The FMCG sourcing problem today
If you buy FMCG wholesale across borders, most of your day looks like this:
Spreadsheets that never match
Quotes from ten suppliers, each in a different Incoterm, currency, and pack size.
WhatsApp and email chase
Half your sourcing pipeline lives in chat threads with suppliers who reply when they feel like it.
Hidden freight eating margin
A €3.20 EXW offer from Spain looks great until HGV freight to Rotterdam makes the €3.45 German offer cheaper.
Scam risk on open directories
Europages and Alibaba deliver leads, but you still have to verify every supplier — VAT, registration, trade history.
MOQ mismatch
Your buyer wants 30 pallets. Suppliers want 20, 40, or a full truck. Hours lost stitching multi-supplier deals.
Geo-fragmented directories
One covers Germany, one Poland, one the UK. None let you compare Warsaw vs Hamburg vs Barcelona on true delivered cost.
Directories give you names. Boutique platforms (Faire, Ankorstore) give you retail brands you cannot move in volume. Alibaba gives you Asia when you need Europe. None answer the one question a wholesaler actually has: which active offer lands the cheapest on my dock this month?
What you get on First FMCG
First FMCG is a vertical FMCG marketplace built around that exact question. Here is what changes the day you register.
What does First FMCG do for wholesale buyers?
First FMCG is an AI-powered B2B wholesale marketplace for FMCG. You describe what you need — product, quantity, destination — in plain language. The platform scans every active supplier offer, adds road or sea freight to the unit price, and ranks results by total landed cost. Deal-identifying details stay private until both sides confirm interest. 0% platform commission, across EUR, GBP, and USD.
Concretely:
AI-ranked offers by total landed cost
Not unit price, not paid placement, not alphabetical. The cheapest real deal for your route and volume floats to the top.
Built-in road + sea freight calculator
HGV routing for road, container rates for sea. Freight is folded into the ranking — not a separate step.
Privacy-first trading
Supplier identity, exact price, and buyer context stay hidden until both sides accept mutual interest. Competitors cannot scrape what you are sourcing.
Structured enquiries with context prefilled
Every request carries product, quantity, Incoterm, destination, and your registered company context.
Multi-offer cart
Combine items from different offers of the same supplier into one request. Fill a truck with the exact mix you need.
0% platform commission
No cut on deal value — permanent, across every plan (Basic, Pro, VIP). Future on-platform payments are expected to be processed by a third-party provider such as Stripe at their standard rates.
Multi-currency — EUR, GBP, USD
Suppliers quote in their currency; you see costs in yours.
Registered suppliers only
Every listing is tied to a registered business — not an open directory anyone can post to. Cuts the scam-risk floor vs generic B2B directories.
Use cases by buyer type
First FMCG is built for buyers whose economics run on pallets and landed cost, not on retail markup. Four patterns show up most.
International FMCG wholesaler
- Pain:
- 20–200 pallets a month across 3–5 EU countries. Every deal needs landed-cost math in a spreadsheet.
- First FMCG angle:
- AI ranks every active offer by delivered cost. A full day of quote collection collapses into one search.
- Example:
- 30 pallets of Red Bull 250 ml to Hamburg. Ranked offers come back in seconds with road freight already added.
Parallel-trade / grey-market operator
- Pain:
- Your edge is the route. Exposing your sourcing pattern on an open directory burns that edge in a week.
- First FMCG angle:
- Privacy-first by default. Supplier identity and exact terms stay hidden until mutual interest.
- Example:
- Confectionery from Poland to the UK — browse anonymously, enquire only when an offer fits, reveal identity only to the accepting supplier.
HoReCa procurement
- Pain:
- You buy for a hotel group or restaurant chain. Incumbents are fine, but you have no visibility into whether you are overpaying.
- First FMCG angle:
- Run the same query against a live cross-border supplier base. Multi-offer cart consolidates a truck across SKUs.
- Example:
- A mixed pallet of soft drinks + snacks for a Warsaw hotel — build the cart across categories, one supplier fulfils the whole order.
Private-label sourcing team
- Pain:
- You need comparable quotes from multiple manufacturers — fast. Directories are cluttered with resellers.
- First FMCG angle:
- Structured enquiries go straight to manufacturers who uploaded a pricelist. Apples-to-apples quotes in the same format.
- Example:
- Private-label household cleaner from EU manufacturers — one AI search, ranked candidates, structured enquiries compared side-by-side.
Who First FMCG is NOT for
We are a vertical platform, and we tell buyers the truth about our lane.
Boutique, lifestyle, or independent retail. Gift shops, fashion boutiques, small specialty retailers buying single cases — Faire or Ankorstore fit better.
Bulk manufacturing from Asia. 40-foot containers manufactured in Shenzhen — Alibaba is still the right tool.
Food-service equipment, packaging, raw ingredients. We are finished-goods FMCG only: confectionery, beverages, snacks, personal care, household, baby care.
Retail end-consumers. B2B only. Buyers register with a company and VAT.
How you buy in 4 steps
How do buyers purchase on First FMCG?
Buyers describe what they need in plain language, the AI ranks every active offer by total landed cost, and the buyer sends a structured purchase request. Supplier identity and exact terms unlock only after the supplier accepts. From search to offer-in-hand is minutes, not days.
You register free, run an AI search in plain language, compare ranked offers with freight already priced in, and send a structured enquiry to the supplier whose deal wins. Exact mechanics — what the AI parses, how the calculator routes freight, what happens after an enquiry is accepted — are on the how it works page.
Why buyers pick First FMCG over Faire, Ankorstore, and Alibaba
The compact version of where we differ:
Vertical focus
FMCG-only — confectionery, beverages, snacks, personal care, household, baby care. Faire and Ankorstore are boutique/lifestyle first.
Landed cost, not unit price
Our default ranking is total delivered cost. Other marketplaces make you do that math yourself.
Privacy-first by default
Prices and supplier identity stay hidden until both sides accept. Faire, Ankorstore, and Alibaba publish prices openly.
True 0% platform commission
Ankorstore waives platform commission but charges ~3% payment processing. Faire charges 15% on first orders. We take nothing today.
EU-/UK-native, not Asia-default
Product data and freight math are built around European road and short-sea lanes.
Full feature-by-feature matrix is in progress — it will live at /compare with dedicated pages at /vs/faire, /vs/ankorstore, and /vs/alibaba.
Buyer FAQ
How do I find verified FMCG suppliers online?
Use a vertical B2B marketplace where suppliers register as companies and you can evaluate their offers before committing. On First FMCG every supplier is a registered business, every offer is live, and the AI ranks their offers by total landed cost to your destination. You assess the deal first; you meet the supplier only after they accept your enquiry.
How do I compare wholesale supplier offers by total landed cost?
Add road or sea freight from origin to destination on top of unit price, then adjust for MOQ fit. Manually, wholesalers do this in spreadsheets with freight quotes per lane. On First FMCG, landed cost is calculated automatically — the transport calculator is baked into the offer search, so results are ranked by total cost by default, not EXW unit price.
What's the difference between AI sourcing and a traditional wholesale directory?
A directory returns supplier profiles you then contact one by one. AI sourcing returns ranked offers — scored in real time against your specific product, quantity, and destination — with freight priced in. The directory hands you leads; an AI sourcing platform hands you a shortlist of deals.
Can I trust a new B2B marketplace with my sourcing data?
First FMCG is built on a privacy-first model: supplier identity, exact prices, and buyer context stay hidden until both sides confirm mutual interest on a specific deal. Your sourcing pattern is not published and is not used for paid placement. That is the opposite of open directories, where contact data and demand signals are public by default.
What happens if a supplier ghosts me after accepting?
Every enquiry on First FMCG opens a structured message thread with the supplier's registered company context attached. If a supplier stops responding after accepting, you have a full record and can flag the behaviour, reopen the search, and use the multi-offer cart to route the volume to the next-best ranked supplier. Every deal runs through the platform.
How long does it take to get an offer on First FMCG?
From query to ranked offer list: seconds. From sending a structured enquiry to a supplier response: usually hours, not days, because the supplier sees a fully specified request (product, quantity, Incoterm, destination, registered buyer) and can accept or decline with one click.
What fees will I pay?
0% platform commission on every transaction, always. The Basic plan is free forever and lets you search, browse offers, send structured enquiries, and message suppliers. When payments ship, transactions will be processed by a third-party provider such as Stripe at their standard rates — First FMCG itself will not take a platform commission on top.
Do I need to commit to a minimum purchase?
No. There is no minimum order across the platform, no subscription, no credit-card requirement to register. Individual offers have their own MOQs set by the supplier; the multi-offer cart lets you combine items from the same supplier to hit their MOQ without overbuying any single SKU.
Start sourcing on First FMCG
Registration takes two minutes. No credit card. Basic plan free forever for search, browsing, enquiries, and messaging. 0% platform commission on every deal.
Already registered? Sign in. Want the detailed walkthrough first? Read how First FMCG works.