Product Research for E-Commerce: How to Compare Suppliers with AI

Whether you're dropshipping, doing retail arbitrage, or sourcing for your own brand — the bottleneck is always the same: finding the right product at the right price from the right supplier. Here's how to use AI to cut your research time from days to hours.

The sourcing problem

You find a product trending on TikTok. Now you need to answer:

• Where can I source this? AliExpress? 1688? Direct from manufacturer?
• What's the landed cost? (product + shipping + customs + platform fees)
• What's the retail price on Amazon/Shopify? What margin am I looking at?
• Are there 5 sellers offering the same product at different prices?
• Is this product even legal to sell in my market?
• What's the competition doing? At what price point?

You end up with 30 browser tabs, a spreadsheet that falls apart every time you add a column, and a growing sense that you've already spent more time researching than the first batch of sales will ever make back.

The AI-assisted workflow

Here's the workflow with Claude + Grabbit:

Step 1: Find the product

Tell Claude what you're looking for:

Claude searches, finds products, saves each one to your Grabblist with title, price, image, and supplier URL. No tabs, no copy-paste.

Step 2: Organize into a collection

Now you have a clean collection with 5 supplier options, prices visible at a glance, and a budget tracker.

Step 3: Check the competition

Claude saves the Amazon listings. You can now see: AliExpress price ($8-14) vs Amazon retail ($25-45). Your margin potential is visible in one view.

Step 4: Link alternatives

Now your collection shows the relationship between source and retail. When you open either item, you see the linked alternative with your margin notes.

Step 5: Make the decision

Use Grabbit's decision workflow:

• Considering — all 5 suppliers start here
• Shortlisted — narrow down to 2-3 based on price, reviews, shipping
• Decided — your pick
• Bought — order placed, track it

What makes this better than a spreadsheet

Visual product cards vs cells

Each supplier is a card with the product image, title, price, and your notes. Not a row in a spreadsheet where column G is "supplier URL" and you forgot what column J means.

AI does the searching

Instead of manually opening AliExpress, searching, clicking through 10 listings, copying URLs into a spreadsheet — you tell Claude what you want and it does the legwork. You review the results.

Cross-platform comparison

Save products from AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, 1688, Shopify stores, Etsy — all in the same collection. Grabbit doesn't care where the URL is from. Use the Compare Prices button to check Google Shopping, or Find Similar for visual search across the web.

Persistent and shareable

Your research doesn't disappear when you close the browser. Share a collection link with your business partner — they see the same cards, prices, and notes. No spreadsheet access permissions needed.

Pro tips for e-commerce research

• One collection per product category — "Kitchen Gadgets", "Pet Accessories", "Phone Cases". Don't mix everything in one giant list.
• Set budgets per collection — track how much you're committing to each product line before ordering.
• Use notes for margin calculations — "Source $8 + shipping $3 + platform fee 15% = landed $12.65. Retail $34 = 62% margin."
• Link supplier and retail listings — when the retail price changes, you can quickly check if your margin still works.
• Save the rejects too — mark them as "rejected" with a note why. Saves you from re-researching the same supplier next month.

Works for more than dropshipping

The same workflow applies to:

• Private label sourcing — compare manufacturers, track samples, organize by MOQ
• Retail arbitrage — find price gaps between clearance stores and Amazon
• Wholesale buying — compare bulk pricing across distributors
• Equipment purchasing — any business buying gear, supplies, or inventory online

FAQ