DropShipping

This is a great way to enter the brave new world of ecommerce , as dropshippers are suppliers who will ship directly to your customers .

A big advantage of dropshippers over wholesalers is they can process individual orders and by posting and packaging direct to your customer they also save you on the p+p costs. The downside is they are comparitively quite expensive and the range of goods is limited (and also the brands and quality on offer are inferior to the biggest wholesalers).

Starting an eshop is no easy matter , it takes marketing / web skills , dedication and a lot of patience , not to mention considerable luck. which is why many web startups will sadly fail. Perhaps the easier route to making cash from web sales is to affiliate to the bigger brands (and earn by advertising their products) , the advantage is you do not have to handle transactions and do not have any stock to worry about . If you already have a bricks and mortar shop then a traditional wholesaler / supplier would usually be the route as you are already meeting the minimum volumes , and probably have trade discounts set up . A pure ecommerce startup might well mean dropshipping is a good idea as you can atleast dip your toe as the startup costs (no stock to buy etc.) can be really minimal . You can slowly build up your site , without the burden of major upfront payments, you could start today for just a few pounds (without having to visit your bank manager) , compare that to other businesses that cost many thousands before you even start , then you can see why the proposition is so tempting.

Which dropshipper ? Your choice here is essential , look at the quality pricing and service , and try to find out if they are well established and trustworthy, or a fly by night site to avoid (you don't want a site which you cannot rely on to deliver or even worse is fraudulent!) . Our favourite at the moment is ATS Distribution (we use them on our ad9.co.uk store ) they offer seamless payment for goods via paypal (or credit card) , and the account interface for ordering is better than average. With over 3500 diverse items to promote you may be able to use them solely without recourse to other suppliers...., there are undoubtedly others maybe even better (let us know if you have experiance of doing business with any as we would like to feature them on this page). Another good wholesaler (we think) , who dropship a limited range of their products , is 123Wholesale , formerly Videotechuk shame they don't dropship more of their products perhaps worth keeping an eye on this one.

Update 8.12.07 SOME BIG PROBLEMS Following several months of trialling various dropshippers , we now have learnt a bit more about the industry , not immediately obvious , but soon becomes an issue , if you are thinking of using a dropshipper(s) we publish this , and hopefully save you some hassle :

1. Product Updates - If running a dropshipping site this is of PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE - and unfortunately all except one dropshipper that we have found simply lack in providing updated stock information , which means we have had to let some customers down as the item they have ordered has not be in stock . This happens all too frequently as a lot of traffic comes from customers searching say google for their favourite product (which has countless retailers all using the same dropshipper - say you are not ranked on the first page - highly likely - the customer is more likely to reach your listing , as they may go through all the listings above yours looking desperately for that item to be in stock - unfortunately all those shops have no way of telling it has been discontinued until they come to order from the wholesaler) .

2. Dropshipper Stock Levels - We were surprised at just how few items were held by some dropshippers , and unfortunately few publish the stock levels ! Invariably this leads to refunds or partial refunds and customer dissatisfaction

Our Solution To The Above Problems

As we cannot guarantee stock , we no longer accept instant payments for these dropshippers - how can we? obviously our sales have dropped to near zero .

We have HOWEVER found a good dropshipper called Puckator which does offer live stocks level information , and - even better - products can be updated by their web service feed - so unlike all the other dropshippers we have an automated product updates

Staying In Touch

join our forums , we are happy to help and advise , and welcome your input!