For years, I’ve heard of people going directly to the supplier of their favourite brands to bypass the retail markup and save some big money. One guy on Tik Tok even found Restoration Hardware’s supplier on Alibaba and got $30,000 worth of outdoor patio furniture for only $7,000.
The issue for me has been finding exactly which suppliers my favourite brands are actually using so that I can get as close to the real deal as possible. Finding a brand’s supplier isn’t as simple as a Google search. Otherwise, it would be way too easy for anybody to skip the middle man and go directly to the source.
Luckily, I found a way to figure out exactly which suppliers companies are using, including when they used them, and for what kind of product. I’ll show you the step-by-step process I did to find the brand Kitsch’s supplier and save some big $$$.
1. Go to importyeti.com
Type in any of your favourite company’s names in the search bar. They’ve got data on companies from Urban Outfitters to Crate & Barrel.
2. Click on the brand you’re looking for (and make sure it’s the right one)
After you press search you may be met with a list of similiar-named companies, so you want to make sure you are clicking on the right one. For example, if you were to search a big brand like Nike, each of its foreign subsidiaries might be listed. You might see “Nike USA”, “Nike Canada”, “Nike Australia”, etc. I usually click on whichever one has the highest number of total shipments.
3. Scroll to the brand’s supplier section
Once you’ve found and clicked on the correct brand, you’ll want to scroll down until you see that brand’s list of suppliers. Here you can see the exact names of the different suppliers, when a shipment was made, and what kind of products were in that shipment. If I’m unsure if I have clicked on the right company, I’ll take a look at the “product description” list to make sure that what is listed there makes sense with what I know about the company. For example, I know that Kitsch sells hair and sleep accessories, so if I were to see cars or furniture listed I know that I might not have clicked on the right company.
4. Search the supplier’s name on Alibaba
For this example, I decided to find Kitsch’s supplier called Dongguan Lirong Decoration.
When you head to Alibaba to search the name of the supplier, make sure you select “suppliers” in the search bar because it auto-selects to “products”.
Now that you’ve found the supplier on Alibaba, it’s happy shopping from there!
Here are some price comparisons of what I found on the supplier’s Alibaba page (left), versus Kitsch’s website (right):
The price differences are massive. If you can’t find the exact product you’re looking for on the supplier’s page, you can try contacting them directly on the Alibaba webpage. You can also try searching a supplier’s name on AliExpress as well.
LUXE FOR LESS 