Supplier Hub

LaunchFast's Supplier Hub centralizes your entire supplier sourcing workflow in one organized workspace. Find verified manufacturers, manage relationships through your sourcing pipeline, track sample quality, and keep communication templates ready—eliminating the chaos of scattered spreadsheets and email threads.

Overview

Supplier Hub sources guaranteed and verified suppliers, ensuring you work with high-quality manufacturers. The platform is organized into four focused workspaces that guide you through the complete sourcing journey—from discovery to partnership.

• Discover verified suppliers for your target products with ratings, pricing, and operational history
• Manage supplier relationships through a visual pipeline from initial contact to active partnership
• Track sample requests, quality evaluations, and costs to make informed sourcing decisions
• Organize communication templates so every supplier interaction is professional and complete

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How to Use Supplier Hub

Follow this workflow to find suppliers, manage relationships, and validate product quality:

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Search & Discovery

The Search & Discovery tab is where you find suppliers for products you want to source. Enter a search term that describes your target product—like "yoga mat" or "stainless steel water bottle"—and LaunchFast pulls verified manufacturer data from Alibaba.

Results appear in a comprehensive table showing up to 20 suppliers. Each row includes product images, direct links to supplier pages, company names, price ranges, supplier ratings, review counts, years in operation, and country locations.

You can save all suppliers at once using the "Save All" button, or select individual suppliers using checkboxes. Saved suppliers move directly into your Supplier Manager for relationship tracking. You can also export search results as a CSV file for external analysis or team sharing.

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Supplier Manager

Supplier Manager organizes your saved suppliers into a visual kanban board with five stages that mirror your sourcing workflow:

• Prospects — All saved suppliers start here automatically
• Contacted — Move suppliers here after sending your first message
• Negotiating — Advance suppliers when discussing pricing and terms
• Sampling — Shift suppliers here when you've requested samples
• Partners — Promote suppliers when you're ready to place orders

How it works: Drag suppliers across the board to reflect their current status. Kanban boards are separated by search term—use the dropdown menu at the top to switch between your saved searches. Delete suppliers from the board if they're no longer under consideration.

This visual workflow keeps every supplier relationship visible and actionable, eliminating guesswork about where each supplier stands in your evaluation process.

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Sample Tracker

Sample Tracker helps you log sample requests, monitor shipments, and conduct quality evaluations for data-backed sourcing decisions. Like Supplier Manager, Sample Tracker is filtered by search term—use the dropdown menu to view samples for each product you're sourcing.

Adding Samples

Click "Add Sample" and fill in:

• Supplier (from your saved list)
• Product name
• Sample cost
• Date shipped
• Tracking number (optional)

Samples appear in the Sample Pipeline and automatically start in the Shipped stage.

Sample Stages

Samples move through three stages:

• Shipped — Initial stage when sample is sent
• Received — Move here when the sample arrives
• Passed or Failed — Final stage after evaluation

Evaluating Samples

When your sample arrives, move it to Received, then click "Evaluate" to open the quality assessment form. The form has three sections:

• Quality Assessment — Rate on four criteria using a 1-5 star scale:
  • Build Quality
  • Packaging Quality
  • Design Quality
  • Supplier Communication
• Physical Specifications (optional) — Add item weight, item dimensions, packaging weight, and packaging dimensions
• Notes — Add any comments you want to remember

After completing your evaluation, mark the sample as Passed or Failed based on whether it meets your standards. This moves the sample to its final stage and updates your tracking dashboard.

Key Stats

The dashboard at the top updates automatically as you add and evaluate samples, showing:

• Total samples requested
• Samples in each stage
• Total sample costs
• Average sample quality ratings
• Breakdown of passed, failed, and pending evaluations

These metrics help you identify which suppliers consistently deliver quality and which products are worth pursuing.

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Communication Hub

Communication Hub stores reusable templates for supplier outreach—introduction emails, sample requests, follow-ups, and other common messages.

Creating Templates

Click "New Template" and fill in:

• Category — Choose from introduction, sample request, quality concerns, or other scenarios
• Template Title — Describe the template's purpose
• Template Content — Write your reusable message structure
• Click "Save Template" when finished

Using Templates

Saved templates appear in the Template Library. Click any template to copy its content to your clipboard, then paste it into your email client, messaging app, or supplier contact form. This speeds up communication and ensures consistency across your outreach.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Next Steps

Ready to start sourcing? Here's what to do next: