Whether you plan to sell on Amazon or your own website, you need a reliable product source and supplier at the end of the day.
Because your entire business depends on consistently high product quality, it’s imperative to have strong relationships with suppliers for a solid sourcing and import strategy.
Brands who find trusted manufacturers for producing quality products know just how much it helps them maintain a positive reputation and brand image.
However, designing quality products isn’t solely the headache of the supplier; you need to be diligent and oversee the product’s sample stages. Ordering and analyzing product samples is key to ensuring the success of your product. This combined effort will complement the final product and please your customers more in the end.
What Are Product Samples?
Think of product samples as the chance you have to tweak your faulty products before they take a toll on your reputation.
That’s right; product samples allow you to test and preview the products before placing an order for mass production.
You can request a sample at different manufacturing stages to ensure consistency and quality. Plus, it is your chance to see if it’s the exact product you desire for your customers in the first place.
Professional sellers recommend requesting initial samples. This helps you shortlist the suppliers and choose the best one for producing products at scale.
Besides, it’ll also give you a chance to see what working with them is like, and you can improve your relationship and communication.
Further, you can also request the samples during the manufacturing stages. For instance, if you choose a supplier and ask them to proceed with product development, you can request a sample during manufacturing.
This way, you can test its features, practicality, and quality for a better final outcome.
Why Do They Matter?
A supplier factory based in your locality eases the job for you, but if you want to source products from overseas, you cannot pop into the factory to check your product.
That’s where samples come in, and here’s why else they matter.
- Ensure product quality. An obvious reason why experts praise testing sample product is that they help check a product’s quality. You may be paying right and have a certain quality in mind, but the supplier might not produce the exact item. Testing products during different development stages eliminates the trouble.
- Check product features. Apart from quality, the features also matter. Is the supplier featuring all the elements you desire to see in your product, or are they missing out on something? For instance, if you run a clothing brand, size and measurements matter greatly – the quality won’t matter in the event of horrible measurements.
- Prior customer feedback. One of the biggest pros of product samples is that they help you get customer feedback before the actual feedback. For instance, you can set up a focus group keeping your niche in mind and share the product samples with them. This group will inform you what they like or dislike about the product. Later, you can tweak your product to improve it before its launch.
On a side note, samples are meant to determine the product’s quality, not the supplier’s quality as a whole. Simply put, you shouldn’t judge the supplier’s work based on a poor quality product. Humans make errors, and samples can turn out poor for a couple of reasons.
For instance, if you fail to communicate the instructions and features properly, a supplier could make mistakes.
Furthermore, the fabric quality also counts.
How Much Does It Cost to Get the Samples?
How much a supplier costs you for ordering the sample depends on the supplier, your relationship with them, and of course, the product.
However, it won’t cost you more than 2x or 5x of the unit expense per sample. If you share a good relationship with your supplier, they may send you free samples.
However, as a responsible business owner, you shouldn’t abuse any privileges. Simply put, do not request samples that you aren’t interested in ordering later.
If, however, you’re a relatively newer seller, a supplier may charge you a fee. A few sellers hold back from investing in product samples, but requesting samples makes sense instead of receiving low-quality stock. The former option will save you money.
Additionally, suppliers requesting a sample fee is a fair enough practice. Why? Because you may ask them to start production from scratch, which might not be in their best interest – as they’d need to invest more money.
How Do You Request the Samples?
There’s no secret sauce to requesting the samples. However, a few tips will make the process smoother for you.
- To begin with, shortlist the suppliers you desire to choose for your brand.
- Share a brief with each supplier telling them the precise samples you need. Do not forget to mention the color, features, specifications, and measurements to receive the exact order.
- Once you receive the samples, test them.
- As a rule of thumb, share it with your team to get their feedback
- Make sure you send a note to your supplier mentioning that you’ve received the sample
- Later, you can share feedback with them
- If you want any adjustments, highlight the changes. How well your product turns out significantly depends on how well you communicate with your supplier.
- If you receive a satisfactory sample from a specific supplier, you can choose to work with them.
- Do not forget to send them a note of appreciation for encouragement. This will motivate them to keep producing quality products for your business.
- Finally, negotiate the price, and you’re good to go!
Wrapping Things Up
Investing time early on will keep you from wasting it down the line. You won’t receive low-quality stock and consequently, save yourself money in the long run.
While optimization efforts work wonders to scale your ecommerce business, quality products matter, too – no customers will purchase from your brand after receiving substandard products. And remember, it’s cheaper to keep loyal repeat customers than acquire new ones.
What’s worse, negative word of mouth will keep potential customers from approaching you.
Therefore, it is always better to test product samples initially – especially when sourcing from overseas where you can’t pop in with ease to keep an eye on quality.
