Things to Look For in a Wholesale Shoes Supplier

When you’re looking for a supplier of wholesale women’s shoes online, you might want to check if they have all of these characteristics before trusting your money with them.

1. Variety of shoes

A good wholesale shoe supplier should have a wide selection of shoes. What good will it do you if your supplier has a limited amount of shoes for you to choose from? None. You need a supplier who has many different types of shoes, designs and styles so you can freely choose the pairs you want or need in your shop.

2. Updated shoes styles

If your shoe supplier has a good selection of shoes, you also need to know if they have all the latest shoe styles on sale. Why? Because if your supplier is always late with the goods, you’ll also end up late selling the latest in the fashion world. By then, your competitors would've already gotten hold of what’s hot in fashion and people would be flocking to their store.

3. Updated website

Having an updated website is a factor that will determine your supplier’s consistency when it comes to their online businesses. If they don’t continue updating their terms, conditions, discounts and promos, that’ll mean that they don’t check their website too often. Not a good sign.

4. 24 hour customer service

As a customer who shops shoes online, it is important to have someone to talk to when you need help. Even if this means during the night or just before dawn, having someone to talk to will mean that the supplier really cares for their customers.

5. Helpful and friendly customer service

Even if they do have 24 hour customer service, what good will it do if the customer representatives are mean and unhelpful? As a customer, you’d want to talk to someone friendly and accommodating.

6. Shipping

You also need to know if the supplier has a trustworthy shipping partner. The rates should be reasonable and delivery should be fast too.

7. Discounts and sales

Online shops are popular because they can give discounts and sales. If they don’t, you’ll probably find one with regular sales.

8. Flexibility of payment methods

Being limited to only a few payment methods can be a bad thing for a customer. A good shoe supplier should always have more than 1 payment method to provide customers with flexibility when it comes to paying their goods.

9. Offers warranty or money-back guarantees

It’s normal to be disappointed with a product you bought online. In fact, once or twice, you’ll probably find yourself pondering over your choice of style. Besides, when a shoe supplier offers warranty or money-back guarantees for their products, they can assure their customers more about their reliability.

10. Good quality materials

If you've used a shoe supplier once or twice, then you can see how honest they are about their products. Do they really sell shoes made out of good quality materials? Can you trust the pictures they post online? If you find a shop that can offer quality shoes on a consistent basis, then you’ve found yourself a reliable shoe supplier.

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How to Make Your Wholesale Shoes Business Safe

Prevention is better than cure, so goes the adage. As a wholesale shoes entrepreneur, you should know that this maxim does not only apply to one’s health. It also applies to business. Awareness and early preparation are your key defenses against business fraud. You may think that no one would want to prey on you especially if yours is just a start up shoe enterprise but think again. You are, in fact, more vulnerable because you do not have established safety and security protocols to safeguard your business.

When it comes to the safety and security of your livelihood, you can never be too prepared. So, here are some tips to help you protect your wholesale shoes business from fraud and other unscrupulous elements.

1. Get insurance for your business. 

Home-based or small-time wholesale shoes entrepreneurs may fall into the trap of thinking that their business is small enough to not need insurance. This is a security risk that you need to address. Depending on the kind of coverage that you want and the budget that you are willing to allot to it, there are different kinds of insurance policies you can get for your business. You can choose between a business owner’s policy (which has a broader coverage) or an in-home business policy (which is an “in-between” between a homeowner’s policy and a business policy). Talk to your insurance specialist about your options.

2. Back up. 

You've heard about students and writers “backing up” their important files. Here’s news for you. As an entrepreneur, you can also back up your shoe pieces online. Aside from keeping hard copies of your important business files, you can utilize free online tools such as Google Docs for your documents, Flickr for saving photos of your wholesale shoes items, and bookmarking sites such as Delicious for constantly visited webpages. Of course, it is important to save your business files in removable file saving devices such as flash drives and external hard disks. These are ideal for “grab and go” situations.

3. Listen to your gut feel. 

If you have a bad feeling about a customer or a supplier, act on it. Double check their credentials and ask around. Check the Internet for well-known scams and join online communities.

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Increase the Value of Your Wholesale Shoes

 The common perception with selling items in bulk like wholesale shoes for women is that you are providing customers with affordable products, but not really high in the way of value and quality. You will get a lot of comments from customers saying that shoes that are sold in bulk are cheap and therefore, can easily get damaged. You know as a businessman that this mentality is not always correct. Wholesale shoes are affordable because of the quantity you have brought them, driving their process down. But it doesn't automatically mean that they are poor in quality.

Knowing that your products have that kind of reputation, you need to known how to add value to them. That way, you can proudly offer them without being on the defensive all the time. But how is value added in products, anyway?

Here are some tricks in increasing the value of your wholesale shoes :

Brand

A brand should be created, then established, and then promoted.  Anything unknown or has no distinct identity scares consumers. It does not have to be a high-end brand. You don’t need to lie to customers. Just put a brand to your merchandise and cement its reputation by offering products that are affordable but have sterling quality.

Price

After setting an affordable introductory price, jack your price up, as higher-priced products are more often than not, associated with superior quality. This will definitely take time, so make sure that when you are in the introductory stages of your price, that the quality is really top-notch so that by the time you will increase your prices, you have your customers hook, line, and sinker.

Alliances

Endorsements and associations with established personalities gives products credibility and in turn, value. These personalities, especially if they have credibility and a reputation for the finer things in life, will jack up the profile of your product.

After-sales service

Excellent customer support is a must-have for legitimate businesses. There is nothing that says “credibility” and “legitimacy” then letting customers have ways of reaching you or improving their products. For example, is a customer has a broken hell on her shoe, how can she have it repaired? If your company assists customers like her, she and the rest of the consuming public will think your company is top-notch. 

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