And What To Do If Every Drop Ship Supplier Rejects You

I had a recent YouTube comment that inspired me to make this post. It came from a member that was living outside of the States and was worried about getting rejected by the best drop shipping suppliers.

So the basic gist of the question was:

This article is also available as a video on our Drop Ship Lifestyle YouTube Channel. Make sure to subscribe here so you never miss an episode!

Listen, not every supplier is going to reject you. It doesn't matter if you're from Zimbabwe, Costa Rica, New York, wherever.  There are still suppliers that will work with you if you follow the Drop Ship Lifestyle model.

If you're totally new to this business, check out our intro blog post on "What is Dropshipping?"

But let's just say somehow, you do everything wrong.

You don't use our phone and email scripts.

You don't have a bank account.

You don't have any way to pay suppliers.

You’ve contacted the twenty suppliers you found, and they all denied you.

What can you do?

How can you still make this work?

Well that's what I'm going to talk to you about in blog post. I’m going to show you how you really have no excuses if you want to make this work.

What to do When You’re Rejected by Drop Ship Suppliers

So let’s say that all you’ve dealt with has been rejection. Well it’s not time to give up yet, because you can make this work– and I’m going to tell you how.

When you start Module One of the Drop Ship Blueprint, you’re working on niche research and selection. Part of that is brainstorming all different ideas for items to drop ship.

Maybe that's something that you could drop ship right? So you build your demo drop ship Shopify store, and contact your suppliers. But you can't get any.

Well here's the beautiful thing right. I promise you, no matter what, that if you go on Google right now and search for different marble fabricators and different custom furniture builders, you’ll find potential new suppliers.

You can reach out to these people that aren't the type of brands you would normally go for because most of the time they don't have brand names. Instead, they're an individual or small team that have small fabrication shops.

You might want to sell wooden furniture with marble inlays (for example) because that's something that people can't get locally, especially not in different you know stains of wood or types of marble.

Then reach out and say, “Hi my name is you know Anton from Anton'sTables.com. I really like what you have to offer. I would love to list them on my website. We are looking to have a collection of best sellers. Can you let me know all the different types of marble, wood stains and types that you have, along with the different shapes and dimensions of the furniture you make?”

At this point, because they're not your normal supplier, they're not going to just send you a normal CSV or Excel sheet like you would get from your typical supplier.

After they tell you what they make, you want to ask them a few other specific questions such as:

Got it, good. Go to your website and list the specific item(s) you discussed with them. You have the dimensions from them. You have all the info you need. Put it up there, and guess what?

You're now in business. Now you can run traffic. Now you can set up Google Ads. Now you can set up ads wherever you want.

And then boom– you get the sale! You place it with the manufacturer. They actually make this thing. They ship it to your customer. All is well.

Why it Works

So this kind of strategy of drop shipping for small fabrication shops is something I think you should do, regardless. Whether or not you get approved with all the gold and silver suppliers you want, you should still do this.

To these suppliers, you’re the same to them as the customer down the street that orders an item for their house.

Another benefit about this strategy, is if you start drop shipping just a few customer pieces, you can drive highly-target traffic to product pages. 

Then, once you start making sales and growing your store, you can pick up more suppliers. You can go back to the ones that denied you with more confidence and business experience.

Stop Making Excuses and Stop Having Assumptions

That’s my advice for dealing with rejections from the gold and silver suppliers. Don’t have any excuses for thinking people don't want to work with you.

Don’t assume every supplier is going to turn you down because you’re still learning how to run an online business. That's not the truth. You can always make this work. Where there's a will, there's a way!

If you don’t believe me, some of my biggest orders was from a brand just like the one I explained above. I found a small, no-brand-name, fabricator creating custom stuff and listed their products on my drop shipping site. In fact, the biggest order placed in that store was $66,000! I was pumped.

So, no excuses. Find suppliers regardless of what it is you're doing. If you want to make it work, you can.

It doesn't matter how much experience you have. Doesn't matter how long your business has been around because, again, this is a simple relationship.

Easy to build. As easy as a few emails back and forth. Maybe a few phone calls. And you could be in business that quick. Without having to buy inventory in advance. Without having to lay out a whole bunch of capital. You can make it work!

If you’re dealing with supplier rejections or worries, feel free to drop me a note in the comments below. I’d love to try and help!