Regardless if you’re selling cakes or an adventure to space, every business must have an established supply chain that provides them with the materials they need to create their products and services.

Sometimes this can be a relatively small and flexible supply chain thanks to the common materials they use, but at other times, you may need to work with some very niche and specialised businesses in order to maintain the quality of the product you’re offering.

So to help make sourcing your specialist supplies easier, we’ve put together a couple of tips that will help in various different aspects of your business.

Make sure you look for alternatives

First, we’d always recommend that you don’t stick to just a single supplier or type of good if possible. Alternatives are fantastic because they allow you to be more flexible with your products.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work for products that would be drastically different when you change the formula. For instance, your famous cakes might taste completely different if you use fruits from a different farm, but if there’s not much of a difference then you may have a list of alternate suppliers you can contact should your primary one be facing issues.

Similarly, replacing the type of fruit entirely could lead to drastically different products, but it could actually help you discover brand-new products and services that might be popular. 

Look to industry leaders

Building long-lasting relationships with specialist suppliers can be a fantastic way to save money and ensure that your business is always well-stocked on different types of specialist products.

For example, if your business needs lots of different rubber o-rings during the manufacturing process, then you need to work with a reputable company that uses high-quality materials in order for the product to be more reliable.

This is where you’d typically look at industry leaders that have proven themselves time and time again. While it might be a little more expensive, there’s no doubt that the higher-quality product will give you peace of mind. There’s less experimenting involved with lesser-known suppliers and it’s less of a gamble.

Work with smaller companies

However, that’s not to say that we don’t suggest working with smaller companies. Small businesses tend to have more flexibility in the way they do things, and this could provide you with a more bespoke level of service.

This is great for products that might use very delicate, fragile or customizable materials that would have a drastic impact on the end product. For example, smaller coffee producers might open up different flavors and give your café a unique selection of drinks to pick from.

It’s often a good idea to hold on to the relationships you currently have with suppliers, especially if finding a replacement proves to be difficult. We highly suggest that you work on building quality partnerships instead of trying to work on lots of different ones.

While circumstances are unpredictable and your supplier could disappear the next day due to unfortunate circumstances, having mutually beneficial deals with specialist suppliers could make running your business a whole lot easier.