For all the contacts on linkedin sales navigator and the world wide web, for the real MSME world works, the required information, contacts, business names are not online.
This is the conclusion of the various aspects of sourcing I have had to do in the last 10 years of sourcing for custom made menswear.
From fabric swatches, workshops, tailors to tailoring materials to pattu vendors to embroidery workers. There are only 4 ways to gain sources:
1. Experienced people connecting you to known parties
2. Doing the hard physical search (searching a pin in a haystack)
3. The party comes to you for business due to reference / online presence
4. Creating chance coincidence at exhibitions (much like asking a stranger girl out once you spot one - the unsolicitated direct approach. One needs gonads of steel for this!)
Reality of the sourcing does not lie in the digital realm as these are all uneducated people who are not going to list on google or have a linkedin account. Even if they are educated, most have done the hard work and have decent business and do not have the patience to put in the efforts for the results.
Even if some of them do, there are innummerible number of qualities which are not certified by anyone and difficult to decifer.
Then, there are minimum order quantities and chance to give continuous business to the party while not reducing the existing parties' orders.
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