The key is to stop looking for "dropshippers" and, instead, contact the actual brands you want to carry and see if they will ship directly to your customers for you. If they won't, find out from them who their major distributors are and contact them to see if they will dropship.

Also, don't take the lame way out and send an email. Those get largely ignored. Pick up the phone and speak to a human being, establish some rapport and get them to want to help you, help them.

Those knock-offs actually do sell in their own right FYI!

You're just looking in the wrong place, instead of looking thru Aliexpress, google the brand name + supplier and see what pops up!

Also if you're so interested in selling branded kitchenware items, i'm guessing you know how to market them successfully?

Let's hear from you about that?

There are other searches you can do to find potential suppliers. Search for a product name along with the words "dealer login" or "become a dealer".

Another way to find suppliers that few people have considered is finding convention websites. Practically every product niche has some sort of convention somewhere at least once a year. Those conventions almost always have a website and list the manufacturers/brands who will be showcased during the convention and quite often, links to the sales contact at those organizations. Find the convention website(s) and there is a whole lot of "gold" there. You'll likely discover products and brands that you never knew existed.

Calling the brand(s) directly, though, is usually the fastest way, assuming you know all of the brands to contact.

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