#WhyWeWalk

With the ever-increasing prevalence of online businesses, many are approaching whole new different avenues, and now looking into selling wholesale exercise equipment online.

Before you can do that, you’d have to stock up; meaning you must first find a reliable place to buy your fitness equipment wholesale, such as walking pad or treadmill pad, as well as ensuring you have all areas covered before launching your business.

Am I qualified to distribute fitness equipment?

Before one can even consider the selling of fitness equipment or any other thing for that matter, they must have a few things in place initially.

Legal Bits

For those who wish to approach the process completely legally, they must first ensure that their business is officially registered.

This means making sure that you have your official license, federal identification number and a resale tax certificate set up, to avoid other issues coming up down the line.

Experience and ability to stock products

The next step would be to ensure that you’re fully able to handle the capacity of the products you buy.

This means having a designated area in which you can stock your desired products, preferably in a warehouse or store-front type location, depending on if your business is selling products on, or offline.

Ability to distribute your stocked products

As well as being able to stock the products, you must also have some, at least minor experience, or have done research into, the distribution of your products.

This works in two ways: For instance, if your business is primarily online, then you need to ensure you’re able to ship these products to your customers.

Some of which may be abroad or in foreign cities, in this case, you’d need to ensure you have the logistics set up to be able to fulfill these requirements.

Supplying for the demand

After having the legal aspects ticked off the checklist, the area to stock the products, and the distribution channels set up (whether you’ll be shipping or selling directly to the public), you should then consider and question: Do you have enough stock to fulfill the demand for your products?

This is where your detailed business plan comes in.

Have a business plan and gain some marketing expertise

You need to cover all the avenues. So other than the legal boxes you must tick, the distribution channels and place to stock your products, you must ensure you are able to supply for the demand your target audience will have.

This means you must be able to handle the financial aspects of buying products in bulk to stock up as well as a separate budget for marketing. A lot of businesses go bust simply due to not having an appropriate plan in place.

As well as accounting for your stock, logistics, rent for your warehouse (or store), one of the most important things you must put in place for every successful business, is a marketing plan.

There are two main types of marketing, online and offline. For those planning to run an online store, you’d need to ensure your website is optimized for SEO, as well as looking into paid advertising platforms on search engines, as well as social media marketing.

If you plan on distributing products on a high street, in a walk-in store, you’d want to utilize (mainly) offline marketing, so you must invest in making your storefront as attractive as possible, initially.

Only once you start getting business coming in, and your offline business starts kicking off, then you should consider investing into online marketing, particularly local search marketing channels to target customers that haven’t yet heard of you.

Where can I buy fitness equipment wholesale?

Before sorting any of the above out, make sure you first find a wholesale fitness equipment manufacturer.

Reliable fitness equipment manufacturers are rather hard to come by nowadays, but we’ll get onto that in a second, firstly, where to find one.

Finding one online

A simple online search can go a long way.

It’s as easy as typing in a search term such as Fitness (or gym) Equipment Manufacturer/Fitness Wholesale Distributor + Country (depending on where you’re based).

Some online gym equipment manufacturers are cheaper than others, some offer no low minimum orders. Other things to consider is shipping costs and the country the goods will be shipped from, as this could affect you financially in the long-run.

Finding one offline

There is a wide array of exercise equipment wholesale distributors available out there, it’s all a matter of finding the appropriate one for you.

The best way is to flick through a catalog and find your appropriate category, ideally a B2B catalog to ensure you’re finding the appropriate company for what you require. Or you can take part in some B2B life fitness exhibitions where most enterprises display their products. It is fairly easy for you to communicate with the people in charge and compare the bulk pricing with other fitness equipment manufacturers.

What makes a reliable fitness equipment manufacturer?

There are a few aspects to consider when picking through fitness manufacturers, let’s go through some of them.

Read reviews and online comparisons

With the ever-increasing price comparison sites and review websites available online, it’s never been easier to research a company you’re not sure of and find out whether they’re legit, by looking into verified reviews.

Reviews are also useful to investigate prior to visiting a wholesale store, to save you time in traveling to a store if it has poor reviews.

Make sure, if you’re wary of a wholesaler, that you do extensive research into them, the last thing you want is to waste time and money on a scam site or something of a similar nature.

Browse their site or go in-store to see the products for yourself

For online stores, ensure you look through their products, what they have available.

Some indicators of quality would be a wide range of products (unless of course, they’re a specialist manufacturer for one specific product), and if they have a wide range of fitness-related products, then you can assume they’re good enough for you.

For offline fitness equipment wholesalers, make sure you go to the store yourself, so you can see the quality of the products in person, before considering placing any orders.

Quality, pricing, support and warranty

We must stress, before placing any orders, make sure the following is in check...

Quality

You’re looking at fitness products, it is imperative that these products are comprised of the finest materials, as this could raise health and safety concerns otherwise.

Pricing

Ensure the pricing is appropriate for the other overheads, and that you’d be able to make an adequate profit on top of.

The last thing you want to do is order a set of products and make a small profit from your investment, choose wisely.

Warranty, Support and Inventory

Every good life fitness equipment manufacturer should offer at least a minimum warranty, giving you the peace of mind that their products are made to be used and to last.

Technical support is another important aspect to consider, as problems do come along and accidents do happen, ensure that they’re available when that does occur.

One of the other most important considerations is to ensure their inventory is adequate for your business needs. This goes back to the point about supply and demand; If you choose a manufacturer that’s consistently low in stock, then that’s an indication that you may not be able to meet your business needs if you run out of products.

A wholesaler should be supplying distributors with products almost effortlessly, so ensure you choose your one wisely.

Make sure they’re legit and licensed.

The most important indicator of quality, for the bare minimum, you need to ensure the source you’re considering is from a legally licensed business.

If you must ensure all the legal aspects are in place before you can even distribute these products in question, then the least you do is ensure your manufacturer has done the same; Check for certificates, and other indications of quality such as company history, etc.

For legit manufacturers, it shouldn’t be too hard to find this information online.

How to find reliable fitness equipment manufacturers from China?

China is well-known for its vast shipping industry due to its strength in PR and advertising, it is very important to consider the following when considering an exercise equipment manufacturer from China.

Pricing

The well-known term “you get what you pay for” applies heavily here.

Ensure that you are not lured only by low pricing, as this could potentially come with the negative possibility of low-quality products.

Again, make sure you do your background checks to ensure these low-ball products are as they are advertised.

Warranty

Once again, products that come with a warranty are an indication of, at least, basic quality.

Wholesalers that don’t advertise their warranty or are apprehensive to provide details on the warranty for their products should be avoided.

Remote technical support

Due to the products coming from China, whether you’re based in the UK, USA or any other country in the world, you need to ensure reliable technical support is available.

This will ensure if you come across any problems with your orders, that you can get in touch with them easily and alleviate any issues. The last thing you want is to have to send an order of 100 or so products back to China for maintenance.

That can end up being very costly and can eventually hurt your business.

Conclusion

When buying fitness equipment at wholesale, ensure that your manufacturer is licensed; That they offer support and have a warranty available to cement your trust in their products and their quality; otherwise you’re wasting your time.

When considering fitness equipment manufacturers, especially for your own business needs, these are the essentials for you to know.