Worldwide Brands

Worldwide Brands, Inc.

Industry	Internet eCommerce
Founded	1999
Founder	Chris Malta
Headquarters	in Maitland, Florida, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jim Ritzel (COO)
Products	The Product Sourcing Database & Membership The Whole $ale Education
Number of employees	20+ (2008)
Website	www.WorldwideBrands.com

Worldwide Brands is a company that was founded by Chris Malta in 1999. It is a product sourcing research company whose primary function is to locate and qualify factory-authorized wholesale suppliers and wholesale manufacturers that are willing to sell to home businesses and Internet retailers. Worldwide Brands publishes the results of its findings in an online wholesale directory. They also publish educational materials that teach sourcing wholesale products to sell online. Its headquarters are in Maitland, Florida.^[1]

History and origin

Before establishing Worldwide Brands, Chris Malta spent many years as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, designing and building corporate and ecommerce server platforms and managing major installations for Fortune 100 businesses. In 2003, he was a founding partner of a wholesale company in New York that distributed darts and dartboard products. To date, he has been engaged in wholesale, retail, and entrepreneurial endeavors for more than thirty years, and currently serves as the CEO of Worldwide Brands, Inc. Malta is the author of numerous books on online retail and product sourcing,^[2] and the co-author of What to Sell On eBay and Where to Get It with Lisa Suttora, founder of Blue Island Marketing Group. From January 2005 to June 2007, he co-hosted The Entrepreneur Magazine eBiz Show and The Entrepreneur Magazine Product Sourcing show with his business partner Robin Cowie. Additionally, he has served as the product sourcing editor for eBay Radio since 2006.

In 1998, Malta started an ecommerce website but struggled to find product suppliers. After being scammed by numerous Internet middlemen, his frustration led him to develop, through trial-and-error, a thorough research process for finding and verifying genuine wholesale suppliers who would allow their products to be sold on the Internet. Upon publishing a short article^[3] series^[3] in Web Pro News about his product sourcing experiences and challenges, he received a tremendous amount of feedback from other frustrated online retailers. To meet this market demand, Malta established The Drop Ship Source Directory, which he renamed Worldwide Brands and incorporated in January 2001.^[4]

Light Bulk Wholesale

Malta discovered that using dropshippers allowed many new online retailers to start their ecommerce businesses with very little investment costs. But when they wanted to move into buying volume wholesale to increase their profits, the vast majority of wholesale suppliers required cost-prohibitive minimum orders. Malta began approaching many suppliers to request that they not only allow retailers to offer their products online, but that they also allow those online retailers to buy in small, affordable volumes of $500 or under. This type of small minimum order would allow online retailers an easy transition from using only drop shipping to buying volume wholesale. Malta coined the term 'light bulk wholesale' to describe this kind of low-minimum wholesale buying. Wholesalers who agreed to his request, he referred to as 'light bulk wholesalers'.

Research Process

To conduct its supplier research, Worldwide Brands chooses new product markets to research and then buys specialized raw contact lists of manufacturers and wholesalers from large lead generation companies like Dun & Bradstreet and InfoUSA. They also attend wholesale trade shows across the United States and internationally. Company representatives gather thousands of supplier leads at trade shows in New York, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

After gathering raw data, the researchers contact every supplier lead and ask a series of questions to determine whether a supplier will be a good fit for the directory. If initial approval is given, the supplier will fill out an extensive questionnaire and answer a secondary set of questions. The researchers will verify the company's background and answers. If final approval is given, the supplier must sign an agreement guaranteeing compliance with all of Worldwide Brands' qualification standards. At this point in the process, the supplier will be added to the online directory.

Products

Founded as a supplier research company, Worldwide Brands' first product was 'The Drop Ship Source Directory', which listed wholesale suppliers willing to drop ship for home business and Internet merchants. In early 2004, it released a second product: 'The Light Bulk Directory' which listed wholesale suppliers willing to sell to Internet retailers in light bulk quantities. It worked with the eBay developers program to build its third product, 'The Market Research Wizard', in late 2004. This software application employed a proprietary algorithm to analyze Internet product market data in real time.

On January 1, 2007, the company combined 'The Drop Ship Source Directory', 'The Light Bulk Directory', and 'The Market Research Wizard' into one inclusive product, which it temporarily marketed as 'OneSource'. The product content was expanded to include volume wholesalers, as well as liquidation and import lots. Market confusion surrounding the company OneSource, a division of infoGROUP, and the name of the new product led Worldwide Brands to remove the label 'OneSource' from all branding associated with its product in 2008 and to reposition the product as a 'Worldwide Brands Membership'.

In 2008, Worldwide Brands launched a supplementary product, which it labeled 'Worldwide Brands' The Whole Sale'. This product is Internet-based and consists primarily of extensive educational content on the subject of ecommerce product sourcing for home business and includes permanent admittance to an online community of home business and ecommerce sellers.

The company's target market consists of small to medium sized retailers, home businesses, and online merchants who sell on popular ecommerce platforms like Yahoo!, eBay, and Amazon, as well as on independent ecommerce websites.

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