Drop Shipping Supplier

Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment process in which an online store sells products that it does not stock itself. In other words, the store can sell as many different products as it desires without actually having to pre-purchase or stock them.

When a customer purchases an item listed on the online store, the store places an order for the item with a third-party (known as a dropshipper or wholesaler), which then ships the product directly to the customer.

Among the obvious benefits of fulfilling retail orders in this manner, the store:

• Does not need to buy products up front;
• Does not need to warehouse products;
• Does not need to rent an office space;
• Does not need to employ people to manage and ship the products.

If you own a website, an online store, or an eBay or Amazon seller account, and are looking to use dropshipping to sell your products, then you may need to engage a dropship service provider to keep tabs on the inventory aspects of your store, while you focus your attention on marketing your website or ecommerce business. Here are some tips on how to select a dropshipping service.

Profit Margins

When you select a wholesaler or dropshipper for your online store, first thing you may want to ensure is enough profit margins. If supplier is providing product at nearly retail rate, it could be difficult for seller to sell them in tough online competition. Although many branded products may not be offered at more than 10-20% profit margin, certain non-branded products are often offered at upto 50-70% less price than retail price and that can really help seller to sell products even at discount rate to stay in competition.

Large Collection of Products

Dropship service providers maintain a directory of products and suppliers that their members can access and do business with. While some dropship services offer free access to their product and supplier directory, others may require members to sign up for a basic plan. Free access (or a trial period) can help you see and analyze if the products in their directory will fit with your business strategy. More importantly, the larger the collection of products, the more the number of options available to you. That way you can either choose to sell larger volumes of mainstream products, or select a few niche products and net in a sizeable profit.

Authentic Wholesalers

Free access to a dropship directory can also help you check out their list of suppliers. Though most dropship service providers state that they carry only verified dropshippers, it is in your own interest to verify if they are truly authentic, official or authorized distributors of the brands they're dealing with. This will not only ensure that your customers aren't treated unfairly, but it will also help you make healthier profits than if you were to deal with middle or lower-tier wholesalers. Moreover, poor feedback from customers about fake, low-quality or badly-packaged products can significantly impact your business.

Inventory Management Tools

Managing inventory at your online store can turn out to be a very cumbersome and time consuming process. At the same time, it’s important to know if an item is low on inventory or if a new product or supplier is available that may help you grow your business exponentially. If you have a fairly large store with a number of different products and suppliers, it may be helpful to be alerted about these events beforehand. Many dropship services offer automatic low-inventory alerts that let you know if a product is running low on inventory. This allows you to remove these items from your store, so your customers don’t order an out-of-stock item. Automatic product updates, too, alert you to possible business opportunities.

Shipping Time and Policies

Managing dropship services takes forever to ship a single product. Shipping time often confuse customers. If they get product faster then they're more likely to come back. Sometime several dropshippers may not just respect standard shipping policies and may take more time than they have provided. Since dropshipping is all about connecting sellers, shippers and buyers uncertainties in shipments may end up with angry customers or refunds. So it is always wise to work with dropshippers who always have items in stock and ready to ship on time.

For big-ticket items like furniture or LED tvs buyers often expect them to be delivered in home at exact place. Some dropshipping services offers additional services so that it can be a hassle free experience for customers. When you choose a supplier, you should also check with them if they provide such an additional service.

Integration with Third-Party Applications

Product information, such as product name, id, description, quantity in stock, images etc., can be very difficult to export manually. To help save time, many dropshipping service providers offer "push to" tools to export product data to an eBay or Amazon account, or even to your own website. While these services can be very useful, it's important to check if the format of the data provided is compatible with the platform you're using. Most dropship services are well integrated with third-party applications and shopping cart like Magento, Shopify, pinnaclecart, Bigcommerce etc.

Conclusion

Dropship service providers can save you a great deal of time and effort in managing your online store. Before you select yourself over-the-top tools and features, it's important to consider your real needs. This may depend almost entirely on your business outlook, or even the type of products you're looking to deal with. Regardless of the dropshipping service you select, it's important to remember that what really matters is your customer, and whether he or she is satisfied with the service you provide them.