Hi Skitunes,
Thanks for joining the forums and welcome 
It can be a hard process to get started in this sort of area (reselling) as most often what suppliers are interested in is volume of sales – this is what will attract the attention and also the bulk discounts.
Given the competition in ecommerce and easy of entry into the market, the broader question might be establishing a specialist offering – i.e. a reason why people would buy from your store v others. Competing solely on price is hard for small players.
A good place to experiment with ecommerce sourcing/selling could be on existing bigger marketplaces such as eBay, etsy, Amazon etc where you can set up a store.
Otherwise I think what you are doing reaching out to brands, doing research and also asking questions of others with a similar model is a great idea, there are no shortcuts I’m aware of! Others may jump in with other suggestions based on their experience.
All the best and thanks for posting.
Peter
