Shopify Product Sourcing Specialists

Ask for a product like yours, taken all the way to production. Sourcing knowledge is category-specific. Someone who has run apparel sampling may not know the testing and certification questions that come with children’s products or electronics, so ask for a comparable product they took from first sample to first order, and what went wrong on the way.

Find out who will be at the factory. The first 100 sourcing listings on shopexperts lean towards agencies in North America and the UK: 93 are agencies, with 53 based in the US, 13 in the UK and 10 in Canada (September 2026). If you need samples collected, production visited or goods inspected in person, ask whether they have their own people in the producing country or subcontract that part.

Ask to see a specification sheet. A written spec covering materials, dimensions, tolerances, colours, packaging and labelling is what you hold a factory to. Ask for one from a past project with the client’s details removed; if they work from photos and chat messages, any dispute comes down to memory.

Agree who owns the supplier relationship. You should know the factory’s name, have purchase orders in your company’s name, and be able to reorder directly if you part ways with the agent. Raise it in the first conversation, not after the first order.

Deal-breakers. An agent who won’t name the factory until you’ve paid. Sampling that starts before anything is written down. No pre-shipment inspection in the plan, or an inspection carried out by the factory itself. A quote that never says how the agent is paid.

Work backwards from the retail price. Set the price you’ll sell at and the margin you need, and the target landed cost is what’s left. Landed cost counts everything it takes to sell and deliver one unit: unit cost, packaging, freight, duties, 3PL fees, an allowance for returns, and Shopify and payment fees. Brands that start from a factory quote and add a markup discover their real margin after launch.

Specs and samples come next. Write the specification before requesting samples, and expect more than one round before sign-off.

Weigh minimum order quantities against cash. A lower unit price at a higher minimum only saves money if the stock sells through before that cash is needed elsewhere. A good product development consultant models a few order sizes against your sales rate instead of chasing the lowest unit cost.

Inspect before it ships. A pre-shipment check against the written spec costs far less than finding a fault once the stock is in your warehouse and orders are live.

Know which specialist you’ve hired, and how they’re paid. A product development consultant shapes the product: spec, materials, costings and the sampling plan. A sourcing agent works the supply side: finding and vetting factories, negotiating, following production and arranging inspections.

Agents are paid by commission on orders, by a fixed fee, or through a margin built into the unit price they quote. The third model hides the factory’s real price, so you can’t compare it with other quotes or see what the agent’s work costs you. Ask which model applies before comparing any quotes.

Sourcing help is priced in three different ways, so quotes that look far apart may be for different work; the tiles show a typical range for each.

The work splits into stages, and you can hire for one of them or all: