I've been thinking about adding some Chinese products to my store and trying dropshipping with them, because the margins on a few things look pretty attractive. What keeps holding me back is the supplier side of it. I don't want to build listings around products and then discover that the seller takes forever to ship, sends something completely different, or just disappears when there's a problem. There are so many suppliers out there that I honestly don't know where to start checking who is reliable and who should be avoided. How do you guys usually figure that out?
The cheap price stops looking so great the first time you have to explain to a customer why their order still hasn't moved. I'd message a supplier before listing anything and ask a couple of normal questions about stock, shipping, or the product itself. If getting a straight answer already turns into a back-and-forth, I'd cross that one off immediately. After that, order one or two items yourself so you know what your customer is actually going to receive.
I'd also avoid picking names at random and testing every supplier you come across, because that can turn into a week of chasing samples with no real direction. Narrowing it down first makes the whole process a lot less chaotic. There's an article about Chinese dropshipping suppliers here: https://easync.io/articles/china-dropshipping/ . Pull a few names from there that fit the products you want to sell and check those one by one. Then compare how they communicate, what arrives, and how long the order takes. Anyone who starts creating problems before you've even sent them real customers is easy to remove from the list.