Finding American Suppliers Beyond Thomasnet

2025-12-17

When sourcing products within the United States, you may initially think of using directories like Thomasnet (often described as an "Alibaba for American suppliers"). However, many experienced sellers find Thomasnet’s listings limited and not always up to date. Instead, the most effective way to locate reliable American manufacturers and suppliers is simply through Google – but with a strategic approach. In this section, we'll explore how to leverage Google search to find U.S. suppliers and the best practices for contacting them once you do.

The Limitations of Thomasnet and Traditional Directories

Thomasnet (Thomas.net) is a well-known online directory of manufacturers and suppliers in the US. In theory, it is the perfect solution for finding American production partners. In practice, however, many sellers (including high-volume Amazon entrepreneurs) report that Thomasnet doesn't yield great results for niche or specialized products. The platform can be clunky to navigate and often lists only companies that pay to be featured, which means you might miss out on many smaller or highly specialized manufacturers who aren’t active on Thomasnet.
If you have tried Thomasnet and found yourself struggling to get good leads, you’re not alone. Fortunately, there’s a more powerful tool at your disposal – one you use every day – and that’s Google.

Using Google Search to Discover U.S. Manufacturers

Google is the go-to tool recommended by seven-figure and eight-figure Amazon sellers when asked how to find American suppliers. The key is to use Google effectively to surface genuine manufacturer websites, which often don’t rank well in standard searches due to poor search engine optimization (SEO). Many U.S. factory and supplier websites are outdated or simple in design, and they might not contain much content or keywords to rank for generic product terms on the first page of search results. You can cut through this noise by crafting specific search queries that target elements common to manufacturer websites.
Here’s a proven tactic: use your product’s keywords combined with specific phrases in quotes so that Google will return results containing those exact phrases. These phrases should be likely to appear on a genuine manufacturer or wholesale supplier’s site. For example, typical markers of a manufacturer’s site include pages or text like “Contact Us,” “About Us,” “Our Factory,” “Lead Time,” “MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity),” “Wholesale Pricing,” or “Manufacturing” terms.
How to search: In the Google search bar, type your product name or category along with one of these specific phrases, and put the phrase in quotation marks. For instance, suppose you are looking for a supplier of silicone soap molds in the US. You could try searches like:
  • Silicone soap molds “manufacturer” – This finds websites where the exact word "manufacturer" appears (great for finding actual manufacturers or factories).
  • Silicone soap molds “contact us” – This surfaces results where "contact us" appears on the page, often a company's contact page (almost every legitimate business site has a Contact Us section).
  • Silicone soap molds “lead time” – The term "lead time" often appears on sites discussing production or order timelines, indicating a manufacturer or B2B supplier.
  • Silicone soap molds: “pricing” or “wholesale pricing” – This can help find pages that discuss pricing structures, wholesale prices, or quote requests.
By combining your product keyword with these terms, you force Google to show results that are likely from actual manufacturers or industrial suppliers, rather than just retail or informational sites.
Try multiple searches with different keywords. You might also use variations such as “made in USA” or “US factory” combined with your product name. For example, silicone soap molds "Made in USA" can be effective if you specifically want domestically produced goods.
This method helps cut through the clutter and reveals those hidden American supplier websites that might otherwise be buried deep in the search results. It may lead you to simple websites that look like they were built in the 1990s – which is actually a good sign! Often, the best manufacturers put minimal effort into flashy websites or SEO, and instead focus on their production. Your targeted Google searches will bring these sites to light.

Evaluating and Contacting Potential Suppliers

Once you’ve identified some potential supplier websites from your Google searches, it’s time to evaluate and reach out to them. Here are some steps and tips:
  • Explore the Website: Look for clues that you’ve found a real manufacturer or wholesale supplier. Do they mention producing the product or components in-house? Do they list a factory address or photos? Is there a section for bulk orders, custom production, or wholesale clients? A genuine manufacturer’s site often highlights its production capabilities, equipment, materials, or the industries it serves.
  • Look for Contact Information: Find the “Contact Us” page or any listed email and phone number. If an online form is available, prepare the information you’ll need to fill in (often your name, your company or project name, the product you’re looking to produce, the estimated order quantity, etc.). However, email isn’t your only option – and often not the most effective one.
  • Prioritize Calling Over Email: While you can certainly email or submit a contact form, many experienced sellers recommend calling the potential supplier directly. U.S. manufacturers are accustomed to phone inquiries, and a call can often get you information much faster. By talking directly, you can introduce yourself, explain what product you need made, and gauge their interest and capability in real time. It also helps build a more personal connection from the start. If you’re not comfortable calling, email is fine – but be aware that some smaller manufacturers might be slow to respond to emails. A friendly phone call during business hours can set you apart and get the ball rolling quickly.
  • Prepare Your Questions: Whether by phone or email, have a list of key questions ready. For example:
    • Can they manufacture the specific product you need (material, design, specifications)?
    • What are their typical minimum order quantities (MOQs)?
    • What are their usual production lead times?
    • Do they offer packaging services, or will you need a separate packaging supplier?
    • Can they provide an initial quote or ballpark pricing for your expected order volume?
    • Have they worked with e-commerce sellers or Amazon sellers before (optional but helpful to know)?
  • Be Professional and Honest: Introduce yourself and your business briefly. You don’t need to pretend to be a big company if you’re starting – many U.S. manufacturers appreciate working with startups and smaller entrepreneurs. Still, they will take you more seriously if you come prepared and communicate clearly. Let them know you are exploring suppliers for a new product venture and would like to learn more about their capabilities and pricing.
  • Multiple Quotes: As with sourcing overseas, it’s wise to contact numerous suppliers. Use your Google search results to build a list of maybe 5-10 potential manufacturers. Reach out to each, take notes on their responses, and compare. Factors to compare include unit pricing, MOQs, responsiveness, willingness to accommodate custom requests, and overall professionalism.
  • By following these steps, you should be able to compile a solid list of American suppliers for your product without relying on Thomasnet. Google is your best friend for finding the right factory in the U.S., as long as you use the right search terms and take the initiative to reach out.

Why Google Search Works Best for U.S. Sourcing

To recap, American supplier websites often have poor SEO, so a generic search like “silicone soap mold supplier” might not immediately show actual factory sites. Instead, you’ll see a lot of Amazon listings, Etsy shops, or blog articles. The trick of including specific phrases in quotes (like “contact us” or “manufacturer”) filters results to those more likely to belong to real manufacturers or B2B suppliers. This method has been proven by successful sellers who source domestically, and it remains one of the fastest ways to discover hidden gem suppliers that your competitors might overlook.
Finally, so that you know, sourcing is a numbers game. Don’t be discouraged if the first few leads don’t pan out. Keep searching with different keyword combinations, and be persistent in contacting companies. Once you establish a relationship with a good U.S. supplier, it can become a valuable long-term partnership for your business – with benefits like shorter shipping times to Amazon warehouses, easier communication, and the marketing appeal of “Made in USA” for your product.

 

Calculating Profitability Before Placing an Order

Finding a great supplier is a huge step, but before you commit to placing an order (whether with a U.S. supplier or an overseas supplier), you must ensure your product will be profitable. It’s surprising how many new Amazon sellers skip this critical step and only realize later that their margins are too thin to sustain the business. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to you. In this part, we'll walk through how to calculate your product’s profit per unit and profit margin percentage before you even order inventory. By doing this homework upfront, you’ll have a clear target for what costs you need to negotiate and what price you need to charge, and you’ll have confidence that every sale will actually put money in your pocket.

The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers

Being passionate about a product is excellent, but at the end of the day, a business survives on profits, not passion alone. Every unit you sell should earn you a healthy return after all expenses. By calculating your expected profit per unit in advance, you can answer questions like:
  • What is the maximum cost per unit I can afford from my supplier?
  • What price should I aim to sell at, given the market?
  • How much can I spend on marketing or Amazon PPC and still be profitable?
Far too many sellers launch a product without a clear grasp of these numbers. We don’t want you to be one of them. Let’s break down the steps to determine your profitability.

Setting a Target Retail Price

The first input in your profit calculation is the price you plan to sell the product for on Amazon (your retail price). Determining this requires some market research and strategy:
  • Analyze Competing Products: Review the current top sellers or close competitors of your product on Amazon. What price are they selling at? This gives you a baseline for a competitive price range in your niche.
  • Position as a Premium Option: A common strategy, especially for new entrants, is to differentiate your product and position it as a premium offering. This can justify a higher price than the cheapest competitor. Often, adding value through better quality, improved features, bundling, or even better branding/packaging can help you command a higher price.
  • Aim Higher Than the Top Seller: As a rule of thumb, price your product slightly above the best-selling similar product. For example, if the top competitor sells at $25, you might target a price of $28–$35. The exact increment can vary – it could be $3 more, $5 more, or even $10+ more for higher-end products – but the idea is not to enter the market as just another cheap alternative. You aim to be better, so you charge a bit more.
Setting a higher price accomplishes two things. First, it gives you more room to absorb costs and still make a profit (which is crucial for a new seller who might have higher costs early on or needs to spend more on marketing). Second, it creates perceived value in customers' eyes – many buyers associate a higher price with higher quality. Of course, you must deliver on that quality and value, but if you do, the slightly higher price point is justified.
For now, decide on a realistic yet optimistic price you believe your product can sell for, given its advantages and the competitive landscape. We will use that price in our profit calculations.

Calculating Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

Next, let’s itemize all the costs involved in manufacturing, packaging, and shipping one unit of your product to Amazon. In traditional business terms, these expenses are part of your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) – basically, the direct costs of producing and delivering the product. Knowing these is essential to figuring out your profit per unit.
Your main per-unit costs will include:
  • Production Cost (Per Unit): The price your supplier charges to produce one unit of your product. It usually varies with order volume (higher volumes can lower per-unit cost). If you haven’t gotten a quote yet, reach out to your supplier (or multiple suppliers) with your product specifications to get an estimate. If you already have quotes, use those numbers. For example, if a factory will make your custom silicone soap mold for $2.50 each at a certain quantity, that $2.50 is your production cost per unit.
  • Packaging Cost (Per Unit): Nearly every physical product requires some form of packaging. This could be a simple poly bag, a cardboard box, a custom-printed package, or something similar. It might also include inserts such as a thank-you card or an instruction pamphlet. Often, your manufacturer can provide the packaging, or you might source it separately. Include all packaging-related costs per unit here. Even if packaging is quoted separately, add it to the per-unit cost. For example, custom packaging and an insert add $0.75 per unit.
  • Shipping Cost to Amazon (Per Unit): Once your product is made and packaged, it must be shipped from the factory to Amazon’s fulfillment centers (FBA warehouses). If you’re sourcing in the US, this might involve UPS or trucking across state lines; if overseas, it involves international freight and importation. Your supplier or freight forwarder can help estimate this. Take the total shipping cost for your batch and divide by the number of units to get a per-unit shipping cost. For instance, if it costs $500 to ship 1,000 units to Amazon, that’s $0.50 per unit.
  • Additional Production Costs: Depending on your product, there might be other per-unit costs to consider. Examples include:
    • Product customization or special materials: If you are adding anything extra per unit (e.g., a hand-painted finish that costs $0.20 per unit).
    • Quality control inspections: If you pay for a third-party inspection per unit, even though it's usually a one-time batch cost, you might amortize it per unit.
    • Import duties or taxes: If importing from abroad, calculate the duty per unit. For domestic sourcing, this is usually not applicable except standard sales tax on materials, which is often baked into your production cost.
Add up all these per-unit costs. Let’s illustrate with an example:
  • Production: $2.50 per unit
  • Packaging (including insert): $0.75 per unit
  • Shipping to Amazon: $0.50 per unit
  • Total COGS per unit = $3.75
This means it costs you $3.75 to produce and get one unit ready for sale on Amazon, before any Amazon fees or marketing.
Pro Tip: In the early stages, you might use rough estimates for these costs if you haven’t finalized a supplier. That’s okay – use slightly conservative estimates (round costs up a bit) to avoid unpleasant surprises. It’s better to overestimate costs and end up with more profit than expected than to underestimate and end up with less.

Accounting for Amazon Fees

When selling on Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon), there are specific fees you must account for. These fees cover the services Amazon provides, from listing on their marketplace to storing your inventory, to picking/packing orders, and shipping them to customers. The three main Amazon fees to include in your profit calculation are:
  • Amazon Referral Fee: This is the commission Amazon takes on each sale, giving you access to its massive customer base and platform. For most categories, the referral fee is 15% of your sale price. Some categories have slightly different rates, but 15% is a good rule of thumb (and it’s usually exact once you know the category). For example, if your product sells for $40, the referral fee will be around $6.00.
  • FBA Fulfillment Fee: This is the fee Amazon charges to store your item in its warehouse, then pick, pack, and ship it to the customer when an order comes in, and to handle returns and customer service for that order. The fulfillment fee is a fixed cost per unit sold, based primarily on the item's size and weight. Amazon has tiered rate charts for this – for instance, a standard-size item weighing under 1 lb might have a fulfillment fee around $3, whereas a larger or heavier item could be $5, $8, or more. Continuing our example, if a silicone soap mold set is small and light, the FBA fee might be, say, $3.50 per unit. (We’ll refine this estimate shortly using a tool.)
  • Monthly Storage Fee: Amazon charges a small fee for storing your inventory in their fulfillment centers, calculated per cubic foot of space your products occupy. On a per-unit basis, this usually comes out to just a few cents per month for small products. It varies by month (it's higher in the holiday season) and by the product size. For our example, storage might cost only $0.02 to $0.10 per unit per month. If you plan to sell your stock quickly (within a few months), storage fees have a negligible impact on each unit’s profitability. They become more significant if your product is large or sits in the warehouse for many months.
To estimate these fees accurately before you have the product live, you can use Amazon’s FBA fee calculators or third-party tools. Amazon itself provides an FBA revenue calculator on its website (you enter a product ASIN and your price, and it outputs the fees). Still, a more straightforward approach is to use a browser extension or tool that does this with a single click.
Using SellerSprite’s FBA Profit Calculator: SellerSprite offers a free Chrome extension that includes a profitability calculator. You can install the SellerSprite extension, then go to Amazon and find a product similar to yours – ideally one with a similar size, weight, and category. For example, if you plan to sell a crystal wine stopper, find a comparable listing on Amazon. Once on that product page, open the SellerSprite extension and use its FBA Profitability Calculator feature. It will automatically pull in that product’s current FBA fees (referral, fulfillment, and an estimate of storage per unit).
From this, you get a ballpark figure of the fees you might expect for your own product. Suppose the similar product shows:
  • Referral Fee: $2.80 (for a ~$40 product, which suggests ~7% – this seems low; likely it’s a $2.80 referral for maybe a $18 product? 
    But anyway, let's align: If the product price was $40, 15% is $6; perhaps the example in the transcript was a cheaper product. 
    We'll make it consistent in writing. For example, now we find a product with a referral fee of $2.80, fulfillment of $3.54, and storage of $0.02. 
    Perhaps that product was around $18.66 in price (because $2.80 is 15% of ~$18.67). Or did Amazon have a minimum fee in a category? 
    But let's not confuse. Let's perhaps present a hypothetical but realistic scenario:
Better: If our target price is $40:
  • Referral fee ~15% -> $6.00.
  • Fulfillment fee estimate from a similar $40 item (maybe a bit heavy?) might be around $3.50.
  • Storage per unit may be $0.05 (pick a small number).
But since we had an example in the transcript, let's stick with the transcript's numeric example, but ensure logic:
Alternatively, phrase it like: "For example, using a similar product on Amazon, you might discover the referral fee is around $2.80.
The fulfillment fee is $3.54, and the monthly storage fee is $0.02 per unit. (These numbers will vary based on the product’s price, weight, and size, but this gives a reference point.)"
Yes, let's keep that.
Continue writing:
Once you have these fee estimates, plug them into your profit calculation. You can also manually verify by checking Amazon’s fee schedule if you know your product’s dimensions and weight:
  • Amazon’s referral fee is straightforward once you know the category.
  • For fulfillment, Amazon provides charts by size tier; if your product is small and light, use that row, etc.
  • Storage fees per cubic foot are published by Amazon (e.g., X dollars per cubic foot; you can calculate your product’s cubic volume).
For our example scenario:
  • Planned sale price: $40.00
  • Referral fee (15%): approx. $6.00
  • Fulfillment fee: estimated $3.50
  • Storage fee: estimated $0.02
These would total about $9.52 in Amazon fees for each unit sold.
Remember that FBA fees can change slightly over time (Amazon updates fees periodically, usually annually), and they can also differ if your product turns out to be heavier or larger than anticipated. Always check the latest Amazon FBA fee schedule or use a tool like SellerSprite to get the most current estimates.

Including Marketing and Advertising Costs

Selling on Amazon isn’t just “set and forget” – especially with a new product, you will likely invest in marketing and advertising to generate visibility and sales. The most common ongoing marketing expense for Amazon sellers is Amazon Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, which helps your product appear in sponsored search results and on competitor pages. Additionally, you might spend on external advertising, influencer marketing, or promotional campaigns. These costs need to be considered in your profit calculations as well.
A simple rule of thumb is to allocate 10% to 20% of your product’s sale price toward marketing and advertising. The actual percentage can vary:
  • If your product is in a competitive category, you might spend on the higher end (20% or even a bit more of each sale’s revenue could go to ads, especially during launch).
  • In a less competitive niche or after your product gains organic traction, you might spend less (perhaps 10% or even less of revenue).
When planning conservatively, it’s safer to assume around 20% of your revenue will go back into advertising. If you manage to spend less, fantastic – that becomes extra profit. But if you plan on only 5% for ads and then find you actually need to pay 20%, your profit margins will suffer. So let’s be cautious and build in a healthy marketing budget.
Using our running example:
  • Sale price: $40.00
  • 20% of $40 = $8.00 allocated to marketing/advertising per unit sold.
This means, for each unit, we expect to spend $8 on advertising (this could be the average over time – maybe $12 on the first unit and $5 on a later unit, but we budget $8 as the average).

Other Costs to Consider (Miscellaneous)

Beyond production, Amazon fees, and marketing, think of any other expenses that are directly tied to your product. These might include:
  • Product Research and Tools: Did you purchase software or tools (like SellerSprite or others) specifically to help with this product research? Usually, these are monthly subscriptions covering all your business, so it’s not straightforward to attribute per unit. Some sellers choose to ignore tool subscriptions in per-product calculations, considering them overall business overhead. However, if you want, you can factor in a small per-unit charge for tools. For example, if you pay $100/month for various software and expect to sell 500 units per month across your products, that’s $0.20 per unit in software costs.
  • Trademark, Patents, or Certifications: If you spent, say, $500 on a trademark for your brand or $300 on product certification testing, you could amortize that over the number of units you expect to sell in the first year. It might only add a few cents per unit, but it’s worth noting if significant.
  • Shipping to Customers (if not using FBA): In our case, we assume FBA, so customer shipping is included in the FBA fee. If you were fulfilling yourself (FBM), you’d need to account for postage per unit.
  • Returns and Replacements: This is a bit advanced, but some sellers budget a small percentage of revenue for returns or defective units. For instance, if you expect 2% of orders to be refunded or replaced, you could factor that cost into your calculations. However, this is often negligible on a per-unit basis and can be absorbed by a healthy profit margin.
For initial planning, the high costs are those we’ve already outlined: production, packaging, shipping, Amazon fees, and advertising. Once you have those in place, you can calculate the profit and decide whether there’s enough room to cover any smaller miscellaneous costs.

Calculating Profit per Unit and Profit Margin

Now comes the exciting part – putting it all together to see how much money you’d actually make per sale. We will use the example figures we’ve been discussing:
Example Scenario Recap:
  • Target Sale Price (Revenue per unit): $40.00
Costs per unit:
  • Production: $2.50
  • Packaging & Inserts: $0.75
  • Shipping to Amazon: $0.50
  • Amazon Referral Fee (15%): ~$6.00
  • Amazon FBA Fulfillment Fee: ~$3.50
  • Amazon Storage Fee: $0.02
  • Marketing/PPC: $8.00 (assuming 20% of sale price)
  • Total Cost per unit: Let’s sum these: $2.50 + $0.75 + $0.50 + $6.00 + $3.50 + $0.02 + $8.00 = $21.27.
Given those numbers, the Profit per Unit would be: Sale Price ($40.00) – Total Cost ($21.27) = $18.73 profit per unit.
This means for every unit sold at $40, about $18.73 is left as profit (before any further overhead like your general business expenses or taxes, but as far as the product itself is concerned).
To express that as a Profit Margin Percentage, you take the profit per unit divided by the sale price, then multiply by 100:
  • Profit per unit $18.73 / $40 sale price = 0.4683, which is 46.8% margin.
A 46.8% gross profit margin on a product is excellent. It means nearly half of the sale price is profit. But is this realistic? That depends on how accurate our cost estimates were. If any of those costs were under-estimated (say the product ends up costing more to make, or ads cost more), the margin would be lower. If we overestimated costs, the margin could be even higher.
The key is to use realistic numbers based on research:
  • Use suppliers' quotes for production/packaging.
  • Use actual Amazon fee estimates from a calculator or Amazon’s data.
  • Use a reasonable advertising budget based on the competitiveness of your niche.
Run these calculations for your own product idea. You can set up a simple spreadsheet to plug in different scenarios. For instance, what happens if the supplier’s quote comes in $1 higher per unit? What if you have to lower your price by $5 to stay competitive? Adjust the numbers and see how it impacts profit. This sensitivity analysis helps you understand the boundaries of your product’s viability.

Evaluating Your Profit Margin: Is It Good Enough?

Once you calculate your estimated profit margin, you need to assess whether it’s strong, weak, or somewhere in between. Not every product needs a sky-high margin, but you do want to ensure the margin is healthy enough to make the business worthwhile and resilient to unforeseen costs.
Here are some general guidelines for gross profit margin on a per-unit basis in an Amazon FBA business:
  • 0% – 25% Profit Margin: This is very low. A product with under 25% margin is usually not worth pursuing unless you have a very unusual strategy (e.g., you expect to make money on repeat purchases or subscriptions, or you’re using this product as a loss leader for another part of your business). At below 25% margin, you’ll find cash flow tight – most of the money from sales goes right back into buying more inventory and paying Amazon and ad costs. It will be hard ever to pay yourself or scale up. Essentially, you’d be working for minimal reward. If your initial calculation shows under 25%, you should look hard at ways to either raise prices or reduce costs. Otherwise, consider choosing a different product.
  • 25% – 30% Profit Margin: Margins in the mid-twenties are okay, but not great. Many experienced sellers would consider ~30% the minimum acceptable gross margin for a new product. If this is your very first product and you’re treating it as a learning experience, you might accept a ~25% margin, but it leaves little room for error. At this range, any small unexpected cost (like a tariff increase or an ad campaign that performs worse than expected) could wipe out most of your profit. It’s not terrible – some businesses operate on thin margins – but for an Amazon FBA private label product, aim higher if you can.
  • 31% – 36% Profit Margin: This is a solid, healthy range for most products. If your calculations show somewhere around one-third of the sale price is profit, that’s pretty good. It means that if you sell an item for $30, you keep around $10 in profit. This level of margin gives you a cushion. If Amazon raises fees slightly or you need to spend a bit more on advertising, you’ll still have profit left. Also, if down the line you decide to run a discount or sale, you have room to temporarily lower the price without losing money. For most new sellers, targeting a margin of at least ~30% is a wise goal.
  • 37% – 50% Profit Margin: This is excellent. Any product hitting near 40% or above is a real winner in terms of profitability. It suggests you have strong pricing power (your price is significantly above your costs). With margins like these, you’ll have more flexibility to invest in marketing, endure price wars, or enjoy a good profit from each sale. Many successful private label sellers aim for margins in this range. In our earlier example, we had about 46.8%, which is the kind of result we want to aim for. High margins like this might be achieved through highly efficient sourcing, a high-perceived-value product that commands a premium price, or by finding a niche with less competition.
  • Above 50% Margin: While not very common in physical products, it’s not impossible. Some sellers do achieve 50-60% margins by sourcing very inexpensively and branding/positioning the product at a much higher price. If you find yourself in this territory, that’s fantastic. Just double-check that you included all costs, because margins this high can sometimes indicate an oversight in your calculations. If everything is accounted for, you might have a uniquely profitable opportunity on your hands.
In summary, we recommend aiming for at least a one-third (33%) margin or higher. The higher, the better, as long as your price remains realistic for the market. High profit margins give you room to maneuver and scale. Low margins trap you in a cycle where you’re constantly pouring revenue back into expenses.
If your calculated margin is coming out too low, don’t be afraid to go back and adjust your strategy:
  • Can you negotiate a better price from the supplier, or find a slightly cheaper manufacturer? Even a $0.50 or $1 reduction per unit might bump your margin by a few percentage points.
  • Can you bundle an item or add a feature to justify a higher sale price? Sometimes, adding perceived value lets you charge more without significantly increasing costs.
  • Are there any costs you overestimated? (Be careful here – it’s better to overestimate than underestimate. Only adjust if you genuinely think you were too conservative.)
  • If the numbers still don’t work, you might decide to pass on this product idea. It’s tough, but better to find out now than after investing thousands in inventory. It’s not uncommon to research multiple products and proceed only with those that meet your profit criteria.

Double-Check with a Profit Calculator Tool

As you pull all these numbers together, consider using a profit calculator (such as a spreadsheet or SellerSprite’s Profitability Calculator) to enter all the variables. These tools often have fields for price, costs, fees, etc., and can automatically compute your profit per unit and margin. They sometimes even let you play with “what-if” scenarios easily. For example, SellerSprite’s calculator enables you to enter your product cost and shipping, and it auto-fetches Amazon fees if you provide a reference ASIN or category, giving you a quick snapshot of profitability. Utilizing such a tool can save time and reduce human error in your calculations.

Think Long-Term: Beyond Just One Unit

We’ve focused on per-unit profit, which is crucial. Keep in mind there’s also the concept of overall profit and cash flow as you run your business. A product with a healthy per-unit margin will generate more total cash as you sell through your inventory. That cash can then be reinvested in reorders (to keep your business in stock and growing), launching new products, marketing, or even paying yourself.
By ensuring, from the start, that each sale delivers a solid profit, you set your business up for a virtuous cycle of growth. In contrast, a product with slim margins might gross a lot in sales but net very little – all the money goes back out to expenses, leaving you with almost nothing to show for your efforts.
So, do the diligent work now: run the numbers, and don’t be afraid of what they tell you. If the result is good, you gain confidence to move forward aggressively. If the result is poor, you’ve gained valuable insight and can iterate on your idea or choose a new direction before risking time and capital.

Motivational Insight: Profits = Freedom and Growth

Knowing your profit margins isn’t just an academic exercise – it’s empowering. When you have a product that yields, say, 40% profit, you know that for every $1000 in sales, about $400 is actual profit. You can decide how to use that: maybe $200 goes into ordering more stock to grow, $100 into more ads to accelerate sales, and $100 you keep as your earnings. With a low-margin product, you might find that after reordering inventory and paying expenses, there’s nothing left for you or to invest in growth. That’s a frustrating place to be.
By insisting on healthy margins from the outset, you ensure your business not only generates revenue but also delivers real returns for you as the owner. This is how your Amazon venture can become financially rewarding and sustainable in the long run.

 

Chapter Summary

In this chapter, we covered two critical preparatory steps for Amazon FBA success: finding quality suppliers (specifically in the U.S.) and crunching the numbers to ensure profitability.
For sourcing American suppliers, the key takeaway is that Google is a potent tool when used with targeted search queries. Instead of relying solely on directories like Thomasnet, you can find hidden manufacturers by searching your product keywords alongside terms like “manufacturer,” “contact us,” “lead time,” etc. This approach, combined with proactive outreach (especially phone calls), will help you build a list of reliable U.S. suppliers for your product.
For profitability, the message is simple but vital: never place a production order without knowing your profit margin on each unit. We broke down how to calculate all the relevant costs – from production and shipping to Amazon fees and advertising – and how to set a price that positions your product well in the market yet leaves you with a healthy profit. Aim high in your profit margins, and don’t settle for a product that will leave you working hard for minimal gains. By doing the math upfront, you can move forward with confidence or pivot if the numbers don’t look good.
Equipped with these strategies, you are now more prepared to make wise decisions in your Amazon FBA journey. You know how to find the right partners to make your product, and you know how to ensure that the product will actually make money. Many sellers skip these fundamentals – but you won’t. By laying this groundwork, you’re building a stronger foundation for a successful, profitable Amazon business. Keep up the momentum, and let’s carry this careful planning and strategic thinking forward as you proceed to the next steps of launching your product!
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