A dozen ways to find suppliers for reselling on Amazon.com and a checklist to verify them

Want to get the most complete US supplier base? Read to the end. There you will find a list of 500+ verified companies. But with the help of this article we are sure that you can easily supplement this list and collect your ideal base for online arbitrage and wholesale.

In this article, a supplier refers to any site or company where you can buy merchandise for resale on Amazon. For online and retail arbitrage, the provider will be a retail store. The only difference is how the product is purchased in the store: offline or online. In wholesale arbitration, suppliers are manufacturers, brands, and distributors.

When searching for US suppliers, do not forget to set the region as United States in your browser settings. In certain situations, you may also need a VPN plugin to change the IP address to an American one.

Arbitrage search strategies

There are two strategies for finding profitable deals for arbitrage: from Amazon or from a supplier. Each seller chooses his own option or combines them depending on the goals and objectives of the business.

In the first case, we find a potentially profitable product on Amazon.com and then we look for the most suitable supplier. With the help of the Seller Assistant App service, this can be done in just two clicks:

1. We open the listing of an interesting product.
2. Click the search button in the upper left corner of the Seller Assistant App frame., 
3. Select one of the following items in the drop-down list for instant search:

• Google       
• Google Shopping       
• eBay       
• Walmart       
• Target       
• Webstaurant       
• Katom       
• The Home Depot       
• Alibaba 

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When you click on any of the items in this list, you will be taken to the search results page for that product on the selected site.

Our favorite search destination is Google Shopping. In its search results, you can compare prices in several stores and quickly select the best deals.

The second option - “search from a supplier” - assumes that you already have a database of verified suppliers. And that you know their product range and can choose what will sell well on Amazon. A large database is especially important for wholesale, where the work is reduced to the analysis of price lists of wholesale suppliers.

Now let's look at ways to find suppliers. Hopefully, this will give you new ideas about where to search and help you find your ideal suppliers.

Method One: Google It!

The first method is also the most obvious. Just google “online arbitrage suppliers” or “wholesale suppliers”. More relevant results are also found by searching with expressions such as:

• online arbitrage websites,       
• online arbitrage deal sites,       
• best sites for online arbitrage,       
• wholesale trade shows,       
• wholesale shows 2021,       
• wholesale suppliers. 

Interestingly, for the queries “best stores for online arbitrage” and “best stores for retail arbitrage”, Google displays a carousel with a list of sites based on web sources. And this, of course, is only a small part of the possible suppliers:

• Walmart       
• Home Depot       
• Target       
• Walgreens       
• Lowe's       
• Big Lots       
• CVS       
• Best Buy       
• Ross Stores       
• GameStop       
• Disney Store       
• Christmas Tree Shops       
• Vitacost     

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For more accurate search results, use the name of the category, brand, or product in your query. For example, from the search results for “best restaurant supply online”, you can quickly collect the following list:

• webstaurantstore.com       
• restaurantdepot.com       
• katom.com       
• ckitchen.com       
• mcdonaldpaper.com       
• therestaurantstore.com       
• restaurantsupply.com       
• erisequip.com     

By the way, in addition to Google, you can also use Bing to search in the US. The results will be slightly different because they use different algorithms to choose which sites will be at the top of the list.

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Method Two: Ready-Made Ratings

You can find such ratings by searching: top retailers, list of retail stores,

top manufacturing companies in the USA, etc. Using ratings is a great way to find suppliers, as their authors have already done a great job of selecting and checking suppliers for certain indicators. For example, Top 100 Retailers, 2021 Edition from RIS & Ratings collected and sorted vendors based on their market share. This is indicated as a percentage in this list:

1. Walmart 14.05%
2. Amazon 9.75%
3. CVS Health 6.79%
4. Costco Wholesale 4.51%
5. Walgreens Boots 3.58%
6. Kroger 3.35%
7. Home Depot 3.34%
8. JD.com 2.76%
9. Alibaba Group 2.39%
10. Target 2.36%
11. Lowe’s 2.26%
12. Albertsons 1.75%
13. Alimentation Couche-Tard 1.61%
14. Loblaw 1.33%
15. BestBuy 1.19%
16. NIKE 0.97%
17. Dollar General 0.85%
18. TJX Companies 0.80%
19. Empire Company 0.72%
20. United Natural Foods 0.69%
21. Dollar Tree Inc. 0.64%
22. Rite Aid 0.60%
23. Starbucks 0.59%
24. Sherwin-Williams 0.46%
25. Metro 0.46%
26. Macy’s 0.44%
27. Kohl’s 0.40%
28. BJ’s Wholesale Club 0.39%
29. Vipshop 0.38%
30. Canadian Tire 0.38%
31. Estee Lauder 0.36%
32. Qurate Retail 0.36%
33. Wayfair 0.36%
34. Sears Holdings 036%
35. The Gap 0.35%
36. Ross Stores 0.32%
37. L Brands 0.30%
38. Tractor Supply 0.27%
39. Nordstrom 0.26%
40.  eBay 0.26%
41. Old Copper Company 0.25%
42. Bed Bath & Beyond 0.25%
43. Dick’s Sporting Goods 0.24%
44. SpartanNash 0.24%
45. V.F. Corp. 0.22%
46. Casey’s General Stores 0.21%
47. PVH 0.19%
48. Foot Locker 0.19%
49. Williams-Sonoma 0.17%
50. Hanesbrands 0.17%
51. Sprouts Farmers Market 0.16%
52. Chewy 0.16%
53. Big Lots 0.16%
54. Ulta Beauty 0.16%
55. Burlington Stores 0.15%
56. Academy Sports & Outdoors 0.14%
57. Michaels 0.13%
58. Signet Jewelers 0.13%
59. GameStop 0.13%
60. TravelCenters of America 0.12%
61. Ingles Markets 0.12%
62. Tapestry Inc. 0.12%
63. Skechers U.S.A. 0.12%
64. Under Armour 0.11%
65. Levi Strauss & Co. 0.11%
66. Ralph Lauren 0.11%
67. Dillard’s 0.11%
68. Weis Markets 0.10%
69. lululemon athletica 0.10%
70. American Eagle Outfitters 0.09%
71. Ascena Retail Group 0.09%
72. Sally Beauty 0.09%
73. Urban Outfitters 0.09%
74. PriceSmart 0.09%
75. Grocery Outlet 0.08%
76. Abercrombie & Fitch 0.08%
77. Carter’s 0.08%
78. Steelcase 0.07%
79. RH 0.07%
80. Overstock.com 0.06%
81. Columbia Sportswear 0.06%
82. Floor & Décor 0.06%
83. Deckers Outdoor 0.06%
84. Herman Miller 0.06%
85. Designer Brands 0.06%
86. Leon’s Furniture 0.05%
87. Caleres Inc. 0.05%
88. Guess? Inc. 0.05%
89. G-III Apparel Group 0.05%
90. Village Super Market 0.05%
91. Five Below 0.05%
92. 1-800-FLOWERS.COM 0.05%
93. Sleep Number Corp. 0.05%
94. Party City 0.05%
95. Stitch Fix 0.05%
96. Ollie’s Bargain Outlet 0.05%
97. Wolverine World Wide 0.05%
98. Genesco Inc. 0.05%
99. Etsy Inc. 0.04%
100. Fossel Group 0.04%

To save time, you can simply select the top large suppliers, who definitely have several profitable deals in the discounts section.

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Method Three: Discount Aggregators

There are all kinds of promotions and sales from suppliers that give a very big chance for a profitable surebet. The easiest and fastest way to find special offers is to monitor coupon and discount aggregator sites. For the United States, this could be:

• Slickdeals.net       
• RetailMeNot.com       
• Hip2Save.com       
• BensBargains.com       
• Brickseek.com       

Pay attention to the timing of the promotions! Special conditions do not last forever, so make your order on time.

Method four: Search for Similar Sites

If you already have at least one supplier, you can find similar ones using search services for similar sites, such as SiteLike.org, SimilarWeb.com, or Alexa.com.

For example, let's collect lists of vendors similar to webstaurantstore.com. The free Alexa tool only allows you to find five to six sites, namely:

• katom.com       
• restaurantsupply.com       
• uline.com       
• centralrestaurant.com       
• partstown.com       
• wasserstrom.com  

But with the help of SiteLike, more than 70 sites were found. Here they are:

• acehardware.com       
• acitydiscount.com       
• bedbathandbeyond.com       
• bestreviews.com       
• bjs.com       
• bonappetit.com       
• build.com       
• bulkapothecary.com       
• centralrestaurant.com       
• chewy.com       
• chowhound.com       
• cleanitsupply.com       
• containerstore.com       
• costco.com       
• costcobusinessdelivery.com       
• crateandbarrel.com       
• displays2go.com       
• dollartree.com       
• eater.com       
• ebaydesc.com       
• epicurious.com       
• food52.com       
• foodandwine.com       
• foodnetwork.com       
• foodservicedirect.com       
• globalindustrial.com       
• grainger.com       
• grubhub.com       
• harborfreight.com       
• homedepot.com       
• instacart.com       
• jesrestaurantequipment.com       
• katom.com       
• kingarthurflour.com       
• kmail-lists.com       
• loopnet.com       
• lowes.com       
• menards.com       
• narvar.com       
• nextdoor.com       
• nolo.com       
• northerntool.com       
• officedepot.com       
• orientaltrading.com       
• overstock.com       
• papermart.com       
• partstown.com       
• quill.com       
• restaurantdepot.com       
• restaurantsupply.com       
• samsclub.com       
• sears.com       
• seriouseats.com       
• shipstation.com       
• squareup.com       
• stamps.com       
• staples.com       
• target.com       
• tasteofhome.com       
• thekitchn.com       
• thespruceeats.com       
• toasttab.com       
• totalwine.com       
• treasury.gov     :-)
• uline.com       
• usplastic.com       
• walgreens.com       
• walmart.com       
• wayfair.com       
• wholefoodsmarket.com       
• williams-sonoma.com       
• worldmarket.com       
• zoro.com       

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Method Five: Search on Facebook and LinkedIn

For US companies, social networks have long been an important tool for promotion and advertising. Therefore, finding them there is easy. For example, a LinkedIn search for wholesale companies returns 34,000 results.

And don't forget the awesome Similar Pages feature. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have algorithms that are great at finding similar companies.

Method Six: Review Sites

Searching review and rating sites such as Trustpilot, ResellerRatings, Sitejabber, and the Better Business Bureau gives excellent results. Each site has its own characteristics and benefits.

On Trustpilot, in addition to searching by companies, a search by category is also available. By searching on Trustpilot you can get, for example, a list of 52 wholesale companies.

On Sitejabber, on the page of the company you are analyzing, there are suggestions for similar companies under the reviews. For example, here sitejabber.com/reviews/webstaurantstore.com you can find several more companies similar to WebstaurantStore:

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Method Seven: Search Internet Directories

On the internet you can find catalogs of companies for any task. Be sure to check these sites:

• Manufacturer catalogs: Thomasnet, DatabaseUSA, Maker's Row, MFG, Kompass International, NAM Directory.       
• Catalogs of wholesalers WholesaleCentral, SaleHoo, TopTenWholesale, WorldWideBrands.       
• Catalogs of trade shows TradeFairDates, Orbus, TheTradeShowNetwork.       

Method Eight: Brand Sites

Many brands indicate the contacts of official dealers directly on their site, often even broken down by the regions in which a particular representative works.

If the website of the brand you are interested in does not have this information, then make a direct inquiry to the brand about where you can buy its products in bulk - and you will be provided with the contacts of the official distributor or dealer.

Method Nine: Ask for Advice from the Prep Center

One of the most reliable ways to find suppliers is to contact your prep center and ask for their advice about which companies to purchase from. Since they are in direct contact with them, providing logistics, they can always recommend trusted suppliers for specific groups of goods.

Method Ten: Ask Other Salespeople for Advice

Feel free to ask other salespeople, as successful people share their experiences openly.

Searching your post history or asking directly in specialized Amazon seller groups on Facebook, especially in English, will give great results. They will not only share contacts with you but also honestly tell you about the possible difficulties and peculiarities of certain companies.

Method Eleven: Image Search

This method allows you to find a supplier for a specific product or modification. Google's picture search tool can give unexpectedly good results if all other methods have failed.

And for online arbitration from China, you can search by the picture on Alibaba.

Related: 5 Strategies To Increase Amazon FBA Sales

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Method Twelve: Using Research Services

Technologies never stand still and many routine processes can be automated with varying degrees of success. There are many tools available, so you can choose a program that matches your style of work.

Alternatively, you can just buy ready-made plugs, in which you will already have the contacts of a suitable supplier.

Can we recommend a service? Yes, even a few:    

• OAbeans
• Search Mogul
• Tactical Arbitrage

Supplier Verification Checklist

When you search, you probably come across a lot of fraudulent sites. There are some hard-to-spot cons with a phone number, PayPal and social media icons. Therefore, it is extremely important to check suppliers on all points of the checklist, especially since they are very simple and there are only four of them:

1. The website contains a phone number. And if you search for the number on Google, it will return several sources with the name of this supplier.
2. The site has a link to the supplier's Facebook page. Follow the link and make sure it is an active page with a lot of likes and a fully filled header. And the address in the page header must match the site address!
3. A search term with vendor name + reviews returns real reviews of the vendor. Search something like this: webstaurantstore + reviews and follow the links to check the reviews.
4. The company is listed on LinkedIn or online directories and the description on these resources matches what is written on the supplier's website.

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A search term with vendor name + reviews returns real reviews of the vendor

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List of 500+ US suppliers

Do you want a large base of potential suppliers? Read the “List of 500+ US suppliers” article. You will find a selection of well-known retailers and multi-brand distributors that are already popular with Amazon Sellers. Each of them is a proven and reliable company.