’s already working in your niche to find suppliers who are open to dropshipping.
 ★ It’s a Win-Win: High-quality suppliers often prefer partnering with retailers who can expand their reach and drive sales.

FOLLOW:
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LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/company/dropship-unlocked
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/dropshipunlockedlewissmith
Website: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/

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Transcript

0:02

I know for you and I, James, with our combined total of, what is it? Upwards of £7,000,000 in E commerce sales. Now we can both safely say that the way to find UK dropshipping suppliers who want to work with you is. If you're still searching for suppliers on AliExpress or wholesale directories you're missing. And once you start looking there, you will have an unlimited supply of UK dropshipping suppliers. Because finding great suppliers isn't about luck, it's about knowing where to look. Most people get ignored by UK suppliers because they make one crucial mistake. Welcome to the Dropship Unlocked podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of Dropship Unlocked and with me is our client success coach, James Eardley. Now, when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropshipunlocked.com start now. Sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the Dropship Unlocked podcast. If you're looking to start a high ticket e commerce business in the uk, one of the biggest hurdles you'll face early on is how do I find suppliers and more importantly, how do I get them to say yes? So today that's exactly what we're going to cover. We're going to answer that question once and for all. So Louis, let's start at the beginning. What kind of suppliers and do we actually want to work with here in the UK and why? Sure. So we personally with our home turf Advantage model, which is our trademarked model for E commerce that's proven and has been used now by thousands of our members, we work with high quality brand direct UK suppliers and so there's a reason why that matters. It's because they already hold stock of the items in the uk. Now this is beneficial to us as well retailers as e commerce sellers for a couple of different reasons. First, fast delivery. That means that you can get a much better customer experience. There's no issues with people waiting for their orders. They order and they can get the item usually the next day, if not a couple of working days versus, you know, it might be six weeks to have it shipped in if you were ordering from and working with suppliers abroad. The other reason is that the admin in the cost is so much less in that you don't have to deal with things like border customs issues and paying import duty. That's already been done by your supplier because they have the items on the shelves of their warehouse here in the uk. So it just means that you can accept a sale and you can send it out the door straight away to a UK supplier, to a UK customer. Remember, there's something like 66 million people in the UK. That's a lot of customers. And if you think about with this type of business, you probably only need one sale per day to hit 10,000 in profit per month. When you're selling say a 2,000 pound item at 30% margin, that's 600 pounds profit per sale. Do you think you could find 30 people out of 66 million in a month to hit a target income of 10k? I'm not saying that that's the limit, but like, you know, that's a good starting point, right? So I think that's one of the reasons why we think that it's so important to work with these domestic suppliers. They, they represent premium high ticket products that, that they make and that's really key for, for our profit margins because we want to make sure that we're able to sell at the higher end of the market to make a good profit margin, offer customers a great reliable service that they then want to go and leave us a nice 5 star review for and tell their friends about. And so these suppliers have a vested interest in quality and quality control. You know, they want to make sure that every item going out to customers has been checked and they're happy with it. Unlike the cheap middlemen, the kind of directories where the brands don't really care how their products are perceived by the market because they're just a supplier behind the scenes and they never have to face the consequences. These brands that we work with are the actual suppliers of the product brand that is kind of known in the market. So that's why we partner with them. And we'll talk a little bit more in this episode, I'm sure about the, the common question that we hear from people is why would those suppliers not just sell themselves to the public? So do you want to know the answer to that? Keep listening. We'll definitely cover it for you. Yeah, yeah, we're familiar with these types of questions, so we'll get to that in this episode. But first, laying the foundations really of the type of suppliers that we want to sign, because there's no point knowing how to sign super easy suppliers like signing up to Aliexpress or some random wholesaler like that, because the actual results you'll get when you sign them up and not worth the effort you put in the first place to get them on board. So we're talking about real business, real businesses to actual brands that are manufacturing or at least supplying into the UK these high ticket products. And that means that they're going to expect a certain level of professionalism as well. Which brings us on to the next point that we want to raise here, is what would you need to do in preparation before we even think about contacting these suppliers to sign them or to find them? What would you suggest we need to do to get prepared in order to contact them and therefore get the best results when we do get in touch with them? Yeah, it's a great question because most people do unfortunately fall into the trap of going in unprepared and as a result of that, they end up just getting ignored. Their request is, is either just ignored or rejected. So the first thing you can do to prepare is have your company set up professionally. So there's a reason why in week one of our programme we go through the process of helping you set up a UK registered business. Now, I don't just mean the company on Companies House, although that is part of it, but also like a professional email address, a professional phone line so that you can have calls coming through to either yourself or a virtual assistant call answering service. And making sure that we've chosen a clear niche before reaching out to suppliers, you know, you want to make sure that they trust that as a retailer you've done your market research and that you're not just trying to throw together a store with any products you can find, but you have created a, you've carved out a niche for yourself in the market and you want to differentiate yourself. And partnering with their brand and the products that they are very proud to distribute and sell is a strategic move because you see them as the premium end of the market. That's why it's so important. It's also important later for customers, you'll get a higher conversion rate if you have selected and created an environment where customers feel that they're in the right place to make the purchase of their item that they're looking for. Suppliers also want to see that you're aligned with their brand and their audience. So if you make a real kind of budget store and it's like constant discounts and it's like looking for the cheapest price on items and then you go and approach a premium supplier who's not trying to compete on price but is really high quality, there's going to be a misalignment it's not going to. It's going to be mismatched. So making sure we have a really professional store up and running. As part of the programme, we give you our pre built, pre designed, optimised e commerce theme for Shopify that you can just simply plug in, put your logo in place, put your colour scheme on it and it's just good to go. It's ready. It's probably save you £5,000 of custom web design fees to go and have something like that built yourself. And then it just shows the suppliers that you're approaching that you've got some skin in the game here. You know, you're not just some fly by night ebay that's looking to sign the contract with them and then throw their products onto an ebay shop front and then, you know, get a load of bad reviews for them. Like, you have a professional phone line, you've bothered to register a company, you have a professional email address, you have a premium site, you've built it out, you've got your logo, you've got the company details in place, like you're checking all of those trust boxes for the supplier. So those are the initial preparation steps, that and that, you know, that's just a list of a few of them. There's many more. We have a whole checklist that we would go through before reaching out to suppliers. Yeah, they're crucial, isn't it? You can have a completely different outcome if you're unprepared and don't go through those steps compared to if you do. I mean, just put yourself in the shoes of the supplier. And you imagine if you received an email from somebody coming from an@gmail.com email address, that's the first amber or orange flag. And then they've got a phone, they don't have a phone number. If they do, it's a mobile phone number. Again, loses some credibility if they don't even have a store to show you or a website URL that they're linking to. If they don't have a limited company, which is actually a basic requirement for a lot of the best suppliers in the uk, all these things, they just chip away at the authority and give you less of a chance to sign them. Whereas that's why the success that we've seen, the suppliers that we've signed up, they're looking for these things that we've done in place and it's worked for us. And you think the effort that it would take to go through this is going to Be a week's work or two weeks work to get these foundations in place. When you think about how much these suppliers represent, and I've got suppliers that I've done multiple six figures of sales through certain suppliers for my store, I think that justifies the effort for me to put in a couple of weeks work to be prepared when I go to reach out to them. Makes a huge difference. Also, it's difficult when you. If you have an initial bad reaction. So your first impressions will count. If you try and come back after doing it after they say no the first time, you've already tainted the way that they're going to perceive you. So super important to get it done the first time correctly. So we've actually walked you through a lot of this in other episodes as well. So not like we're holding things back, we're just letting you know this is the reality to get these really good suppliers on board. Another one that I'd recommend, another episode is called the easiest way to start Dropshipping. And we walk through the whole blueprint in that episode. So that's just a few back. So cue that up after listening to this one today. Now, Louis, onto the big question. Talked about the type of suppliers we're looking for, we've talked about the preparation we need to do upfront. Now the big question is, how do we actually find these suppliers to contact in the first place? Yeah, it's actually simpler than people might think if you know where to look. So one of the first places we would start with is where with the niche that you've selected. Part of that process of niche validation. And we have nine different niche validation criteria that we go through in depth inside week two of our programme. But one of the points would be finding competitors in the market who are already doing this. Now, if you can look at UK stores who are already in your niche, who are already dropshipping, you can start to reverse engineer where they're sourcing from. You can list out the brands that they feature and if those brands are dropshipping for someone else, they're very likely to then wants to work with you too. You just become another retailer as part of their route to market. And so you can then contact them directly. You can use their trade or their wholesale contact information and just go in there with all the boxes checked and lead with professionalism. But like we said before, there are some things that you just want to have in place. Like you said, if you approach them with a Gmail address or a mobile phone number, imagine if they Miss your call and they call back and then it get, it gets diverted to like this is the Vodafone voicemail service for oh 7, blah blah, blah. Like it doesn't fill them with confidence that this is a legitimate company. It just feels like this is just someone like doing this on the side. And that may be the case. You may be doing this as a side hustle, but you've got to portray that sense of like professionalism and that wholesome company presence to them because you know, you could put a virtual assistant in place who is manning this full time and answering all the customer calls. They want to be sure that you, you'll look after their customers who are also your customers when they start purchasing. So yeah, just making sure that we kind of reverse engineer that process. See where suppliers are already drop shipping and already doing this and then kind of just work backwards. So it's all data driven and it's is how we do everything. It is, it takes emotion out of it. It means we just go to suppliers that we can see are already dropshipping so they will actually want to work with us because we're not having to convince these brands to work in a way that they've never worked before. The way it works is because we've got the preparation and because we've chosen a niche, because we're aware of the market and the people operating in that niche already. The different retailers means we can see which suppliers are already operating and working with dropshipping retailers. So we can just cherry pick those to contact. And so they'll, we'll, they will want to work with us and you're going to get a much higher number or proportion of people that say yes when you reach out to those people doing the things that we've talked about in today's episode. Now a question that we can almost hear coming back through this recording list from, from people listening today is that question you mentioned earlier, which is, but why would these high quality suppliers want to sell to us instead of why aren't they just selling directly to customers themselves? So it's time to answer that question, I think. Yeah. So put yourself in the shoes of a distributor, a supplier, whatever you want to call them. Your job is to manage a warehouse. You have the shelves stacked full of products and really your focus is just on getting products out the door. Now imagine that even since before the Internet existed, you've operated in a way a route to market where you have other retailers simply send you money for orders and then you just dispatch them out to customers, right? You're not a professional website builder. You've got no idea how to run ads. You don't even know what SEO means or stands for. You know, it's not your world. If you're a supplier in that situation and a retailer approaches you, that is us, you know, you listening to this, approaches you as a supplier and they say, hey, would it be okay if I just start giving you money? And then you just send out products as and when. That's a pretty good proposition. Like it's hard for them to turn that down in that situation. Now of course the entrepreneurial minded amongst us are like, well, why wouldn't they be doing it themselves? Why wouldn't they run a service and outsource source to a VA and have ads running? Like, it's just sometimes it's so beyond them and they don't want the, the hassle of like building a business from scratch that does that. So instead they just focus on good quality products being shipped out, dealing with it. And they're almost just like a logistics provider. Like they, they focus on either manufacturing or importing the goods, having it in their UK distribution centre and then you just sending the money to send the items out they have and bulk relationships or like trade relationships with the couriers as well to get like much preferential rates based on the volume of shipping that they're doing because they could be sending out hundreds of orders a day. And so when a new retailer comes to them and says, hey, can we start working with you as well? If you think, well they're thinking, oh well, the other retailers that I have all send me hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of orders per month. Hmm, maybe I should take on another retailer because that will be another 100,000 in orders per month. So you can start to see that it's just not their world. And actually companies like this have existed since, you know, before the Internet. They just used to be called like direct dispatch suppliers or you know, just kind of behind the scenes type distribution centres. So yeah, I think it's, it's very clear that it's a great proposition for them. You're just plugging into their existing route to market. They have relationships with retailers that do this already across their country and you are just becoming one more of those. And it's a no brainer for them when they see that you're going to be expanding the market. So because we're running ads for the products that they sell, it means that their products are going to appear on the search terms because we're running ads to those search terms and we're making sure that their products appear. So when you put it in those terms, suppliers have got targets at the end of the day and if you can make it clear that you're going to help them hit their targets, then they'll want to work with you. Especially if you've done all the preparation that we've talked about on today's episode. So we've covered the type of suppliers that we're looking for, we've talked about how to prepare for when we contact them and then we've talked about how exactly to find them. Anything else that you don't want to leave out, Louis, and leave people with when they're listening to you today about how to find these high ticket suppliers that actually want to work with us? Yeah, I think just follow the process that we lay out. Keep it simple, make sure it's professional, make sure you've got all of those checkboxes that we give in, our pre store launch checklist in our programme checked to ensure that you're not going to go in there and contact someone before you've got one of these trust signals in place and potentially end up, you know, burning a bridge that you can't then repair later. And don't take silence personally. You know, sometimes even with all the right things done, a supplier might not get back to you straight away and, you know, you might be sitting there tearing your hair out thinking, like, is it something I said? Did I do something wrong? And it turns out the managing director was on holiday for two weeks. It's not personal, like, they're just busy people, they've got retailers contacting them quite frequently. So we're just making sure we bring our name to the top of that pile and give them no reason not to say yes to us. Reaching out to suppliers does eventually just become a numbers game, but once you land the right partners, it just changes everything and you can start to become the supplier's favourite retailer in that you send them the most sales out of any of the retailers using the strategies that we teach in week five, like you mentioned, James, of running Google and Meta ads to their products. They start to be like, how are you sending us so many orders? Like, how, how is this happening? And that's where you realise, or they realise the part, the benefit of the partnership that they've created with you and how actually you're now bringing a lot more to the table and than perhaps they first thought you could. So if you're ready to do this and start putting this into action. And you want to build your own business and your own store, find real UK suppliers and start to launch a profitable online business. The best place to start is to head over to dropshipunlocked.com forward/start. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment or a review and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. And for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropshipunlocked.com podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favourite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine and who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Now let's answer a question that we've had in from a listener of the podcast. So I'm going to put that question to you now, Lewis. Before I do, I'm going to remind everyone listening if you have a question that's come up in your mind while listening to today's episode, simply comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode and we will answer it in the comments and we may feature it on an upcoming episode. And that's exactly what juna yed13 has done. So we're going to feature it now and we're going to get Lewis to answer it for you live on the podcast. So Louis, which part of the strategy do you think most beginners struggle with when they first get started? No, that's a great question, Junior yet 13 so it really depends on your backgrounds and strengths, I think. So some people will come into this and say, oh no, I've done Shopify web design for years. You know, I can throw together a Shopify store in like 10 minutes. Okay, the Shopify setup part will probably be very quick for someone in that situation. For others it might just be a bit more of a learning curve. But it's a very valuable learning curve and I would argue that actually it's a skill that will serve you very, very well to learn how to build and optimise your own e commerce store. Remember, we do 90% of it for you by giving you the pre built, optimised Shopify theme that we've had created. So it really is very drag and drop and you're not starting from scratch. You haven't got a code or anything like that. But that's technical side of things can be a little bit more time consuming if you had no experience with that kind of thing before, and that's fine. Lots of people still succeed when that's the case. Other areas might be like supplier outreach that can be quite time consuming for some people, but much easier for other people. Like for example, if you've worked previously in quite a people facing role, like if you dealt with people on the phone or in person and you're quite good at chatting to people, you, you're probably going to be absolutely fine when it comes to speaking with suppliers because they're just like us, they're business people, they want to hit their targets. Like you said James, they want to make more money and they want a good partnership that they can trust. And so if you're someone who's confident at chatting to people, then you're going to be absolutely fine at that. If you're not, it might be a little bit more daunting at first, but at the same time we've had very introverted people who've never had like jobs where they're interacting with like the public or customer facing still succeed at this. And it just might need to be a little bit more scripted, which is why we give you the like supplier contact script, the phone, the email script, so, so you know exactly what to say and how to answer any of their questions. But I think with all of this stuff, your success comes down to your motivation and your willingness to learn. If you're determined and you're open to just stepping out of your comfort zone and saying that I'm going to go through this entire process, I, I want to have a clear step by step roadmap to make this happen. That makes a huge difference. I think the people who struggle most with this are often the ones who say, let me just try and kind of piece it together and let me see if I can just figure it out alone and let me see if I can just, you know, find some suppliers first and then I'll kind of see about getting a step by step process. They're unfortunately not then able to learn from the years and years of expensive, time consuming mistakes that we have gone through and are now laying out a blueprint so that other people can avoid. So I think being able to ask questions from day one, get expert feedback on your situation, your store, how you're speaking to suppliers, how your ads are going, like every part of the process and really being around other people in a community who are taking action alongside you, that's a huge help. Especially when you hit a wall and you don't know where to turn. So I'd say it depends on where you're at and what your current skill sets are. But regardless of where your weak spots or blind spots are, if you're willing to follow the process and most importantly, ask for that expert help as and when you need it along the way, which we all do, that's the key to succeeding with this 100%. Yeah, you only need to listen to a few of our podcast episodes where we've featured masterclass members to learn that people excel in different areas and then so when they need some more support in certain areas, they've got people around them to push them on, show them the right way to go, and also provide that emotional support when things are tough and challenging. So don't hold yourself back if you're fearful for any part of the programme, any part of building a business that's just you getting outside of your comfort zone, it's inevitable to get to the success that you've got in mind. So great question. And as well as your question, you also left some nice comments as well on a recent episode, so we thought we'd feature that as well. So thank you to junior13 for the YouTube comment where you said amazing strategies. I can't wait to try these. Amazing. Thank you so much for your review. We really appreciate it. If you found value in today's episode, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave us a review. It only takes a few seconds, but it means the world to us. It just helps us keep this podcast going. So we're always looking to hear your thoughts and we might even be able to feature your review in our next episode. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial. Journey to kickstart your e commerce business. Head over to dropshipunlocked.com start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies. Tips and success stories. Plus, if you enjoyed this episode today. A five star review would mean the. World to us and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast.