New API from Kole Imports for Wholesalers
Wholesalers have a new tool at their disposal and it comes from Kole Imports, a leading importing and wholesale company offering discount goods, most notably in the dollar-store business. The Kole Imports API can now be used - free of charge - to sell goods with real-time data.
In the coming weeks and months the API will be used to pull an individual product at a time, to supply shipment notifications and accept orders, as well as supply product feeds to facilitate Kole's drop ship program, as it does currently. Kole's business is based in bulk, but merchants and website owners can buy and sell in as little volume as 24 pieces at a time. Goods offered from Kole vary - from apparel and auto accessories to stationary and sporting goods. The advantage for merchants using the API is tapping into real-time data of thousands of items, all housed in and shipped from Kole's 250,000 square-foot warehouse. A merchant could, for example, sell thousands of items (on their own website or even on eBay or Amazon) and collect payment without ever handling the items or incurring any upfront costs, including shipping.
"It's really the next wave of importing," says Jason Kole, VP of business development, Kole Imports. "The opportunities for light importers - people who may buy one or two containers per year - it's getting much harder for them. The costs keep going up on merchandise, the warehousing costs are more expensive than they used to be. [The API] enables people to sell wholesale quantities and offer them without having to pay all of those costs. It's a huge step forward for the industry to have all of this available for someone to use at their fingertips. And it's free.
"Anyone can access it. It's very easy to use. We have a full customer service team, and anyone can begin selling right away. Our model is to make it available to as many people as possible and to not place any barriers to entry on it."
Register for the API here, and the API documentation can be found here.
Also according to Kole, Web developers can contact Kole Imports to find freelance projects from merchants who need help setting up their online stores, at support@KoleImports.com.
