It cost me $50k+ and multiple trips to Hong Kong & China to find my factories. But now you can find any brand’s suppliers – whether local or international – for FREE, with ImportYeti.
I’ve been sharing tons of factory links to overseas and domestic vendors for private label clothing, supplements, wellness, sports, sneakers, activewear, sunglasses, and more.
But I realize everyone has their own product ideas, and while these tools are great, they don’t cover everything. This is your sign to make your own product.
The ultimate tool for finding the best overseas partners?
ImportYeti
Any shipment to the US from overseas of a certain size requires customs sea shipment records. ImportYeti aggregates these for easy search.
ImportYeti is a goldmine for finding brand connections.
To start, you need to know the company’s actual business names. Your best bet for this?
- Go to their website, go to the footer, and click the Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policy.
- Inside the legalese, you’ll find the actual company name.
Now you just search ImportYeti:
- Search by brand name
- If that doesn’t work, then search the company name you already sourced.
Note that most things will come up right away just with the brand name. Here’s an example with ‘Outdoor Voices’.
You’ll get a list of companies:
- Select the one for your brand
- Now you can see the “number of shipments” which will be helpful to gauge supplier usefulness.
Our example shows 56. Jackpot!
Note that brands with multiple hubs will often have multiple results:
Once you’re displaying these results, you’ll get a list of all their shipments. Here you see a wide variety of factories, mostly Vietnam, some China:
I clicked the first (and most popular) result:
- If you scroll down you can also see other places this factory ships to!
- Find suppliers like Forever 21, Chubbies, Cutter, and Buck.
This is a WINNER!
ImportYeti will also brand map factories, their top brands, and those brands’ top partners. This is CRAZY information to be available to anyone
In some cases, you will run across brands where the majority of shipments come from one factory, and that factory has no other relationships.
This is a vertically integrated brand who has their own factory. You’re out of luck 🙁 but kudos to them, though!
Looking for connections to overseas manufacturers?
ImportYeti doesn’t just index factories in Asia, either.
One of my favorite menswear brands is John Elliot, I love them for their quality… and guess what? A lot of their shipments are from Italy:
Still not sure you can find the right overseas manufacturers or suppliers for free? ImportYeti is also not just for clothes.
- Want to start a lighting company for creators?
- Here you are. EVERY category is on here.
Once you have the factory, there are options on-page to search via Alibaba and Google.
A couple of things to note:
- This is where the work comes in. Not all have websites, not all are findable.
- Some of these websites aren’t secure and will get warnings in chrome.
- Be safe, but know you’re going to ignore some browser warnings.
- With enough Google hunting you can usually get a phone number or email.
- I’ve also found them on LinkedIn search, and on the Weibo/WeChat app.
There is absolutely no excuse not to start your own brand! The sourcing of these products is commoditized. Anyone can find the perfect factory for their product.
What should stand out in your search criteria? Actual innovation, branding and marketing.
With great execution, the next big brand is… YOU.
BONUS MATERIAL!
Catch the Builders.Build podcast with my best friends, Colin and James, to discover more about our individual TikTok perspectives and entrepreneurial journeys across brands, products, websites, and more.
Thank you for reading this guide to finding any brand’s suppliers!
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– Oren
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