Competitor Research: How to Get Amazon Wholesalers and Suppliers from Competitors?

• Find out which Amazon wholesale suppliers your competitors source from : Because all shipment and import data is clearly recorded, you can view all of your competitors’ ocean freight information and find out who their suppliers are.

• See what products your competitors import and in what quantities: Since every packaging detail is clearly recorded, you can understand how your competitors' products are performing based on the size of the goods and the frequency of shipments.

• Negotiate better prices with your current suppliers: Are you worried that your supplier will sell your patented product to a competitor? With this data, you can easily find out who else your supplier sells the same product to, so you can negotiate better prices and terms.

• Find new and reliable suppliers : Alibaba is full of middlemen and trading companies. By accessing the US import database, you can instantly find reliable suppliers without having to sift through hundreds of listings.

This article will show you how to get U.S. import and trade data at a low cost and how to use this data to grow your business.

Every container entering a U.S. port must pass through customs before entering the country. As part of the customs process, every aspect of the shipment is inspected and documented.

As shown in the figure, the following is an example of a bill of lading for The North Face (an outdoor products company).

As shown in the picture, North Face clearly indicates the factory used to produce the jacket on its bill of lading, as well as the size and weight of the product. Knowing this information, you can easily contact the same factory to make the product.

Although all US trade and tariff data is available on the US government website, it is not usually easily released to the public. To obtain this data, you can find companies such as Panjiva and Import Genius to help you organize and analyze US import databases, but these companies' services are relatively expensive.

Today, I will teach you how to get this data with less money.

If you are an Amazon seller, you may have used the Jungle Scout Web App to analyze product selection or other data, but you may not know that it can also help you "steal" supplier resources from your competitors!

This tutorial will focus on how to use the Jungle Scout Web App to find your competitor’s wholesalers, suppliers, and factories.

When you first log into the Jungle Scout Web App, locate and click on the “Find Suppliers” tab:

Since we are mainly looking for competitors’ suppliers, we will click on “Company” next:

Enter the name of the company you want to search for in the blank box:

Here is an example of a page that appears when searching for The North Face:

With a simple search, you can find the factories that The North Face is using and the volume of shipments they are sending. Clicking on any of the factory links shown on this page will give you in-depth data on the shipments as well as their weight and frequency of shipments.

These reports are quite detailed and by combining the description of the goods, quantity and weight of each container, you can easily calculate the sales volume of each product.

Additionally, if the products you sell are similar in nature, you can contact the same factory to produce your own products.

While Jungle Scout’s supplier search functionality is very powerful, one downside is that unless you know the exact legal company name, it can be difficult to find your competitors in its database.

The North Face mentioned above is a very large and well-known company, and its competitors are also relatively well-known, so it is easy to find. However, most private label brands are small and diverse, so if you are also a small seller, how can you find your competitors through Jungle Scout?

This method is a bit more complicated. If you are a small private label seller of garlic presses, here is an example of how to find your competitor’s legal company name.

First, you need to find the brand you want to research:

After entering the brand name “Mitba” into the Jungle Scout company search bar, the following results were obtained:

You read that right, there is nothing on the page. There is no company named "Mitba" in the US import database.

Therefore, finding the company's suppliers requires a little more research.

*Note : Jungle Scout will usually be able to deduce the legal name of the brand on its own. If not, please follow the instructions below.

We know that all real brands on Amazon may have registered trademarks and are in the Amazon Brand Registry.

If the product listing looks like high-quality brand content or advertising title, the brand may have been registered.

Once you’ve determined that your competitors are in the Amazon Brand Registry, you can search by trademark .

You can use the free tool Justia to search for it. Here are the results for searching “Mitba” in Justia:

Click on the listing and you’ll find all the details about the brand, including the legal entity that registered the trademark.

Next, enter the full legal entity name into Jungle Scout and you will see the following results:

As shown in the picture, we finally found the supplier of Mitba!

One of the biggest drawbacks of finding suppliers through Alibaba is that there are so many middlemen and trading companies on the platform that even if you filter out gold suppliers and vetted suppliers, you may not necessarily end up with high-quality suppliers, let alone experienced ones.

To immediately check if a supplier is reputable, check the supplier's previous shipping history.

Specifically, you should look for the following questions when looking for suppliers:

• Can the supplier ship to your country? If you are based in the United States and the supplier you are researching has never shipped to the United States before, you should be cautious.

• How qualified is the supplier? If the supplier has only a few customers or very low shipments, this is usually a sign that the supplier is small, newly founded, or inexperienced.

• Can the supplier ship in large quantities? If you have a factory that can produce thousands of units per month, you need to know if the factory can meet your production needs.

• Is the supplier working with a reputable company ? If the factory works with big brands like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, etc., such suppliers are usually reliable.

Type “garlic press” into the search box and you’ll immediately find a variety of factories that make the product for a variety of well-known brands on the web. For example, Good Things International is a supplier that works with big names like Sur La Table and Dixon Ticonderoga, which suggests that the supplier can produce high-quality products in large quantities.

If you want to sell garlic press, then it will be necessary to contact this company.

Once you’ve decided on a particular supplier you want to work with, you can contact them directly by simply clicking the “search for supplier info” button to be redirected to a Google page with their contact details. Alternatively, you can search on Alibaba to see if you can find additional information about the supplier.

Once you have a supplier in mind, you can use Jungle Scout to review their shipment history.

Using the same example above, let’s take a closer look at what Good Things International does for their clients.

As shown in the figure, from Good Things International's shipping records, we can see that it has shipped goods to major retailers in the United States. Therefore, you can rest assured to cooperate with this supplier. However, due to its large shipping volume, its minimum order quantity may be high. If your business is just starting, then this supplier may not be suitable for you.

In terms of the products that this supplier can produce, as shown in the figure, the company can manufacture a variety of kitchen supplies, including cups, pizza cutters, bread slicers, etc.

Typically, when you’re looking for a reputable supplier, you need to do your due diligence and look at their existing customers. You can start by going to Amazon and finding the product that the supplier makes and buying it to see how it works.

With samples, you can gauge the quality of the products they produce and then decide whether to work with that supplier.

With US import data, you can see all the customers a given supplier has worked with. You can then search for suppliers and distributors to manufacture the products you are selling.

Why bother researching existing suppliers? Because you can use this data to negotiate product pricing.

If you are looking for a supplier on Alibaba, there is a good chance it will be a smaller factory. However, this is not always the case, most major suppliers are not on Alibaba because they do not want to deal with small scale new sellers, who usually only find new suppliers through trade shows or daigou.

In this case, you should search for suppliers on Jungle Scout and see how your shipments compare to other customers. Interestingly, we tried searching for Jungle Snugs suppliers on Jungle Scout and found that one of them had only shipped 3 shipments in the past year. Not only that, Jungle Scout also seems to be their largest customer! As shown in the picture:

I don’t know the exact details of the deal between Jungle Scout and this manufacturer, and I don’t know if there is some data missing from the chart, but if Jungle Scout is indeed their largest customer, then they should be able to negotiate better pricing terms.

Most importantly, if you are a major customer of the supplier, this data can be used as leverage in negotiations.

In the past, it cost a lot to get the US import trade database, but now you can get the information for free through the Jungle Scout Web APP.

However, everything has two sides, and these data are also a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, you can pretty much find out where every company sources its products from, but on the other hand, everyone can also find out which suppliers you’re working with.

Therefore, it is even more important to build a stronger brand. With the commoditization of all information, success in e-commerce business will depend on the following factors:

• Relationship with your suppliers: If you can become friends with your suppliers, then you will be able to negotiate for favorable terms and discounts that new sellers won’t be able to get.

• The ability to build a brand: Building a brand is all about creating some form of content, be it blog posts, videos, or images. In either case, you have to build an audience.

• Ability to build an email/Messenger list: Ultimately, you need to understand how to drive traffic to your product and retain your customers through email and Messenger.

• Repeat business capability: Customers who purchase from you once are 60% more likely to purchase from you again. You must leverage your existing customers to lay a solid foundation for business development.

Most importantly, the e-commerce market is evolving. In the early stages, whoever built a good-looking website had an advantage, but platforms such as Big Commerce and Shopify changed this situation. In the past, it was also difficult to find suppliers in Asia, but Alibaba also changed this situation.

With Jungle Scout, you can directly spy on your competitors and find out their sales data, their suppliers, their product portfolio and more!