Wholesale Central Overview
Wholesale Central, a company located in Bethel (Connecticut), has been online since 1996. This popular B2B service connects wholesale suppliers with retailers.
Although their official website is a little outdated, Wholesale Central does an excellent job of helping drop shippers find the right products. Want to learn more? Continue reading.
What is Wholesale Central?
Wholesale Central is a B2B wholesale directory that connects wholesale suppliers and retailers. They provide a wide range of wholesale suppliers, manufacturers, and wholesalers from all corners of the globe. Wholesale Central’s quality control team inspects all suppliers. You can find your dream products quickly with their powerful product purchasing tools. They also offer wholesale services. You won’t be able to purchase a single product like B2C if you want. Wholesale Central does not allow such business. Wholesale Central does allow dropshippers.
Wholesale Central offers what product?
Wholesale Central, like many wholesale websites, offers full categories including clothing, 3C products and Health & Beauty as well as Home decor, food, and military goods.
What is the secret to it?
Wholesale Central, like other wholesale platforms, does not offer dropshipping or wholesale services. Wholesale and dropshipping services are only offered by suppliers, manufacturers, or wholesalers. Wholesale Central will charge platform fees and additional service fees if you plan to sell your products on the site.
Wholesale Central will allow you to sell products by contacting suppliers/ wholesalers. All services, including shipping and packing, will be provided by wholesalers/ suppliers.
Wholesale Central requires you to register if you wish to sell.
This is how you become a supplier in Wholesale Central.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of Wholesale Central?
Pros
- Wholesale Central is free to use. To access the premium service, simply enter your email address and you will immediately have instant access to additional features at no cost.
- It’s easy to navigate: The Wholesale Central service is simple and quick to navigate thanks to its many search options.
- Wholesale Central offers a variety of methods to source new products and suppliers. The entire service is designed to help wholesalers and retailers find each other.
Cons
- A small directory of drop shippers: Only 84 of the 1,000+ suppliers offer drop shipped products.
- Wholesale Central does not offer integration or selling tools. The majority of the work will need to be completed manually or by third-party contractors.
- Inadequacy of Support Channels. Without live chat or email, you will have to rely more traditional means of communication such as telephone and postal mail.
What is Wholesale Central worth? What drop shipping services does it offer?
Pricing
Wholesale Central offers a free service. Visitors to the official website have instant access to the supplier and product directory without the need to register or pay any fees.
Although the directory contains many suppliers, not all drop ship. Drop shipping is only available from 84 of the 84 suppliers in the directory. Good news is that many of these suppliers have large inventories and catalogs so it’s likely you will find the right products for your company.
Other services
Visitors to the website have access to the Wholesale Central directory. They can also use the following services.
- Wholesale Central Deals – The Deals & Steals Section of Wholesale Central offers promotions from wholesalers. It is updated frequently so make sure to check it often.
- Wholesale Central’s Trade Shows Directory and Calendar: Visit Wholesale Central’s trade show page to see upcoming trade shows and to meet suppliers face-to-face. You can search events by keyword, date, location, or category.
- Closeout Central is essentially an online classifieds-style resource that helps you find suppliers looking to sell surplus or unneeded inventory. The site allows you to search by category and browse the featured section. Drop shipping is an option offered by some sites, so it’s worth looking into.
- Independent Retailer Magazine is Wholesale Central’s monthly online publication for owners of online and traditional stores. There are many benefits to signing up for the Premium Service, which is free and offers product information from top manufacturers.
- Product Locator: You can post requests for products you are having difficulty finding. Enter the name of your product, add a description and choose a category. Hit the Send button. Your requests will be seen by pre-qualified suppliers.
- Subscribe to the Newsletter and receive regular updates about the latest deals, new products, and upcoming events relevant for your business.
Wholesale Central: What products are available?
Product Catalog
Wholesale Central has over 400,000 products available from over 1,000 online wholesale shops. Only a few products are drop-ship-ready. There are two main ways to find products that you can sell.
You can search for products. You can search by keyword. Wholesale Central will give you a list with relevant results and direct links to the suppliers’ websites. You can also search by category, or the type of merchandise (premium/midrange, value, etc.). You can narrow down your search further.
You can search for suppliers. Wholesale Central will also list suppliers that meet your search criteria. You can search by location, supplier type, manufacturer, wholesaler, and more. You can search by location or supplier type (importer, manufacturer, wholesaler, etc.) to find those that meet your requirements
You can use the advanced search to find drop shippers and products.
Supplier Information
Wholesale Central checks suppliers before they are added to their directory. Suppliers found to be fraudulent or unable to pay their dues are removed from the wholesalecentral.com service. Suppliers who want to be included in the Wholesale Central directory must pay a $399 fee every six months.
To learn more about a supplier, navigate to their website in the Wholesale Central directory.
Wholesale Central: How can I sell my products?
You don’t, at least not on their site. Wholesale Central allows you to search for products that you want to sell, but all transactions are between you and your supplier. Wholesale Central does not take any cut of your earnings and has no role in the transactions.
You must deal directly with the supplier to sell products. This means that you will need to upload their product data files to your shop. These files will be available to most suppliers for use on the most popular eCommerce platforms.
It is your responsibility to ensure that customers receive their orders. There will be different processes used by different suppliers, so make sure you follow the correct procedure.
Similar to shipping policies, return policies can also differ between suppliers. Double-check with your supplier to confirm the available options, including estimated timeframes. Make sure you clearly indicate these for each product.
Wholesale Central doesn’t have any selling tools that can help you streamline the process. You will need to sell your products by yourself. You’re basically trading efficiency and convenience for larger margins.
How can I get in touch with Wholesale Central?
Customer Support
Wholesale Central representatives can be reached via their contact page. You can also contact Wholesale Central representatives by telephone, fax or postal mail. The company doesn’t specify when the phone lines can be used.
Sections for Self-Help
Wholesale Central does not have a page that provides instructions or guides for how to use their website. Because of the simplicity of their service, you will quickly become familiar with it.
Do you have any other information about Wholesale Central that I should be aware of?
Wholesale Central offers a lot of services that can be accessed without signing up. Wholesale Central offers many services even to site visitors.
Is there any other dropshipping/wholesale company that is as good as Wholesale Central?
Wholesale Central is one of many wholesale companies, including Alibaba, Made-in-China and Wholesale 2B. However, I highly recommend Chinabrands.
Chinabrands is a top wholesaler/dropshipper that offers a wide range of products at wholesale prices, including clothing, 3C and toys, home decor accessories, beauty, health, and car parts accessories.
Many sellers and retailers complain about the difficulty of ffinding right products. It also costs them a lot of capitals and time, even though they know how to locate them.
Many people wonder if there are any platforms that offer hot-sale items or new arrivals from different countries, e-commerce platforms, and regions.
Chinabrands is one such company. They spend a lot of money on data analysis to find the best products and quality control systems. They will promote the latest trendy products and hot-sale items from different ecommerce platforms. Each product from Chinabrands must be inspected at minimum three times.
Chinabrands provides 100% product inspection, which is different from other manufacturers who randomly inspect products. This ensures that every product meets the quality standards.
They also offer more than 500,000 SKU, including high-end and low-end products at wholesale prices.
You can also earn CB points for every purchase. These can be used as cash or credit towards your next purchase. You can register as a member to get additional discounts and free shipping, which will increase your profit margins for dropshipping or wholesale.
Is that all you can get at Chinabrands? You don’t have to get these services.
- Start your business with minimal/zero risk and budgets
We all know that every business comes with its risk. Every business needs a budget. You can’t start a business without taking on some risk, but there are ways to make your budget and startup costs low. How do you do this? Chinabrands Dropshipping Programs allow you to start a business with low/ no budget. This can reduce your risk in capital and product inventory.
- SEO optimization can save you time
Chinabrands can interface with over 16 major e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, Lazada and Joom, Wadi, as well as eBay, Amazon, Lazada and Joom. Automatic listing: sync order, inventory, and send product infringement message.
- 24 Hour delivery
All parcels from Chinabrands can reach international customers within 48 hours.
- Outstanding customer service in more that 10 languages
Customers can be reached at any time, as they work within 24 hours/week.
- Everything you need
Are you having trouble finding the right products in Chinabrands Do not worry, just leave your email and photos of the products. Chinabrands offers customized services. They will get back to you as soon as they receive your message.
Conclusion
You won’t find a single-stop solution to all your drop shipping needs at Wholesale Central. Wholesale Central is lacking many of the functionality offered by other services. Although it is a basic directory, it has some useful functionality.
Wholesale Central is free and can be used alongside other drop shipping services that are more feature-packed.
Wholesale Central is a great resource for any business, even if it’s not a drop shipping solution.
