You found a wholesale supplier with brand-name inventory at prices that finally make the math work. Before you wire a dollar, run this checklist. It is built from the questions real buyers ask us every week – and from the scams they tell us about.
The 12 red flags
1. No verifiable business entity
Every legitimate US distributor is registered somewhere. Ask for the legal entity name and look it up on the state registry (in Florida, that is Sunbiz). No registration, no wire.
2. Prices far below true wholesale
If a pallet of name-brand goods is priced at 20 cents on the dollar, you are usually looking at counterfeits, stolen goods, or a supplier who will simply not ship. Real secondary-market discounts exist – but they are rarely that deep.
3. “Authorized distributor” claims with no paperwork
Anyone can type the word authorized. Ask what documentation comes with the sale. An honest secondary-market supplier will tell you plainly that they are NOT an authorized reseller and that their own invoice is what you get – that honesty is a green flag, not a red one.
4. No invoice, or a borrowed one
Some sellers offer “the manufacturer invoice” from someone else up the chain. Amazon rejects those, and so should you. The invoice must come from the company that actually sold you the goods.
5. Wire-only, gift cards, or crypto
Wire transfer is normal in wholesale – but it should not be the ONLY option, and the account name should match the business entity you verified in step 1.
6. No physical address or warehouse
A real distributor can tell you where the office is and where the freight ships from. Ask for a live video walk-through of the warehouse if you are placing a large first order.
7. Stock photos instead of real inventory
Reverse-image-search the product photos. If they came from a manufacturer press kit or another website, ask for photos with today’s date on a piece of paper in the frame.
8. Artificial urgency
“Pallet closes tonight” is a pressure tactic. Real inventory moves fast, but a supplier who will not give you 24 hours to verify them does not want to be verified.
9. A brand-new website
Check the domain age. A “10-year-old distributor” on a 3-month-old domain has some explaining to do.
10. No reachable references
Ask for two active buyers you can contact. Busy suppliers have happy customers; scammers have excuses.
11. They dodge live contact
If every conversation stays in WhatsApp text and they refuse a phone or video call, walk away.
12. Inventory lists that never change – or change too much
A static price list recycled for months, or wildly different catalogs sent to different buyers, both point to a middleman with no actual stock.
How we answer these questions ourselves
We think every supplier should answer their own checklist. Groovin Fulfillment LLC is a registered Florida company (Sunbiz document L23000028275). We are a secondary-market distributor – not an authorized reseller – and every sale ships with our own invoice that states exactly that. Letters of authorization exist only on select advertised deals, typically over $100k. And nobody, including us, can guarantee any Amazon outcome. You can verify all of this on our How to Verify Us page.
Ready to source branded inventory?
$3,000 per SKU minimums, our own invoice with every sale, FBA prep from $0.60/unit.