Importers / Wholesalers advertising on Google?

October 23, 2009 3:18 PM

Any have experience dealing with online wholesale importers as an end consumer (i.e., not a retailer, just a guy who wants some buckles) ?

I'm trying to find a cheap source of metal buckles (my boots are simply too plain--they need augmentation!) and along the way I've stumbled across tons of sites like AliBaba or China Trade Online. These folks have really neat stuff for very low prices in vast quantity. Monster Steel, it turns out, provides wholesale cock rings. My mind is blown.

They have really cool stuff, but it's pretty clear that they are set up to deal exclusively with retailers (China Trade Online has a minimum order of $1,000, the smallest I've been able to find is a minimum order of $100). I'm fascinated by this all, but have no experience in this area. I suppose my question is twofold:

1) Do you know of any place like this who would be happy to sell me $30 or $40 worth of merchandise, or perhaps $20 worth with a $20 service charge? (I'm guessing not--I assume that these places all make very little per item and thus need quantity to survive, but it is worth checking).

2) Any idea how these places feel about folks like me asking for price quotes and then ordering whatever their bare minimum is? If they deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis, cool, but I don't want to bug / create unnecessary work for them when I'm clearly not their target customer.

posted by Squid Voltaire to work & money (1 comment total)

FInd out who their natural actual buyers are and contact them to buy a one off from them for a little more than they paid. Someone is buying the 500 buckles of which you desire one. Email the supplier and ask who you can buy smaller quantities from. They will either suck it up and sell you less or tell you that ABC Buckles in Anytown, USA buys from them and contact them. My wife did this for some sort of item she needed for a small party favor. Wanted 50 and they only sold in lots of 500.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 5:29 PM on October 23, 2009