Where is the query itself? I would be interested in seeing that bit of the code, so as to understand why a simple ORDER BY clause in your query didn't work...
But, you should be able to use the [man]sort/man function here... (Note... Be consistent with your <?php ?> tags. You had one using long tags and one using short tags...
<td align="left"><strong>Supplier</strong></td>
<td><select name="cardbox[supplier_id]">
<option value='0'>--</option>
<?php
sort($product_supplier_lookup);
reset($product_supplier_lookup);
foreach($product_supplier_lookup as $k=>$v) {
?>
<option value="<?php echo $k?>"><?php echo htmlentities($v['supplier_name']); ?></option>
<?php
}
?>
</select></td>
If this doesn't work, post the code you use to create the array to begin with. (including the MySQL Query).