It’s hard to start a business without any products to sell—in fact, sourcing a supplier is often one of the first steps.
But if you're starting one on Shopify, there are dozens of product sourcing options to help you populate your store with in-demand items, partner with suppliers who specialize in certain goods, or even add your own creative spin to white label products.
What is product sourcing?
Product sourcing is the phase after you generate a business idea where you determine how you'll acquire the products you want to sell. You canfind a manufacturerfor custom products, a wholesale supplier for third-party goods, or partner with adropshipper.
Many of the product sourcing options we'll be covering in this list will let you employ a dropshipping fulfillment model, meaning that youwon’t need to hold or manage inventory, or ship orders yourself—that'll fall on the supplier you choose to partner with. This way, you'll get to focus less on the logistics and more onbuildingyour brand,running effective ad campaigns,and providing great customer support.
Learn more:Trending Products to Sell in 2020
12 dropshipping apps for sourcing products on Shopify
- Oberlo
- Printify
- Dripshipper
- Spocket
- Syncee
- Creative Hub
- Printful
- My Online Fashion Store
- Lulu Xpress
- Shapeways
- Modalyst
- MXED
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How to Find and Source a Winning Product to Sell
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1.Oberlo: Choose from millions of products to sell
Price:Free plan available
Oberlo is an official Shopify app that was built to make it easy to find products via third-party dropshippers, add them to your Shopify store, and ship them directly to your customers.
You can choose from millions of products across almost anyniche marketyou can think of, curating them into abranded online storeto serve a specific audience, like pet accessories for pet owners or smartphone photography gear for travelers.
Best of all, Oberlo gives you data about how each product performs so you can make informed decisions about what you add to your store.
Types of products you can sell:
- Rings
- Sunglasses
- Watches
- Apparel
- Electronics
- Phone accessories
- And more
Start your own store with a free trial of Shopify—no credit card required.
2.Printify:Print-on-demand apparel and accessories
Price:Free plan available
If you’re looking for a way to inject some of your own creativity into what you sell,print-on-demand productsare a popular choice. With Printify, you can choose from a large catalog of products to customize with your own designs.
While Printify is free to use (you pay for the products on a per-order basis), you can also upgrade to a paid plan for $29/month, when you’re ready to scale, to improve your profit margins with a 20% discount on all products.
With Printify, you can put your own designs on:
- T-shirts
- Hoodies
- Tote bags
- Coffee mugs
- Wall decals
- Posters
- Beach towels
- Notebooks
- Pet beds
- And more
Interested in exploring how to build your own app for Shopify? Learn how tobuild a Shopify appon the Web Design and Development Blog.
3.Dripshipper: A quality coffee dropshipper
Price:$25 a month
Do you consider yourself a coffee connoisseur, but are worried about selling a subpar product? Dripshipper, a coffee dropshipping app, might be for you. Whole beans are shipped on the same day they're roasted for coffee that's as fresh as can be.
Upload your own logo, choose the kind of coffee you want to offer, and customize your labels to sell white label coffee under your own brand directly to your customers. You can even offer a coffeesubscription, so customers can get a fresh bag delivered as their previous supply runs dry.
The types of coffee products you can sell include:
- Single-origin coffee (Laos, Papa New Guinea, Columbia, etc.)
- 12/60 pack of single-serve coffee capsules
- Decaf coffee
- Custom coffee product (select origin, roast, size, bag, etc.)
Learn more:Sell Coffee Online: How to Launch a Café.
4.Spocket: US and EU suppliers
Price:Free plan available
Spocket is another product sourcing app that lets you add products from dropship suppliers in the US and EU. It offers a large catalog of quality products and branded invoicing, plus fast shipping times.
Through wholesale pricing, the service promises a 30-60% discount on the retail price of all products, enabling great profit margins for you to get creative with discounts.
The products you can source through Spocket include:
- Earrings
- Apparel
- Sports and outdoor equipment
- Footwear
- Bath and beauty items
- And more
5.Syncee: A global marketplace of suppliers
Price:免费14days (first 30 products)
From inventory to reliability to delivery times, there are a lot of factors to consider when sourcing a supplier.
With Syncee, you can browse a catalog of trustworthy suppliers from around the world and easily import products into your store to start selling.
Products you can import include:
- Baby products
- Watches
- 时尚
- Toys
- Fishing accessories
- Perfume
- And more
6.Creative Hub: Sell art made by contemporary artists
Price:Free to install
With Creative Hub, you don’t need to be an artist tosell art online. This UK-based marketplace gives you access to premium art by contemporary artists to sell in your own store. For each piece, you’re given the retail price (the minimum price you can sell it at) and your share as a vendor (how much you stand to make at the retail price). Some prints are even limited edition, commanding a higher price tag.
There is a £6 fixed international shipping, which keeps shipping simple and lets you sell to anyone anywhere in the world. It's important to note that frames are not included (though you might be able to source them and offer them through one of the other apps on this list).
7.Printful: Highly customizable print-on-demand products
Price:Free to install
Printful is anotherprint-on-demand companylike Printify, but with some key differences.
Printful offers more robust product customization options, along with the ability to brand the customer experience (with branded stickers, package inserts, and labels). You can also order product samples at a discounted price, so you can see what your products will look like before you start promoting them.
产品您可以自定义的类型包括:
- T-shirts
- Posters
- Leggings
- Embroidered hats
- Sports bras
- Socks
- Phone cases
- Pillows
- Joggers
- Bomber jackets
- And more
8.My Online Fashion Store: Fashion and accessories for women
Price:$29/month
My Online Fashion Store is a US-based dropshipper with a large inventory of stylish apparel for women. From tops to bottoms, jewelry to shoes, there’s a large number of items, each with a suggested selling price.
What’s more is they offer free returns and great shipping rates, however, they can only serve customers in the United States at the moment, which limits your market.
The products you can sell include:
- Scarves
- Tank tops
- Lingerie
- Sunglasses
- Handbags
- Hats
- Belts
- And more
9.Lulu Xpress: Print-on-demand books and calendars
Price:Free to install
Lulu Xpress exclusively focuses on books and calendars, letting you useprint-on-demandfulfillment to launch your own book product. You can pick the format and size of the book, whether you want a hardcover or softcover, color or black and white ink, and the quality of the paper you want to use for the interior pages.
Have an idea for a best-selling coffee table book? Lulu Xpress is a low-risk way to try out your idea and prove it out before investing heavily in it.
The types of books you could create include:
- Hardcover photo books
- Novels
- Comic books
- Workbooks
- Poetry books
- Calendars
- Journals and notebooks
10.Shapeways: Premium on-demand 3D printing
Price:Free to install
Shapeways is a 3D printing and fulfillment service that lets you upload your own 3D models and bring them to life as physical products.
While this may be one of the most expensive apps to use on this list (considering the upfront costs of 3D modeling), you can use it to create truly unique high-quality products to sell on-demand or forrapid prototyping.
The available 3D printing materials include:
- Plastic
- Steel
- Gold
- Aluminum
- Sandstone
- Carbon
- And more
11.Modalyst:A large network of suppliers with fast shipping
Price:Free plan available (5% transaction fee on sales)
Modalyst is a supplier network that gives you access to dropshippers based in the US with relatively fast shipping times. You can find independent brands, trendy products, and low-cost goods to sell in your own store.
Many of their independent brands include other Shopify merchants who meetstrict requirementsand are open to forming dropshipping partnerships.
Products you can find on Modalyst include:
- Backpacks
- Formalwear
- T-shirts
- Footwear
- Swimwear
- Jewelry
- Electronics
- And more
12.MXED: Sell officially licensed merch (US only)
Price:Free to install
Selling officially licensed pop culture merchandise often requires you tonegotiate directly with the licensor. MXED offers an easier way to sell licensed merch legitimately from some of the most familiar brands around. Best of all, MXED offers fast 3-day shipping, letting you serve up an excellent customer experience that lives up to the premium products you’ll be selling.
The pop culture products available through MXED includes backpacks, t-shirts, wallets, and other merch from iconic universes like:
- Assassin’s Creed
- Street Fighter
- Overwatch
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Star Wars
- My Hero Academia
- Looney Tunes
- DC Comics
- Marvel Comics
- Naruto
- And more
No products to sell? No problem
With the rise of third-party suppliers and marketplaces, like the ones we covered above and the dozens more you can find in theShopify app store, supply is no longer the hurdle it once was to starting a business. These apps are a great way to start alow-investment businessand get your feet wet and your hands dirty as a beginner to ecommerce.
Illustration by Gracia Lam