How to Find Winning Products Easily - A shopify Guide for 2021


5 Min. Read

Whether you are drop shipping with Shopify or just looking to add new products to a niche Shopify store, finding winning products that are untapped can be a struggle.  

There are 3rd party apps that can help you here, for example Winning Products, an app which focuses on assisting users to find unsaturated products (not oversold), or alternatively, quality, drop shipping product feeds that contain pre-vetted, trusted suppliers and products.  Of course such services come at a price, since their business model leverages their trusted status.

Both of these solutions can be used together, but in order to find that golden winning product, either you’ll either need to get lucky, or you’ll have to get your hands dirty via some ameteur sleuthing and competitor research.  

This blog takes you through the best strategies to find winning products easily in 2021.

Table of Contents

#1 Amazon Best Sellers

Take inspiration from Amazon best sellers, these top sellers are freely available for all to see, and are updated hourly.  Unfortunately Amazon is increasingly dominated by Chinese sellers, manufacturers selling direct to the consumer, or by wholesalers who have a tight connection to the manufacturers.  Therefore, it makes it extremely competitive when it comes to pricing.

The question that needs to be asked for each and every product is one of brand loyalty, will your customers buy a  product from you for a premium price based on your relationship?

The takeaway here is, that in most cases only use Amazon as a source of inspiration, find alternative similar, or related products to products that are best sellers on Amazon, – for example.

#2 Shopify

Although you can no longer specify unique search results when doing a google search, the following technique is still useful.  Set the number of search results to the maximum (100) in the Google search settings to get the top products in the niche of your choice like so:- 

In your search box type the following like so:-

Google search Shopify

Then narrow down your search criteria with a keyword as follows.

site:*.myshopify.com sustainable (for example)

The * returns any subdomain of myshopify.com.  This is the given domain name for every Shopify store.  Specify a store category and a keyword

site:*.myshopify.com “/travel-*” “sustainable”

In addition if you combine either of these queries with the Shopify best-selling query as follows: –

site:*.myshopify.com/ “”all?sort_by=best-selling”” sustainable

With the search results you can get a complete picture of what is selling well on Shopify in your target niche.

In the query above we would be looking for those interested in sustainable products, but this could be used for any niche term.

Sourcing Products for your store.

Once you have identified your potential products it’s time to source them.  This is easier said than done.  Below are several effective techniques.

Google Image Search

Google image search
Google Image Search

Images of your products (both by themselves and in a use context) are among the most effective merchandising and branding tools at your disposal.  For Drop Shippers, they are also a competitors dream.

The Google image search result provides the image thumbnails and the source where the image originates, from this point it is a simple process of elimination, eliminating each source until you find the wholesaler or the manufacturer.

Of course, in many cases larger stores do their own image work, product photoshoots adding branding, and for personalizing image sets for specific purposes.  Since these images are not the original images supplied by the manufacturer, it’s can be harder to find the source. 

Tip: Look for images that best look like the product in question and then try going through the same image search again. When you choose product for your store, don’t make it easy for your competitors to find your product sources by ordering a sample product and doing your own photoshoot.

Import Documentation Meta Data

One way of finding quality suppliers is to search a database of products.  In most countries such a searchable database is available from tax authorities with product name, product description along with the product volume purchased and since the duration of import is supplied, you can determine whether the supplier is a trusted, reliable source.

Here you will find a directory of suppliers from non EU sources that supply companies in the UK

For the USA

Trade Shows

Most industries have tradeshows where manufacturers reveal their new product ranges each year for the following season.

For example, in the United Kingdom, the go to trade events for the retail industry are the Spring Fair and in the Autumn, the Autumn Fair.  Both of these trade events are held at the NEC in Birmingham.

Meeting suppliers face to face is a great way to see the range up close, rather than in some catalog and build a relationship and negotiate terms of purchase.

Alternatively, if on a tight budget, you can pre order the event catelog and get it delivered to your door.  This way you can contact the suppliers in your desired retail niche and request more information.  This is certainly a more time effective strategy.

Conclusion

There are many ways to find products to resell, but starting a new store in a new niche is more than finding likely products.  Its about spotting future trends, a deep knowledge that can take years to develop.

Tip: Don’t forget to test your product ideas on Google trends after big trade shows and before making any big decisions.

Your competitive analysis will yield results, but there is no replacing niche category industry knowledge.

If you have other useful techniques for finding products, let us know!

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