Drop Shipper the Pros & Cons

Dropship is a highly effective sourcing method for e-commerce retailers, especially those who’re just getting into the business. But like all sourcing methods — dropship, wholesale, direct from manufacturer — it has its own pros and cons. Some are inconsequential, some significant, but they all provide another facet of discussion to the dropship question.

 

Every discussion of dropship’s advantages and corresponding disadvantages has to start with its definition – one can’t evaluate something that isn’t clearly defined in the first place. E-commerce retailers use their own website to sell goods directly to clients, and their dropship suppliers ship these goods directly to your clients’ doorstep. It’s fantastically simple, and particularly attractive for new entrepreneurs and people looking to start a side business in addition to their day job.

 

The advantages are varied, and noteworthy. The one that sets it apart the most from other means of sourcing is its utter lack of overhead costs and infrastructure, as well as retailers being able to source goods with no minimum order. You can run a business selling midrange Victorian furniture from your living room, or your bedroom if you prefer the comfort of a bed over a fluffy armchair.

 

Point being, dropship e-commerce involves no storage or shipping costs – your wholesaler will handle that. Artisan Furniture’s dropship programme is tailor made for independent retailers or people looking to start a furniture business without the massive costs and infrastructural support that implies. This is thus particularly conducive for people who lack the funds needed to set up storage infrastructure but still wish to dropship. Further, the model removes the need for a seller to be proficient in the various aspects of shipping, storage and packaging.

 

You don’t need to form long term contracts with shipping companies, nor spend weeks trying to find an affordable warehouse that’s good for your needs. Packaging is another complex art that takes years of knowledge to refine — you could read pages upon pages on how to use styrofoam and bubble wrap to prevent damage, or how to place goods in boxes in the most efficient way, or indeed how flatpack works.

 

Many dropship companies will even ship across the globe, managing all the rules and regulations that this implies.This is a whole world that you don’t even need to scratch the surface off, beyond testing your dropship supplier’s existing packaging and knowing their damage-in-transit rate.

 

Dropship’s lack of investment and ‘plug and play’ business to consumer (B2C) system is a massive advantage over other sourcing methods. This has a secondary method of saving you time over infrastructure hassles, which can be used in analysing, evaluating and refining your business as well as for research.

 

Time is a limited resource when you run a company; there are so many aspects that need to be looked. Everything from whether the website is running, to answering queries, to marketing and research, to looking at logistics and streamlining them. The latter takes up a huge chunk of time for any e-commerce company, if a good isn’t being shipped in one piece you lose money. But with dropship, this part of the operation is entirely outsourced and you can essentially forger about it — if you have a competent dropshipper who you trust, of course.

 

The extra time this allows can be spent on refining and increasing operations. Analysis of how well your sales are doing and how well particular products are doing is vitally important. So is responding to customer queries and offering post sale support, while finding time to set up ads and manage all the social media accounts. If you’re a new business, you’ll have to manage most of these on your own. The time dropship frees up will be essential in allowing you to do so.

 

The inventory aspect of dropship is also quite important. An e-commerce retailer selling on their own website or an aggregator such as Amazon can sell a wide range of products that would not be remotely possible if they had to source them through wholesale. A large inventory is attractive to customers, and without the hassle of storing and transporting products, you can afford to sell as many – or as few – products as you want.  Dropship lets you curate a massive catalogue of products without having to concern yourself with stock and depreciation. It’s key to developing a wide customer base — something for everyone, or everything for someone if you’re looking to specialise. One piece (with free delivery!) at a time.

 

Indeed, you have complete freedom to test the waters with bold new products. If they don’t sell, well you didn’t lose any money and it was worth a shot. But if they did, you’ll be laughing. And to top it all off, you don’t pay the wholesale until a customer buys a product – it’s risk free, and a win win for all parties. You get away with no infrastructure costs, the wholesaler sells a good, and the customer gets lower prices.

 

Now on to the disadvantages. The obvious one here is that the prices are likely to be higher than pure wholesale, simply because you aren’t ordering a massive volume. As basic economics dictates, higher quantities usually equal lower prices, with the opposite also being true. When you can access furniture — and other goods — with no minimum order, there has to be a tradeoff. It simply isn’t cost efficient for most dropship suppliers or even manufacturers to offer wholesale and dropship customers the same price. The price different may be compensated by the other advantages dropship offers in terms of no overhead fees, but it has to be taken into account.

 

This may lead to a thinner profit margin. The flip side of the coin is that you can source goods from wholesalers that own their manufacturing units, cutting out another part of the supply chain and correspondingly lowering costs. Every problem has a solution, and the issue of price can be solved simply through using dropship wholesalers who have lower prices by virtue of their own manufacturing facilities. Artisan Furniture is one such example — they have a manufacturing unit in the north Indian city of Jaipur

 

Lastly, delivery of goods may pose problems because you are not actually shipping goods – your dropship wholesaler is. While this makes it easier for to establish and run a business, it may lead to occasional delivery issues. You don’t know the specifics of how many dropshippers this particular supplier works with, and how efficient their shipping methods are. This part of the business is largely opaque to you, and while this leaves you free time for energy for other endeavours, it’s a risk if the deliveries start getting late or causing damages.

 

Therefore, before creating a business relationship with a dropship wholesaler, it’s always a good idea to get them to deliver a good to you – to see how effective their services are.  Simply find a seller that uses them and buy a few products — one large and one small to know all their varied delivery options. Do this again after a couple of weeks, this will allow you to know their consistently.

 

The delivery problem problem can be mitigated by using an established and reliable wholesaler. With the right one, delivery issues can be all but eliminated.

 

Lastly, returns are one the main cons of this form of supply. Because dropship functions as a business to business (B2B) operation, they have no obligations to offer returns to you except in the case of damaged or incorrect products. This is true for the vast majority of dropship companies,

 

This means that if your customers return a product to you because they didn’t like it or changed their mind, you will not be able to pass it on to your drop shipper. There’s no direct way around this and you’ll have to improvise a solution.

 

Like Angela Cole with her little dropship cellar, you may be inclined to store these products yourself and sell them on when someone else wants them. It’ll involve some sort of storage space, and a lot of logistical work, but this solution will leave customers satisfied. We’ve all grown to get accustomed to being able to return goods for any reason — to offer them will meet customer’s expectations.

 

The other, simpler, method is not offering returns at all because dealing with them is too big a hassle. In your company policy you state that you’ll only be able to accept returns that are due to damages or incorrect products — it might lead to some disgruntled customers but in the end, the logistics are much easier to handle. It’s simply a matter of customer satisfaction versus logistical ease. The choice is yours.

 

As with any sourcing method, dropship has its own pros and cons. But while the pros are unique to it and can’t really be found elsewhere, the cons are quite common among furniture sourcing and can be easily rectified. Dropship remains the most effective method for new businesses, and indeed for any commercial entities looking to sell furniture through e-commerce sites or aggregators

 

To summarise, here’s a handy list of pros and cons that covers everything you need to know. These are specific to Artisan Furniture, they’re the the baseline this book is based on after all, but most should apply to any reputable dropshipper and to dropship as a whole.

 

Pros

1. No monthly subscription fee
2. No minimum spend by value or volume
3. No stock holding required
4. Ability to focus on other aspects of the business such as marketing and promotion
5. No specific experience required in the industry you’re dropshipping in, except basic e-commerce knowledge
6. Free delivery in the UK mainland
7. All logistics and distribution are handled by the dropshipper
8. Delivery available across the world
9. No need to have a VAT or Company Registration Number to sign up
10. Bespoke facility available to allow you to tailor the products to your clientele
11. Click and collect facility available for 10 or more products
12. Large volume containerised customers may be transferred to a Wholesale account for lower prices and more customisation options
13. Enhanced returns available to facilitate change of mind returns
14. Transit damage or manufacturing defects are accepted as reasons for returns, subject to approval by the returns team
15. Free collection of products approved for returns
16. Dozens of new products every month

 

Cons

1. All returns must be logged in within stipulated timelines (2 working days)
2. Prices may be higher than that of our wholesale programme
3. Delivery surcharge applies for regions outside of mainland UK
4. Consumer law is not applicable to B2B companies such as Artisan Furniture
5. Sale of Goods Act is only applicable to B2B companies in a limited sense
6. Dropship is a competitive industry and requires sustained effort and time to market products and earn profits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2B or not 2B

 

The difference between a ‘business to business’, or B2B, model and a ‘business to consumer’, or B2C, model is a matter of confusion to many new dropshippers. But before talking about the difference between these two and how they pertain to dropship, it’s important to know what they actually are.

 

B2B refers to business selling to other businesses This can be services, information as well as products. Businesses that buy these from other businesses add value to them to sell them on and make a profit. This can further be through manufacturing new products – such as wheat to bread. They can also simply change the product slightly and move them on. This type of selling is usually high in volume and requires specific infrastructure. You also market in different ways, perhaps through trade shows and business magazines. This is different to marketing on social media directly to consumers. This includes dropshipping — such as companies like Artisan Furniture who work with trade customers.

On the other hand, B2C refers to businesses selling to consumers. This can be services, information, as well as products. This can be businesses selling goods and services in the traditional way, such as coffee shops, clothes shops and house cleaners. It can also be online selling of products – e-commerce. This involves businesses selling goods online to consumers over the internet, say, Boohoo selling clothing or made.com selling furniture.

So how does this pertain to dropship and (wholesale)  returns?

This is a dropship book after all so let’s start with that. Say you’re Nina Patel and you’ve just started dropshipping products from a dropship supplier who you trust. Perhaps one of your clients didn’t like the product and wishes to return it; the product isn’t broken in any way they simply don’t like it. What happens then?

 

Because you, as the air hostess turned retailer, sell directly to the public, you’re obliged to offer change-of-mind returns unto a stipulated period. This means you’re operating on a business to consumer (B2C) model. Under the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000, as amended, a consumer can get a refund if they simply change their mind about buying something. This applies to goods and services. It’s between consumers and businesses without an intermediary. The regulations apply to most transactions of this kind on the internet.

 

Further, where the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 apply and a consumer notifies the supplier before the end of the cooling off period, the consumer must take ‘reasonable care’ of the product and restore them to the supplier.

 

Your dropshipper is dealing with you, not the public. As a firm operating on a business to business (B2B) model, they are under no obligations to offer you returns except for goods that are damaged or have manufacturing defects. This causes a dilemma — you legally have to offer returns but your dropship supplier doesn’t.

 

 

Any entity selling goods in the UK needs to be aware of Consumer Contract rules. These are especially important for consumers buying goods off the internet and were intended to raise confidence in the new medium.

B2B are exempt from these regulations, but must still comply with e-commerce regulations. So what does this practically lead to?

The regulations means that if you sell to a business, you can create and enforce your own terms for returns and cancellations. This is your terms of service and must be clearly written and adhered to. It should state your returns policy. You also need to make sure that all your clients are well aware of it before doing business.

In practice, this means that B2B transactions do not need to adhere to Consumer Contract regulations and can make their own terms. Most dropshippers will not offer change of mind returns unless explicitly stated or signed up for.

What is exempt from the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000

1. Business-to-business contracts
   2. Financial services sold at a distance (However, these are covered by the Financial Services (Distant Marketing) Regulations)
   3. Contracts for the sale of land
   4. Products bought from vending machines
   5. Goods or services bought at an auction with an auctioneer.

eBay does not qualify as an auction site.

Note that dropship is a B2B model and your drop shipper is exempt from the aforementioned consumer protection regulations.

 

In B2C,  the consumer has multiple rights.

A cooling off period in which they’re entitled to change their minds with 7 days of a transaction. This can occasionally be up to 3 months in certain cases. However, it does not apply to the following.
• Bespoke goods
• Perishable items: fresh food and flowers
• CDs, DVDs and tapes once the packaging has been unsealed
• Newspapers and magazines
• Betting, gaming and lotteries

 

The Returned

 

Ah returns, the bane of every dropshipper. When you’re legally required to offer returns to your customers for any reason, but your supplier isn’t bound to those same regulations owing to their B2B nature, there’s a little problem that you have to deal with.

 

It’s pointless to target this at its root and insist that you’re a business to business entity. Whichever way you argue it — not owning a company, the supplier sending the goods to the customers or even not technically shipping goods yourself — the simple fact remains that you deal directly with the public. indeed, the public expects returns for any reason and you should be prepared to fulfil that.

 

Perhaps the simplest way is to simply ask for “enhanced returns” if your supplier offers it. This means that they will cover all returns for an initially higher product price. Lots of companies such as Artisan Furniture offer this facility. Now, there’s two ways of going about this.

You can either buy enhanced returns on all of your orders and up the prices accordingly, or only do so for specific ones that are experiencing a high volume of returns for any reason. Just like Augustin Rousseau and his fantastical collection, maybe you realise that one particulate set of products isn’t for everyone and people are returning them at a higher-than-proportional rate. To do this, it’s absolutely key to dig through your raw sales and returns numbers and look at the particular return-heavy goods. If there’s no discernible pattern or if you want ensure that all of your goods are covered. A bit like car insurance, you insure the car against future problems by paying a bit more money every month.

 

Take the example of Tobi Braithwaite and his famous Caribbean-inspired vibrant benches. Everyone loves them — how their bright colours pop in a room, how they’re always the centre of attention and indeed how they become a conversation starter wherever they go. But there’s a tiny problem.

 

The benches have a rather unfortunate propensity to break at the slightest pressure. Sticking a hard landing? Broken legs. Pushing it back while getting up? Broken legs. Breathing on it too heavily? You guessed it. Topi has talked to his supplier multiple times with no help. The bench apparent works perfectly regardless of all evidence to the contrary.

 

So the solution is simple. Buying enhanced returns on this particular product, so he doesn’t lose money every time a transporter decides to look at the bench a little too hard. It’s an incentive for the dropshipper to fix the design as well — win, win.

 

 

The other solution is offering customers a refund and taking the hit on the product. This will certainly win you customers, not so much your bank balance though. A toned down version of this is offering them a discount to keep the product, this prevents you the hassle of needing to store a product and you (hopefully) at least break on your sale. Think it this way — would you rather take a hit and maintain the customer or keep the money but lose the customer?

It’s important to look at the bigger picture here. You’re not investing entirely in the supply chain bit of the business. There’s no direct deposits going out every month for shipping companies, warehouses, packaging companies. This is a cost you’ve ‘saved’ and some of it has to be reinvested in streamlining returns and ensuring customers keep coming back.

 

Think of this as a sort of opportunity cost. As opposed to spending a percentage of your revenue on overhead costs, you instead take a chunk on that and use it for returns. It’s unlikely many customers will turn down the chance of keeping the product and the refund at the same time, so this will solve that issue whilst also giving you wiggle room in terms of storage.

 

An example helps. Our dear Tyler Ainsworth balked at the idea of giving people money for keeping a product that they didn’t like, even it wasn’t the full cost. It wasn’t a revenue/profit calculation in his eyes, but money for nothing. So he dawdled on returns and replacements, finding every possible excuse to not let customers return something they don’t like.

 

Surprisingly enough this didn’t end well. Not only was this mildly illegal, but also problematic for his clientele that really didn’t want to go this much hassle to return something. At first the returns slowed to a trickle, cue a whoop of joy from Mr Ainsworth, but then so did the orders themselves. People don’t like jumping through hoops for something they’re legally allowed to do.

 

Don’t be like Tyler here, offer customers discounts to keep their products if enhanced returns aren’t an option. You’re more than likely to gain it back in the long run — a returning customer is the best sort of customer after all.

 

 

We’ve already talked about the rules and regulations behind this in the previous chapter. Another means of ensuring lower returns rates are to follow these rules to the letter — completely filled form, item in the same packaging, return request sent in the required time period. A lot of companies offer some leeway with the government rules but if you follow them religiously that’ll automatically reduce return rates. Of course, customer satisfaction is something you need to take into account while going down this route.

In the same vein, try to be as vigilant as you can in terms of filling out forms for returns for your supplier. Your dropshipper will set their own timelines, being a B2B business, all you can do is adhere to them as strictly as you can. Read their terms and conditions, and when you’re done with that, read them again. Ignorance isn’t bliss in this particular case — you need to know their policies inside out, so that you don’t run into problems at a later stage.   It’s a bit like running a traffic light and feigning ignorance of the speed limit when it’s right in front of you. There’s really no excuse.

 

Lots of new dropship businesses lose viable return claims because they disregard timelines and wrongly fill out forms — a little mistake is all a supplier needs to reject claims. Keep this in mind.

 

Look at our Uber-driver-turned-entrepreneur Aisha Huessin and her penchant for paperwork. She’s a university student after all, and there’s nothing they’re not good at if not sticking to strict regulations. There are no second chances if you accidentally fill out the wrong form, or turn in an essay in a size 11 font instead of the oh so different size 12. Some rules may seem pointless but to get ahead, they need to be followed.

 

So Aisha read every form until she could memorise every letter — filling it well enough so there’s no room for error. She expected much of the same from her clientele, and it paid dividends. Strict but fair, isn’t that what they always say?

 

 

Of course, you can always go the Angela Cole way and store returns yourself until you can resell them. Just like Ms Cole, utilise all your assets as effectively as you can — and that includes storage spaces. Perhaps you’re fortunate enough to own a fairly large house with a cellar, or even a proper basement. If you don’t, consider buying a storage space / garage and storing goods there.

 

This allows you to offer customers returns and not lose money at the same time. Someone might not find your Chesterfield sofa to their tase, but someone else would jump at the chance of getting their hands on one of them (especially if you sell them at a discount!).

 

Similarly, a particular blue painted sideboard might not fit the decor of a customer’s home as well as they’d pictured, but it’d be perfect piece of furniture for someone who’s home just happens to have tastefully blue walls.

 

 

Lastly, if none of these are to your liking, perhaps you’d be inclined to spend time and energy looking for a dropshipper that has a no-questions-asked returns policy, just like a B2C business would. It might be difficult said than done, but if you manage to discover such a dropshipper it’ll solve this entire returns issue altogether while giving you another facet to set yourself apart from the crowd. All in one fell swoop.

 

 

Before we move on to the next section, it’s paramount to note that every dropship seller should check the returns policy and the Ts & Cs of the supplier with whom you are dealing. These should be crystal clear with no room for misinterpretation. Consider Artisan Furniture’s return policy below,

 

1. We accept returns on account ofmanufacturing defects subject to approval by the Returns Team. This includes free collection of the defective merchandise. T’s & C’s apply.
2. We accept returns on account oftransit damages subject to approval by the Returns Team. This includes free collection of the merchandise. T’s & C’s apply.
3. All returns must be logged within 2 working days through the Trade account dashboard.

 

 

The content here does not matter — the point is that the returns policy for every reputable dropshipper is clearly stated on their website. It’s important to know it inside out before doing business with them.

 

Equally important are the timelines, it doesn’t matter whether the timeline is 2 days or 20. These should be read and understood to avoid confusion. Consider the below from Artisan Furniture

 

 

 

 

 

Delivery Day	Notification by end of:
Monday	Wednesday until 23:59 hours
Tuesday	Thursday until 23:59 hours
Wednesday	Friday until 23:59 hours
Thursday	Monday until 23:59 hours
Friday	Tuesday until 23:59 hours
Saturday	Tuesday until 23:59 hours
Sunday	Tuesday until 23:59 hours

 

We do not consider weekends and England bank holidays as working days

The clarity is there for you to see. The overarching point here is to read the text! It’ll save you a lot of hassle when dealing with the sticky topic that is returns.

A modern supply chain

 

Dropshipping is the name of the process whereby a supplier sends a delivery direct to their customer’s end user.

 

• The supplier is usually the manufacturer or wholesaler.
• Their customer is usually a retail or online outlet.
• The end user is usually a member of the public.

 

It’s a completely different supply chain model to one you’re used to. Dropshipping can apply to any supply chain where the goods are shipped directly to a third party bypassing the seller.

 

Take the example of Aleksandra Novak, working away in her little room facing the sea. She’s living in a small Polish town that boasts little more than a port and some vaguely sea-inspired cuisine. But she’s targeting customers back in her adopted country of the UK, with a British wholesaler that probably thinks Gdynia is the name of a city in lord of the rings. Regardless, the supply chain ensures that customers sitting in their homes get goods delivered right to their doorstep, all masterminded by a young woman in Poland.

 

In practice, this means your client places an order on your website or e-commerce account, which is in turn fulfilled by your dropship supplier. They manage all the logistics — which include shipping, storage and packaging. Most suppliers would own a warehouse in the country, as well as technical knowledge in terms of packaging and transport. It’s important to order a few products to yourself before you start working with a company, to check the efficiency and reliability of the supply chain you’re considering becoming a part of.

 

Similarly important is knowledge of different elements of the supply chain model — you don’t need to become an expert, you aren’t handling the goods after all, but a base knowledge will help you when dealing with your supplier. A little online research about internet packaging, sea transport and shipping lines is not essential but is part of the toolkit of a good dropship retailer. You don’t want to end up looking lost wen a supplier brings up how their packaging isn’t drop test certified, or how the ship that contains their products is undergoing custom checks at the port of entry. A little knowledge goes a long way — especially when it comes to supplier relations and your own trust in the system.

 

So how do you get started?

1. Find something you like, and think people will like too

Anything you’re passionate about really, or something you absolutely know customers will love. An e-commerce site based solely on comfy armchairs? Artisan has you covered – soft, comfy and regal armchairs at a fraction of their retail price, what’s not to love. Or perhaps you’ve always liked a particular style of furniture, whether it be the minimalist Scandinavian or Victorian gothic. As long you believe in what you’re selling, your customers will too – and you’re much likely to exude that confidence that makes a business successful

2. Choose your profit margins

This one’s simple – lower profit margins but likely higher sales or higher profit margins but you sell lower quantities? The choice is entirely yours – Artisan sells you products at wholesale prices with none of the minimum quantities that it usually entails, so you’re free to market and sell your product as you see fit. It’s your business after all, we’re just here to help! Just make sure to not charge a thousand quid for a chair, that’s our only bit of advice.

3. Research research research

Whatever you’re selling, there’s almost a 100% chance of Amazon or one of the other big boys of online retail carrying it. Price your product well, and research to see what is and isn’t available. Demand is fickle, and people may want one thing but absolutely despise the other – so make sure you know your market, and just how you’re going to see it. Artisan Furniture offers a free 30 minute onboarding call and communication with our team in London – we’re here to help you build your business exactly to your specifications and ideals.

4. Create your brand

Quick, what do you think when you hear “Apple”. Besides the fruit, we’d be willing to bet it was something to do with their smooth, minimalistic ads and the image of luxury they exude. Clean, white lines paired with a brilliant interface. Apple phones don’t need to have the best specs, or the longest battery range – their brand is strong enough to attract customers who simply want a beautiful, luxurious product. You need to do the same with your business – who do you want to be? The inexpensive, no fuss website for the local community? A sleek, well crafted enterprise for the aspirational middle class? Or the quintessential nature friendly company that emphasises it’s green credentials? The choices is all yours, and Artisan Furniture has goods to support a whole host of routes you may want to go down – whether it be luxurious, Victorian, classical french, rustic. There’s something for your e-commerce site.

5. Get a website up and running, or use a simple e-commerce platform

You can’t have an e-commerce business without a website – so find a website host, and set yours up. WordPress is an effective tool if you’re not particularly technologically inclined – it’s simple to create a website to your specifications, and colour scheme. The website is your canvas, you can add whatever bells and whistles you want and craft it just how you like. But remember, you can’t use the website without furniture to go along with it – and that’s where we come in. Of course, we don’t allow you to sell on the platforms we already sell on, for obvious reasons. But asides from those, the world is your oyster.  Buy as much, or as little, furniture you like at our wholesale prices and add it to your website, if you do well and run out, we have you covered! Free delivery across the UK mainland, right to your doorstep, and fast as you’d like.

6. Market away

Brilliant, you have a website, and fantastic furniture to go along with it. But how will people know of your impressive collection? The traditional media is outdated, few people read newspapers and fewer still read the ads. Telly ads work but they cost an absolute fortune. Thankfully, you have an ace up your sleeve – social media. It’s largely free, and you can spread the word just as easily as through print and television – perhaps even quicker. You can look through Artisan Furniture’s social media feeds for inspiration, we even send out a newsletter every week that you do not want to miss out on. Do sign up!

7. Keep the cogs turning

The hard bit is over, you have a functioning business! Now it’s simply a matter of refining, organising and analysing. Do you too much stock? Too little? How’s the pricing looking? What products to people actually want? There are many questions that come along with running a successful question, and as soon as you answer one, two more pop up. It’s a never-ending cycle – but that’s half the fun. You’re solving problems, creating innovative solutions and refining your business all at the same time. It’s tiring yet incredibly rewarding, and we’d know! Of course, it’s not just luck that creates a thriving business, but good luck nonetheless.

 

Dropship has the benefit of parcels having less ‘touch points’ during their travels. Consequently, there should be less chance of delivery mistakes or damages. Simplicity is the ideal in business, and dropship certainly ensures that. Indeed, in a lot cases, the seller doesn’t even see the goods they sell!

 

Less touch points means lower costs as well. Say you buy a Chesterfield sofa from a bog standard high street retailer. More often than not these retailers source their products from intermediaries such as wholesalers or stockists — sometimes both! This could be an entity that does nothing but buy from the manufacturer and sell to the retailer — they add nothing to the supply chain but costs and inefficiency.

 

So the rational way to go about this is to cut the intermediaries out from the supply chain entirely, reducing the touch points. Dropship allows you to buy directly from a supplier and sell to your clients — at prices that are little more than wholesale. The fewer entities that touch a product, the lower the chances of damage and, indeed, the lower the price to the final customer.

 

The aforementioned sofa could be made in a factory in China, and sold to a British wholesaler or European stockist who buys them in bulk and stores them in their warehouses, and sells them on to your local retailer in Middlesborough . You used used to have no choice but to buy from these intermediaries, because importing products needs a huge amount of technical knowledge and funds to buy the quantities that overseas manufactures prefer.

 

Not anymore. With the new supply chain model that is dropship, you can buy directly from manufacturers who ship goods to your clients. Whether this be overseas or back home, it doesn’t matter to you — the shipping, storage and packaging is undertaken by your supplier with minimal hassle if you chose the right one.

 

The delivery can either take place on the supplier’s vehicles or, more usually, using one of the many courier companies available. DHL, DPD and XDP are the usual reliable options. This can be known by looking up the supplier’s website — make sure you know which delivery service they use so you know who to contact when something goes wrong.

 

 

The model has become more popular with the increase in web sites that sell products. It enables any retailer to offer a wide range of products without having to invest heavily in stock, thereby freeing up cash for other business opportunities or expenses. It essentially enables you to sell whatever they please without needing to calculate stock and depreciation; caution needs to be undertaken of course to maintain a coherent vision.

 

This will be talked about more in the relevant chapter but for now, it’s important to know that as a dropship retailer you shouldn’t get carried away by the huge selection you can offer. A bit like the café Augustin Rousseau loved so dearly, a good establishment offers a reasonable selection of products that are tied together to a certain theme. It wouldn’t do to include Scandinavian, Victorian and plain old rustic furniture in the same selection unless you’re actively targeting a varied clientele.

 

The supplier then takes the responsibility for holding stock. Alternatively, products which are made to order can be offered to end users and shipped immediately as they are made without having to touch the customer’s premises.

 

Dropshipping generally leads to a decrease in overall supply chain costs and can also improve the end user’s satisfaction. It’s particularly popular with new businesses with the lack of investment required. Nina Patel and Jake Burton had the knowledge and passion to run a business, but they didn’t have the funds to set up the infrastructure in a traditional supply chain model. So they did the only thing they could do — turn to dropship, with its promises of low overhead and capital requirement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding a dropshipper

Of course, while starting out, you might not be in a position to compete directly with established dropshippers. Wholesalers provide a reduction when goods are purchased in bulk. When you are dropshipping a product you are purchasing and selling something at low quantities – therefore the wholesale price will stay high. If you are a company owner who knows what you need to market, here is what you should do to get a dropshipping wholesaler:

 

• Learn the supply stations: Each business has its own distribution channel. The most frequent kinds of them include:

 

1) Manufacturer: Most goods are purchased directly from the producers, and at more affordable prices.

 

2) Exclusive Distributor: Depending on the market, a company might have the sole rights to export or import merchandise in a specific nation. They might opt to sell these directly to a merchant, or to some smaller wholesaler.

 

Cut the middleman — Your initial reach needs to be straight to the manufacturer. It is very likely they may provide you the best possible deal (determined by the minimum product requirements), or a listing of reputable distributors you might discover useful. The fewer individuals the goods go through before reaching you, the lower your prices.

 

• Look for specific product-related wholesalers with the ideal keyword or search phrases . You might even incorporate some specific brand names or version numbers into your hunt.

 

• B2B and B2C Trade: B2B markets may be the largest hub places for many producers, wholesalers, and distributors. Platforms might differ based upon the target nation, eg. Alibaba is a a largely Chinese business which remains the largest platform for B2B worldwide. When starting out, small business owners are able to even attempt selling at eBay at which retailers or tiny wholesalers can sell goods in bulk. Though this is much more of a B2C station, it is among the easiest places to begin and satisfy low-volume retailers.

 

• DropShipping Firms: The whole aim of dropshipping is to concentrate on market products that are easy to ship, and have high demand. Certain businesses focus on this in particular, and will make your assortment of goods to dropship simpler. .

 

• Industry Communities and Groups: Another fantastic place to discover producers and dropshipping wholesalers is through business communities and teams. Several social networking channels such as Facebook and Linkedin have classes intended for specific niche businesses and companies. Though other retailers will not be overly eager to talk about their information with rivals, it is possible to begin building a connection with other small business owners to finally become one of those insiders. Business communities don’t just help you community and locate dropshipping contacts but also solve many other issues you face in operation, whether it’s advertising or obtaining a retail funding alternative . Keep sharing and posting, remain in the loop of talks within the area and expand your professional network to take advantage of these platforms.

 

• Firms in your region and Trade Shows: While naturally, an internet community is one of the best places to begin your search, do not be reluctant to reach out to companies in your area too. Attend trade shows in which you are able to directly satisfy dropshipping wholesalers and construct a relationship with them, or other connections of theirs. Trade Show News Network will be able to help you find forthcoming trade shows in your town or region.

 

Remember that if it comes to dropshipping, your dropship wholesaler will deal with the stock and transport the merchandise, which means that your company must establish a profitable platform to market these products. Pay attention to the minimum purchase requirements and their wholesale component rates. Remain honest with everything you’re searching for, and do not attempt to make your small business sound bigger than it’s (as with everything online, they can find your organisation’s numbers using a quick google search). Remain friendly on email, and you may even ask to talk to your dropshipper in person.

 

If you are not able to fulfil your own dropshipper personally, then there are some indications that they may be untrue:

 

1) They charge a continuous charge: No wholesaler should bill you for doing business together. Even though a provider directory (who will supply you a listing of providers ) will bill a charges, a provider themselves shouldn’t. But, per-order shipping prices will be billed, which can cost more two person delivery, since it’s a lot more costly than bulk transport.

 

2) In case your company sells directly to clients, it means they are a merchant who’s simply selling at inflated rates.

 

3) They don’t own a warehouse or storage facility. This is again the hallmark of a merchant, not a dropshipper.

 

Enough of what not to do. How do you know that a dropshipper is a good fit for your business?

 

• The first step, as with everything on the internet, is to stay vigilant and avoid middlemen who’re only posing as legitimate wholesalers. Their business model is deceptively simple – buying from several real wholesalers and selling them on to your you, when it would be much cheaper to buy from the actual wholesalers instead. This is more common than you think, and will lead to your profit margins being razor thin and your competitors gaining an advantage. Make sure the dropship wholesaler you find online – or, even better, in furniture magazines such as Furniture News – is one with an actual warehouse, and preferably a manufacturing facility such as Artisan Furniture’s Jaipur unit. The worst thing you can do for your business is form a business relationship with a middleman that inflates prices and ties you in with a monthly contract that obliges you to pay them for the ‘privilege’ of being in their distributorship. No real wholesaler will do this.

 

• It’s also essential to confirm whether your wholesaler will allow you to sell on certain platforms such as Wayfare or E-bay – it may lead to conflict of interests. Say a wholesaler such as Artisan Furniture sells its furniture to Wayfare (and it does). You won’t be allowed to sell your products on the same platform because it’ll cause competition with them in their business to business (B2B) model. Therefore, look for dropship wholesalers that do not operate on the same platforms that you wish to sell on — or even better, set up your own website!

 

• Shipping arrangements are particularly important to deal with. You can have the best product in the west and no one will buy it if the delivery system doesn’t work. It’s always a good idea to order a good from the dropship wholesaler’s customer to see how quickly and safely it arrives. Further, some wholesalers such as Artisan Furniture offer free delivery in the UK mainland – it’s nice cherry on top.

 

• Lastly, the most important question is that whether they ship single pieces or if there’s a minimum order. If there’s a 5 piece minimum limit, you’ll need to pass that on to your customers – and it may cause problems for your business model. Always confirm first, a lot of wholesalers will be more than happy to ship single pieces.

Finding the right dropship wholesaler is never easy, but it’s one of the most important decision you can take for your business. With the right wholesaler, you’ll have quality pieces, good delivery and the peace of mind to focus your time on research and analysis in order to grow your business. And that’s, of course, the goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to beat the store next door

 

We’re all special little people in the eyes of the ones we love, but the eyes of capitalism are less bound by rose tinted glasses. There’s nothing special about us, or the company we want to run, unless we make it special for everyone else — not just your supportive friend who always buys your goods regardless of whether they need it or not. Everyone needs a friend like that, but everyone also needs a plan to set yourself apart from the crowd.

 

Think of the dropship world like a lake of full of enterprise shaped drops, some are floating on the surface close to the warm sunlight, others are still down in the frigid darkness with little hope of making it to the top. But the majority just sort of sit there, floating up slowly but sitting down as the currents go against them. You need to set up your business in a way that negates these currents, so you can float towards the promised land all on your own.  In keeping with the drop analogy, the lake values every drop in its realms — the bigger ones, the smaller ones, the ones shimmering near the surface, the ones floundering in its depths. Every single one is important to dropshippers, and everything forms a part of the same ecosystem. You’re important!

 

Now, every other business has the same overarching goal. It’s not a zero sum game of course, you don’t need to wish for another businesses to fail for yours to become successful. But you do need to set yourself apart and make sure people buy from you rather than the metaphorical business next door.

 

There are a few ways to go about this. The first is to carve out a niche for yourself as opposed to offering regular, run of the mill furniture that’ll turn up hundreds of results on one google search. This isn’t a bad thing, and we’ll talk about how to maximise a ‘mainstream’ product selection in a bit, but for now it’s important to note that often operating in a niche gives you more room to manoeuvre. It’s a smaller base of customers but one that’s more engaged — 5 regular customers are better than the 10 who show up once a year for Christmas shopping.

 

Take the example of Jeff and Keith with their quaint Scottish highlands inspired furniture. They knew their limitations and strengths, and worked around them. Lots of people could outspend them with sheer financial muscle, but not many could boast knowledge of hundreds of tartans and tweeds, many of them obscure enough to never see the light of day if it wasn’t for their efforts.

 

That’s their niche. Something they knew a lot about, knew that their customers loved, and knew they could market effectively. Something that the thousands of other dropshippers across the world couldn’t do. It set them apart and that’s what you should do when you find your niche.

Perhaps you realise that you can target a wealthy, more traditional clientele. This implies high end furniture that leans towards the victorian. Now, look for ads in places that these type of people will frequent, whether that be online or offline. If you’ve done your research correctly, customers should start coming to your website to buy the type of furniture that they ‘should’ like.

 

Make sure your niche is visible on all of your social media platforms and your website as well, and is reflected in your product selection. Say you’re Zenée Bellwether and love animals. Your bread and butter would be pet furniture — a very profitable niche, people love their furry companions after all. Put all sorts of animal photos on your website and emphasise that in newsletters and other marketing material. The key is a coherent strategy.

 

Now moving on to mainstream. By definition, a niche market is smaller but it’s likely to be more engaged with your business. However, if you choose to go mainstream and offer a wide selection of products, you will unlock a whole section of the populace. They’ll all may not be the most engaged clientele, but in large enough numbers, that’ll make up for it. Besides, these are means to market yourself and build up customer loyalty — as we’ll discuss below.

 

A mainstream selection means more people will like your product and want to buy it, albeit with less enthusiasm and more options across the market. Say you’re Tyler Ainsworth and decided to simply make a website with “contemporary” furniture with no other qualifiers. This would just mean that whenever someone googles “contemporary furniture” or asks people about it, there will be dozens if not hundreds of options available. If you’re a new company you’ll drown in this ocean of entities without ever rising to the surface.

 

So the key, again, is the quality of your goods and the marketing. If you wish to exploit a bigger market, look at ways to distinguish yourself in different ways. Perhaps you’re interested in sustainability and want to emphasise that, so you only buy sustainably made furniture. Similarly, you could brand yourself as a local business with local employees and ethos — this is likely to be done through marketing material and plain old word of mouth.

 

This is what Angela Cole did to rather great success, the key is to set yourself apart — whether you’re niche or mainstream. It doesn’t have to be something about your style or background either, if you have excellent quality or a reputation of always accepting returns (even if the customer is a bit past the deadline) you’ll do well with new clients and retain the older ones.

 

Another way of beating the competition is targeting a particular price bracket — whether that be affordable furniture, medium bracket furniture or the top end. This is another matter of a more engaged group of smaller customers who buy bigger ticket items versus a larger group that may not buy as many expensive items but may make up for it in terms of sheer volume.

 

The way you want to go depends entirely on your understanding of a clientele you can tap into, and your own knowledge of your products. It won’t do you any good if you sell fancy, high priced silver furniture while your have no idea how to market it effectively. It takes more than a shiny, expensive product  selection to run a business.

 

Say you go low, metaphorically speaking. Because you’ll be saving costs in terms of packaging, storage and shipping, this makes dropship particularly conducive to an affordable product model. Prices are the main draw for the clientele you’ll be targeting, so its absolutely reasonable to make a website that’s not particularly ‘fancy’, just functional. The idea is not to cut corners, but to save costs when you can without compromising the quality of the products and service.

 

So go for free advertising wherever you can, and keep the payroll to a minimum. A dropshipper that specialises in affordable, quality products is the starting point. With lower costs, you’ll be able to pass these on to the customer and sell products at a higher rate, albeit a lower profit margin. If you do your research well, you’ll only sell products that can be sold at an affordable price. No silver plated consoles here, just simple things that customers want to buy but aren’t willing to pay a fortune for. Think stools, little chairs, coffee tables, benches.

 

The word undercut has some pretty dodgy connotations but you essentially have to sell at a lower price than your immediate competitors in your sector. Think the companies that turn up when you google “affordable serpentine tables” or something along those lines. If you can’t outright sell your products at a lower price, at least price them similarly and offer better quality and perks. Maybe you have a better interface on your website — convenience is key, after all — or you have an effective customer support service. The little things matter when you’re selling at the lower end of the price spectrum.

 

Now on to higher end productions. It’s important to note that people who’re inclined to buy luxury don’t just pay a premium for the products, they pay for the experience. Yes this has been said a million times before but it’s important to know the connotations to a dropship businesses. You won’t be spending as much or expend as many resources on the logistics portion of the business, so this leaves you with capital to spare on the products, the experience and the marketing.

 

Indeed, the fact that dropship products are as a rule slightly more expensive than wholesale owing to the smaller quantities, isn’t a massive issue when dealing with an expensive selection. You’ll be marking up prices to a degree anyway — the cost price of the product is only one element that makes expensive products expensive, the others include things like the interface of the website, the feeling of exclusivity and simply the whole experience that you offer.

 

It’s wise to use the saved money on building a luxurious experience for clients; no one is gonna spend a fortune on a handprinted, solid wood console if its placed on a barebones website. The aesthetics matter — spend capital hiring a high end website designer. The first impression leaves you last, and ideally never at all.

 

Think of the way luxury brands build up their image. Gucci doesn’t have the best craftsmanship of any company in the world but it’s one of the most popular. The key here is exclusivity, or at least the illusion of it. Create a newsletter that only goes out to a select number of clients once in a blue moon, or make them log in to see the most expensive products. Make sure you don’t advertise on mainstream channels such as Instagram or Facebook. Lastly, keep lots of limited time ranges as opposed to all products being online all the time. All these things make sure that customers believe that the product they’re getting is something exclusive, that they’re special for having it.

 

The one common element we’ve seen throughout this section is that businesses need to set themselves apart from the crowd to really rise above the fray. Or onto the surface of the lake in this analogy. Whether this be through targeting a certain niche, or becoming famous for a particular style, or simply having good, affordable furniture, you need to work hard to get where you want to be.

 

Lastly, while brainstorming ideas about niches and discovering your personal love for a certain type of product that you know a lot about well and good, none of it is a substitute for plain old hard work. And it’s cousin smart work.

 

Dropship is an easy business to get into — not much capital needed, no storage or shipping or packaging either. This makes it simple for a whole lot of people to start a dropship business simply because they’re tempted by the risk free model. But few put in the effort needed to run a successful one.

 

There’s a lot of elements to dropship as a business. Constant marketing in tune with your strategy, whether that be online, in print or through good old fashioned word of mouth. Just not too much — we all know how much a too-frequent ad turns us off from wanting a problem. Then there’s the backend, looking at which products do well and at what prices.

 

This is the thing that most new businesses fail to do, they just look at the flashy stats, “monthly sales”. “best performers”, “profit made”. The more obscure ones tell a fuller story. You should always maximise the profit you can without losing revenue. Analysing which particular products are doing the best, what price bracket is the best seller, and the time products take to sell out are a more helpful indicator of knowing how you’re doing. This sets you apart from the crowd in terms of the backend — outthink and out-research everyone, and know your model inside out.

 

This includes knowing the basics about shipping and stocks, you want to able to talk shop with your dropshipper (shipping, packaging, storage) without being entirely clueless. They’d respect you more and you’d know what’s going on behind the scenes — the more you know the better.  You’d be running a successful dropship enterprise in no time, with a happy clientele (and dropshipper!) in tow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your brand, or someone else’s?

 

We’ve talked about how to make yourself stand out from the crowd and the answer always seems to come down to a brand. We talked about targeting the top end or the bottom end, or finding a niche or going mainstream. You may not necessarily think of this as your ‘brand’ but that’s exactly what it is — something people think of when they think of your company, and indeed a company people think of when they think of a particular thing.

 

Let’s look at a case study, only in less boring terms. The most successful brands, dropship or otherwise, are those that become synonymous with the products they sell — often to their chagrin, ironically. Adobe Photoshop™, as they prefer to call it, has become so synonymous with editing software that photoshop is now a verb. Your keyboard’s autocorrect would prove this.

 

But this means that Adobe may now lose the trademark they had on Photoshop because it’s passed into common parlance. This is the same for Google, Xerox and Jacuzzi. Trademark problems aside, this is a prime example of creating a brand that’s so eponymous you don’t consider a product without it.

 

How many of us use Bing, or ACDSee, or whatever brands are an alternative for Jacuzzis. A google search doesn’t even reveal any for the latter; you know your brand is powerful when alternatives aren’t even on customers’ radars.  You can’t buy what you don’t know exists; you can’t buy from another dropship company when you don’t know it’s even there.

 

Let’s take the example of Jeff and Keith’s sublime, Scottish inspired brand making. Even before going online, they focussed on their Scottish heritage and immense knowledge of tweeds and tartans to sell their products. The internet simply made that easier.

 

They made their whole website around their quaint little town north of be border with its mossy stone church and too many golf courses. The things that scream small town Scotland also scream tartans and tweeds — they knew that and exploited that. The clientele may not overlap but their interests definitely did.

 

Taking cues from our favourite Scottish couple , find something that’s truly unique about you, something that’ll catch people’s eye and set you apart. If nothing comes to mind, create something! There were many, many more people in the world with the same amount of tartan and tweed knowledge as Jeff and Keith, but there were almost none who also owned a mill and lived in the most quintessential Scottish village that your mind’s eye could conjure up. The intersection of little unique things about your company will build your brand.

 

In the realms of the more mainstream, what’s unique about  Artisan Furniture and their brand? They’re a furniture dropship company that specialises in solid wood products, with an Indo-European selection, and a directly owned manufacturing unit abroad housed by trained artisans who’ve been doing this work for generations. None of these are special on their own, but together, they create a company that’s so incredibly unique that it’s a brand of its own.

 

The existing elements are right there in any company, you just need to pull them together and craft a brand that people want to buy from. Marketing is the key thing. People can’t buy what they don’t know about. Your job is to make people aware both of things they needed but didn’t know from where, and things they didn’t even know they needed.

 

Say you put out a marketing newsletter that emphasises how many pet owners are getting pet furniture for their clients. That’s something a lot of clients don’t know they want and are likely to buy from you. If you choose to focus on that particular type of furniture, it becomes your brand.

 

Branding relies almost entirely on marketing and image management. Your products could be of the highest quality, with the best material money can buy, and they still won’t sell well unless they have a brand backing them. Obscure Swiss watch companies in tiny chalets make some of the best watches in the world but have a turnover that’s a minute fraction of Rolex — they hardly have the best watches in the world but they’re marketed the best. “Affordable” luxury targeted towards people who can’t afford the very top end, and don’t know the other, smaller brands out there. A £3500 watch as opposed to a £45000 one.

 

You can mark up your prices very well if your brand is strong enough. That’s not to say you should rip your customers off with a fancy brand and little else, but simply that having that name recognition and value association gives you lot of room to manoeuvre. So how do you set up a business and a brand to go along with it?

 

Well we’ve already talked about the setup bit in a previous section so let’s go on to the brand. There’s two ways for you to come up with a name — the most basic level of recognition. You could either come up with a completely unique name — like Microsoft — and work towards it being synonymous to your product, or get something that’s related to your field — like Artisan Furniture.

 

This is a phrase you’ve become familiar with. There are pros and cons to both of these. It’s much more difficult to get into google search algorithms and really get off the ground with a completely unique name. People won’t be asking around for something like “Arcasea” when they want a piece of furniture. But they will ask for “artisan made furniture” which will ring a bell with both search engines and people. It’s easier to get recognition and get on the map with this sort of semi unique name.

 

But if (or a more hopeful ‘when’) you’re established, a unique name will prove to be the ideal synonym if it rolls off the tongue. Think Nobsy, not Alecisiatité. People will start to associate your products, ethos and model with that name and you’ll get a burst of recognition. There’ll also be lower competition because no one else will have that particular name, you’ll be able to dominate the field.

 

This is unlike a more generic name. It’ll absolutely provide you a launch pad to get recognition and association, but it’s possible that it fades out as your name turns, well, generic. It won’t stand out of the crowd like a completely unique name would. Of course, it’s possible to maintain excellent brand recognition but this takes marketing, marketing and a smidge more marketing.

 

So you chose your name, whatever path you choose to go down. What next? Well you stick to your guns and market yourself steadily. Let’s take the example of a furniture company that specialise in knobs and accessories, with the quaint little name of Nobsy. You need to choose a particular strategy and stick with it.

 

Once you acquire a website with your chosen (hopefully simple) name, you need to promote, maintain and improve it

 

You do not get a second chance to make the first impression. Before a buyer even places an order, he or she’ll interact with your site. Hence, it’s important to get a website that is visually attractive and much more importantly, mobile. Market surveys put online purchases done using a smartphone at around 40% of total e-commerce traffic in the US – the figures are likely to be similar elsewhere as well. This implies that if your website is not conducive to a quick and effortless shopping experience, you’ll lose buyers. Remember the rule of three,

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• Promotion increases customer traffic
• Maintenance enables customer confidence and a sense of reliability.
• Improvement leads to greater sales as more and more customers wish to buy from you

Promoting Your Website

 

It usually takes time for you to show up in google search results if you’re a new website, here are some ways in reducing that time.

 

• Buy an existing domain name with an already established history – this ensures you don’t start from scratch and the search engine already recognises it in its ranking

 

• Publish press releases through websites at least a few times a year, this ensures relevancy to search engines and drives traffic

 

• Target the most searched keywords in your sector and incorporate them into your website, this will increase your page’s ranking and traffic. Be sure not to compromise on usability, though. For example, ‘handmade’, ‘carved’ and ‘sustainable’ are some of the most searched words in the furniture sector so Artisan Furniture integrates them into their website. Keyword density should be about 6-8% of your page to not disrupt the flow of your page.

 

• Find relevant backlinks and connect them to your homepage. Simply looking up relevant keywords will yield many websites that you could ask to link your page when relevant. This will enable you to ride on the coattails of blogs, information websites etc and increase traffic.

 

• Target specific searches instead of the broader term. For example, instead of ‘furniture’ use ‘handmade, sustainable furniture’ to target a higher percentage of a smaller, but perhaps more lucrative segment.
• Attempt to list your domain in major internet directories as this would increase their standing and hence ranking in search engines.

 

• Use google sitemaps and frequently update your website’s sitemap to keep it updated

 

While it can take unto a year for your site to be properly indexed in a search engine’s results, you can use this time to leverage your existing traffic through a better user experience, more targeted marketing and trending products. Use your other platform accounts such as on eBay to direct traffic towards your site, and don’t forget to analyse your traffic through means such as the free Google Analytics in order to optimise your website and products for maximum sales.

 

 

How to market yourself

 

Ability of Social Networking

 

Social networking is a significant part of everybody’s lives now. When it comes to advertising the products your dropshipping company deals in, there is no place better than the popular social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram among others. With recent advancements in mobile technology, it’s expected that over two-thirds of content on social media will be video-based which gives you an opportunity to boost the traffic to your online store by submitting engaging video-based content onto your online store.

 

Boost Your Reach Using Ads

 

Using Facebook Advertising, in particular, provides incredible levels of control and specificity with regard to targeting Facebook consumers with relevant ads. With its massive active user base of about 2 million daily users, this means that if done correctly, Facebook advertisements can get your store a high number of daily visitors that, in turn, means greater sales and earnings for your dropshipping business.

 

Facebook Ads are flexible as well, as you are able to make an advertisement about an upcoming product or make your target audience aware of the different offers you’re running like this Facebook ad by Macy’s.

 

Start A Blog

 

Blog marketing comes useful as a low-cost advertising strategy which lets you always appear in the view of your target audience.

 

Try writing blogs that offer value to readers instead of intentionally selling your goods on them. If your site manages to become an authoritative page for your target buyers, then you’ll have fa chance to generate more interest and earnings for your dropshipping company.

 

If the written word isn’t your ally, don’t worry. Just write a brief and easy blog. If you still think you need some assistance, there are various blog and article writing services which will come to your rescue and deliver top quality and engaging blog articles to your target demographic providing them an opportunity to visit your online store again. The money you spend on this will absolutely be worth it.

 

Retarget Non-Buyers

 

Just because someone didn’t buy a product off your store the first time around, it doesn’t mean they can no longer become buyers. Retargeting techniques allow you to target customers who visited your shop but didn’t purchase anything. This is done using applicable screen ads like this one by Blue Steel in which they inform the users that they have seen their store and added products from the cart. It’s a simple way to refocus buyers onto your site, and induce them to actually buy something from you.

 

Retargeting works as it creates a sense of urgency which can propel store traffic into buyers pretty quickly.

 

These were some pointers that will help you maximise the footfall you

receive on your internet shop, which, in turn, should boost the earnings and revenue of your dropshipping business. With an ever-growing number of dropshipping businesses emerging, so it is important to stay ahead of the curve and all these tips will help you do just that.

 

Pay per click ads are another way of getting traffic to your website if you’re not satisfied with the existing results of your marketing. Basically you research the most relevant keywords for your business and bid on them, the higher your bid the higher the ads will rank on the search results of these keywords and increasing traffic.

 

 

Now, you have a marketed website. How do you promote it specifically to your clientele? Perhaps you realise that your clients prefer a homestyle brand, with affordable goods that might not be the most luxurious but fit in perfectly with the average middle class home. Therefore all your branding will be that understated, homely design that draws in middle class workers that are browsing the internet after closing time. Things like relatable newsletters, agreeable, mild tones in products and indeed photos that are charming rather than outrageously fancy. A photoshoot in a Stanmore semi-detached, not a Kensington penthouse.

 

It’s key that everyone is on board with a singular strategy, and every piece of marketing material goes connects with that. All your social media accounts, websites and newsletters and indeed price list need to be coordinated. Of course, there cannot be a single guide to building a dropship brand but there’s a checklist you could follow

 

• A newsletter that corresponds with your strategy
• Social media accounts with a combination of informational posts, relatable content, marketing for new products and lifestyle photos with the relevant backgrounds
• Only incorporating products that fit your brand, like avoiding sleek, contemporary furniture if your reputation rests on antique goods
• Making initiatives that gel well with your brand — perhaps an antique roadshow for your old furniture centric company, or sponsoring a fine art exhibition to market your new Scandinavian collection

 

 

 

But, of course, your own brand is not the only way to go about this. Building it up takes time, effort and energy — all things that are in short supply for new businesses owners. In many cases, the better option might just be for you to set up an e-commerce account and sell from there.

 

A simple e-commerce accounts doesn’t take much time at all to set up. A 5 minute signup with whatever website you choose (Amazon, eBay, Wayfair, made.com or any combination really) followed by uploading all the products that you wish to sell. Complete integration with your dropshipper is a slightly more difficult task of course, but if you’re initially willing to enter orders manually — that is, placing orders with your dropshipper as your customer orders from your account — it makes your job hugely easier.

 

We’ll talk about the setup procedures and advice in another chapter, but the thing to take away from this section is that time is a limited, and valuable, resource when you’re a new dropship entrepreneur. Your attention will be torn between sales figures and backend analysis, advertising and marketing, technical management of the website and integration procedure, checking up on orders, returns, figuring out hitches and many, many more.

 

Working with an e-commerce website, at least initially, removes at least a few of these factors. You’ll be able to devote time on marketing and advertising, as well as the sales-revenue-profit analysis that we talked about earlier. Importantly, you won’t need to worry too much about attracting traffic to your website and building a sleek, targeted brand.

 

An e-commerce account gives you a ready made client base, at least to a degree. Millions of people visit Amazon, eBay and Wayfair every day — you’re unlikely to get even the same range of numbers with a private website. Of course, not all of them will want the same thing but even if a small fraction are looking for, say, pet furniture, it gives you an opportunity to target an existing clientele. For a price of course, they’ll take a cut of your sales so it’s wise to account for that when you look at profits.

 

Of course, this means that you have less freedom about your brand. When the customer base already exists, you need to tailor your products to them. The most high end of buyers aren’t likely to want to buy furniture off eBay, while people on the hunt for cheap, functional furniture won’t be prowling the polished streets of Wayfair. Every e-commerce website has a flavour of customer that prefers it, and you can’t vary too much or they won’t buy from you. There are unlimited options really! All it takes is scrolling a little bit more.

 

But this presents opportunity. If every e-commerce site has a particular flavour, you could always different goods at different sites, even going so far as to form different brands. Perhaps a more fancy sounding French name for your high end e-commerce account, and a regular soil-of-the-earth one that targets people looking for goods on the cheap. This is provided your dropshipper offers all these products under he same roof. It’s often better to have a couple of different dropshippers, both of whom you trust. As the saying goes, jack of all trades, master of none. Better to have a master of one for each brand you create.

 

Brands don’t need to be particularly strong when it comes to e-commerce accounts. But the same principals apply, even more so in this case. Keep your goods distinctive and find a niche that the hundreds of other sellers haven’t already exploited. A quick search for furniture on Amazon would reveal rows upon rows of options, but to stand out you need something special.This could be anything from glass furniture to bright, eye catching colours. Just anything that sets you apart from the maze of grey, brown and black conventional furniture.

 

You may have noticed that we haven’t talked about the differences between brands and e-commerce accounts behind the scene. That’s the beauty of dropship — there aren’t many differences at all. Your dropshipper simply ships the goods to the customers that buy them, whether that be through your website or e-commerce account. There’s less analysis to be done about traffic and revenues but you still need to be on top of your sales and revenue figures to work with a dropshipper effectively.

 

All quite simple isn’t it? The logistics, that is. Running a dropship business is still never easy — but it’s easier with an e-commerce account, at least until you develop and brand and generate enough demand to warrant cutting out the website and creating your own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daily Grind

Dropship is like any other business insofar as you need to spend time and energy to make it work. Just because a third party is managing the more technical bits and the logistics, doesn’t mean you’re meant to be free for most of the day. A business, especially one run from home, gives you a lot of flexibility — this is a good thing, you can always spend time doing things your own way as opposed to being stuck in a 9-5. Of course, the downside is that work may stretch past normal hours.

 

Think of it a bit like university versus school; there’s more work to be done in university but more freedom to do it yourself at the hours you choose. Some people flail under the immense freedom and do little, preferring the regimented days of school, but others are much more productive and find ways for their hobbies and guilty pleasures. Even Elon Musk loves a cheeky hour scrolling through Twitter.

 

What does the routine of a dropship businesses owner look like? Like everything else discussed in the book, there isn’t one answer for everyone and it all depends on your business and the time you give it. But we can talk about the things you ‘should’ do daily, and how your day should be structured. At least the bit that concerns dropship, the rest is all yours. Two episodes binged at once or five, who are we to judge.

 

• Marketing and social media
• Updates and data on the dropshipper’s website
• Customer contact
• Orders
• The big picture and analytics

 

After you settle into your comfy (home?) office, the first thing you do is make sure you aren’t sitting like a banana, bad posture is the cause of all evil. But after that, you look up your dropshipper’s website — the one should be permanently open on your desktop — and look for updates. New products that they’ve offered that you’d like to upload, any data that you want your customers to know and of course updates on how the logistics are coming along.

 

With your businesses account, you should have access to all sorts of data about new product, images and information. Perhaps there’s a new range coming out and you’d like to add it to your website, or indeed a selection of lifestyle photos that scandalise as much as they excite. A quick glance at their website would give you an indication of what you need to first that day — whether that be uploading new products, discounting some that the dropshipper has reduced the price of, removing the ones that they don’t offer any more or just sitting back and enjoying a smooth operation.

 

After al this work is done, stay on the dropshipper’s website (this will become a bit of a theme, as you’ve probably already noticed) and look for updates about inbound and outbound orders as well as returns. There should be a panel that tells you about how many orders have been shipped and how much stock will they receive in the near future. Or far future, if they’re well organised. We’ll discuss this in detail further on.

 

The warehouse inventory needs to be carefully monitored, remove products on the website that are out of stock. There’s nothing worse than spending hours looking for the perfect armchair only to realise that the one thing you liked is out of stock. Add and remove products on a daily basis based on the dropshipper’s website, your customers will thank you.

 

Now there’s the matter of stock updates. You are not storing stocks and transporting it so it’s not necessary to know the ins and outs of every single piece, but a quick look every day at the stock that’s in the warehouse, in the process of transportation, or being manufactured will help you a lot. It’ll let you target advertising better and answer customers’ queries. There’s few things more satisfying in dropship than knowing the exact time and quantity of products that are about to be shipped in, in response to a customer’s question.

 

As Zenée Bellwether showed to us with her frankly notorious Instagram management, social media is one of those things that every dropshipper should exploit. It isn’t coincidence that every major company worth their salt has a very well compensated social media manager; if you don’t have a presence on one of the major platforms, you might as well not exist.

 

This is especially true if you’re running a new business and trying to build your brand. As we discussed, the best way of doing so and promoting your business is to create a sleek, specific image that’s cultivated largely through social media. The way to go about this is to release some sort of marketing every day, even multiple times a day. Idle scrolling on Instagram is prime marketing territory; when you’re bored and distracted, even the most uninteresting of marketing techniques is bound to grab your attention. Not that your posts should be uninteresting, of course.

 

After making accounts on all the major platforms — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc — it’s important to coordinate your efforts and market every single day. Consistency across platforms and across days is the key to develop a brand. You can’t just post a photo of your vibrant looking Chesterfield one day and do a complete 180 and start posting about something completely different the next; even if the posts are drastically different there always has to be some sort of theme that connects them.

 

Think some posts, some marketing content, perhaps a smidgen of memes and pop humour, and events every week like quizzes and competitions that draw people into the rabbit hole that’s a social media account. Make sure to not be completely aloof, a bit of relatability and humour goes a long way. Especially if you’re active every day, as you should be.

 

On similar lines, marketing your new products, designs and collections is so important. Something we’ve repeated multiple times is that people can’t buy what they don’t know exists, and even if they do know, sometimes they need a bit of a push to go ahead and have a look.

 

Marketing has two facets really, awareness (/temptation) and incentive. This links in with the section about your brand but let’s summarise here. You know when Deliveroo sends you a 10 quid discount for a new restaurant in town, and suddenly it seems oh so tempting. You probably would’ve come across the restaurant if you were browsing through their website, but this incentive pushes you to buy from them specifically.

 

Of course, if the food tastes rubbish you won’t be coming back. So this incentive needs to be paired with good quality products and customer service that keeps customers coming back, giving a discount or putting up an offer only goes so far. It can pull customers in, it can’t keep them unless your products are solid. Before you know it, they’re only buying from you because of a sense of loyalty — and your quality, of course.

 

Same applies for all dropship businesses, if you offer new collections at a discount, even selling them with little or no profit, they’ll become profitable in the future as the discounts wear off and people still buy the products. You’re dealing with the general public after all, the art of retail marketing is all around you.

 

Now on to awareness. If you think that a new selection you’re launching is particularly interesting but a lot of people won’t come across it, the best idea is to advertise it on your social media channels and newsletters.

Utilise all the means you have in contacting customers, either individually or en masse, and go for it. Now, this is not exactly marketing, but customer contact is one of the ways in which you build a connection with your customers. Whether that be individually emailing them once in a while to thank them for their business and congratulate them on growth, interacting on social media pages, or even responding to queries and questions, it’s an absolutely essential part of your day. You need to be connected with your clientele, not some entity in a random London office.

 

Marketing material should ideally be equal parts tempting and reasonable. An ad for a 5000 quid silver plated console may be incredibly tempting but it’s hardly reasonable for most of your clientele. An ad for a new basic chaise is reasonable but won’t tempt the soul unless it’s something completely different. Find a healthy balance.

 

Say you want to put the spotlight on your tweed chesterfield, a la Jeff and Keith. You don’t think that people need any incentive to buy them, their sales are already solid—- but you believe there’s potential there that can be exploited. You design a ad that places chesterfields as the chosen seats of rural Scotland, with rustic carving and workmanship that’ll last a century. A mixture of appealing to patriotism and tempting them with the apparent craft of the product. You’re making them aware of the product and making it tempting for them all in one fell swoop, or swoosh of a newsletter to be precise.

 

One of the most important things in a day of a dropship retailer is to check on your orders. If you (or rather, your dropshipper) ship worldwide, this is the thing you should do first thing when you get to work. Some of us check our emails right when we wake up but that probably isn’t the best idea to keep burnout in check. A flashing phone screen full of emails at 7 in the morning before caffeine is going to make you a rather cranky person to work with throughout the day.

 

Look at what orders you’ve received and how many have been shipped by the dropshipper. This is a largely all day process; if orders stop coming in after the 9-5 you aren’t doing a very good job. This isn’t to say you need to be on your phone or computer all the time, just keep tracking your orders received and shipped on a regular basis and catalogue them at the end of each business day. Excel helps — if a customer asks you about their order and why it hasn’t been shipped yet, you know what to rather than bumbling on the phone while trying desperately to reach your supplier.

 

On a tangent, we need to talk about the bane of all dropship retailers — returns. You’ll see the details in a later chapter but for now, it’s immensely important to know that returns management is a daily job. You’ll need to read returns forms and talk to customers about why they’ve returned something, and of store and resell it if that’s what you choose.  It’s important to keep a spreadsheet of what returns have been filed and for what reason, so you can both offer discounts and talk to the dropshipper on how to reduce those returns.

 

Once you’ve checked inbound and outbound shipments, as well as returns, follow up with your supplier about any orders that aren’t completely on track. Order fulfilment is the heart of your business and customers won’t be happy if orders are delayed without reason. You absolutely need to be up to date with the order position of your company and do constant analysis that keeps you in a pole position to keep going.

 

While this isn’t technically a day to day task, analysis and research is an important part of your business. Things like seeing which products are doing well and so need more marketing, or the ones that aren’t doing quite so well so perhaps a price tweak is in order. It’s always a good idea to keep multiple tabs open on your computer of the various companies at the fore of your field, innovators if you may. Try to take inspiration from what they do — new styles of products, a completely novel initiative, different content on their newsletters, or anything that you can see is doing well and want to incorporate on your website. Backend analysis and forming a long term plan should be on the checklist of your day, even if you can’t do it every single day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tech my worthy friend

 

A dropship businesses isn’t just about selling products to customers, or working with a supplier, or spending hours doing marketing. At its very core, dropship is a child of the Internet, a technological model that didn’t really take off into the mainstream retail zeitgeist until the 2000s. This is hardly a coincidence, without all the fantastic technology of the era dropship would’ve never taken off like it has and this book would be called “The definitive guide to selling products door to door” or something along those lines.

 

This, predictably, means that you need to be adept at the technology surrounding dropship to be able to make the most of it. The model does make life easy for you — no need to know about the intricacies of shipping logistics, the makeup of packaging materials or the legal codes that bind international trade. Your attention remains undivided, at least as much as it can in this new world.

 

Simply because dropship places a lot of the technical and logistical onus on a third party doesn’t meant that you can afford to be completely hands off and let the suppler manage the whole operation. It’s your businesses after all! No one wants it to succeed as much as you.

 

The technical challenge is the most tricky part of dropship to navigate, especially if you aren’t from a technical background. You can hardly expect a high street shop owner to know what an API is, or how CSVs work. What follows is a brief guide to the technical parts of dropship and how you can set up your businesses using them. We won’t be diving deep into it, because you don’t need to know how exactly every single technical detail works — just the framework so you can get it up and running, and keep it that way.

 

Social Media

 

When we talk about social media, there’s usually a Big Three that turns up. These are, rather predictably if you spend any amount of time on the Internet, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

 

Social media is one of the simplest topics to get a grip on when you talk about technology in dropship. Unlike the good old days when you had today a fortune to reach even a tiny spectrum of prospective customers, social media means you can do that for free. Quite an incredible dystopia, really.

 

Your company should have accounts on each of the big three and post on a daily basis — we talk about this in more detail in the chapter ‘The Daily Grind’. The key is to cultivate the same image on each platform but with a slightly different flavour. Think McDonald’s offering largely the same product selection across the world but with a slightly different flavour in terms of local products and food that they exclude completely. You wouldn’t want to sell a beef burger in India, as much as a text heavy post about innovation in the online furniture industry would get much traction on the pictorial model that is Instagram.

 

The rule of thumb is pictures and lifestyle photography on Instagram, personal posts on Facebook and text heavy, professional  content on LinkedIn. You can play with the rules once you know them — but it’s important to know your market. Of course, you’re more than free to set up accounts on other smaller social media platforms such as Pinterest and HuffPost. It’s simply a matter of finding the time and energy to post most days and maintaining a coherent brand image.

 

Remember to plug your website or e-commerce account onto your social media — your aim is to push traffic towards the business end of the model and increase revenues. So how does one go about building the aforementioned website, or much simpler marketplace account?

 

 

Website

 

As we talked about before, there are largely two ways to go about starting a dropship businesses. You can either build your own website or sell on one of the many e-commerce platforms across the internet. Let’s talk about the former first, the latter is rather simple — set up an account and you’re halfway there. When you sit up a website, there’s a few important things you need to keep track of. Unless you’re proficient as a developer, you’ll likely need to to hire one to set up a website you. This is money well spent; it’s the first impression a prospective client has of your businesses.

 

The other option, of course, is to simply buy a website template off a company such as WordPress — you’ll still need to spend time filling it in and customising it, but it’ll be simpler and cost much less. The polish of a website made specifically for your needs is, of course, completely different.

 

The following are some of the aspects of the website that are important to set up correctly. A bit of a checklist if you may.

 

Product Information

Photos should be crisp and informative, with some lifestyle photography and product descriptions to make customers aware of what products they’re looking at in the right context.

 

• If you are selling clothes or wearable goods, use a size guide to aid customers in buying exactly what they need.
• Provide dimensions, weight, material used – sometimes this isn’t obvious and giving customers as much information as possible is important. For example, Artisan Furniture offers goods in a variety of wood types and these are clearly labelled as such.
• Warning labels are necessary alongside product images, depending on the nature of, and the regulations around, the product
• Imported goods should meet all relevant safety standards and labelled as such.

 

Ordering

 

This is the business end of your website and where your money comes form, therefore make sure your ordering system is sleek and simple to use. Optimise every aspect from the usage of the cart to payment means, and don’t forget to integrate it with your dropshipper if possible.

 

Shipping Options

If you have multiple dropshippers, it’s important that to have coordinated shipping procedures and similar timelines and prices. Label shipping costs for different goods clearly so customers so know what they’re getting into. Lastly, make sure you try and expand your delivery region to increase your client base and keep customers updated on any changes therein.

 

Shipment Tracking

 

You and your client should be able to track where the order is, to ensure neither of you are left in the dark as to where the package is. This also offers peace of mind to customers who’re able to see the progress the delivery had made in almost real time.

 

Complaint Resolution

 

The extent of your involvement depends on your dropshipper – they may choose to handle all complaints themselves or leave them for you. The former leaves you out fo the loop, which is hassle free but is a loss of control. In this case, all you can do is choose the right dropshipper and hope their resolution procedures are effective. The latter leads to more work but you can be sure you’re resolving them correctly. You will need to institute your own resolution procedures, and make sure they’re good in resolving complaints. A happy customer is a returning customer and leads to increased revenue in the long run.

 

Out of Stock, Back Orders

 

This is one of the problems with dropship – popular goods can become out of stock quickly and refilling them needs time. You will need to make sure you label these clearly on your website if you have real time stock inventory integration with your dropshipper, so customers know that ordering out of stock goods will lead to longer delays in getting their orders from the dropshipper. If you don’t have real time stock integration and your client orders something that’s out of stock, you’ll need to immediately contact them to make them aware of the delay (and offer other options) and also contact your dropshipper to know the timeline in which the order can be fulfilled.

 

Delays and out of stock situations are never easy to handle but inevitably occur over a period of doing e-commerce through dropship. When they happen, you’ll have to manage a difficult situation and keep your customers happy while not making unrealistic promises..

 

Now you have a website with all the bells and whistles. It’s a big investment for a new business but you have to put it in context — you don’t have to spend money on logistics at all, most of your time and funds will be spent on maximising sales and revenues. A website that’s both easy to use and streamlined will go a long way in achieving that.

 

Marketplace

 

The much simpler option, at least initially, is to set up an e-commerce platform account. The type of marketplace you wish to work with depends entirely on the products you’re selling and what your target marketplace is. The usual suspects are Amazon, eBay and Shopify — but it’s always a good idea to find specialised platforms to sell on as well. Wayfare is one of the best ones for furniture and home decor products, for example.

 

There are cons to this strategy as opposed to setting up your own website. We’ve talked about it in previous chapters but it’s worth summarising — you’ll absolutely need to pay some percentage of your income to the website, and it’s much more difficult to cultivate a brand image when working on a platform that’s not exclusively your own. But for a new business owner with limited funds — the type of person that the low cost of dropship attracts — it’s the perfect way to start off.

 

Once you have the finances, it’s simple to migrate on to your own website or even operate both at the same time! The choice is yours. Let’s talk a little bit about setting up an e-commerce account. “A little” because the process is quite simple — Amazon wants you to set up an account with them, that’s how they make money. It makes sense that they would make the process as simple as they can.

 

You simply look up the website you wish to sign up with on a search engine (do your research beforehand, the marketplace you work with will have massive implications for the revenue) and find the vendors/businesses section. The signup will be simple — they’ll usually ask for your company name, phone number, email address, card number and VAT number if you have it. Of course, you’ll need to upload the product photos, details and prices from your dropshipper’s website.

 

This leads nicely into the next section — integration. Thee’s a few different ways of integrating your dropshipper’s product specifications to your platform.

 

 

Integration

 

 

Well regardless of whether you’re going down the brand route or the e-commerce platform route, there’s a few common factors that you need to understand and choose.

 

You will always need to sync your orders and product selection with your dropshipper, because you’re selling ‘their’ products and they’re the ones who will be shipping products to your customers. You’re essentially linking your website with that of the dropshipper, relying on their product and stock infrastructure to sell goods. There are three ways of going about this.

 

Manual

 

This is the lowest level of integration. Think of a stick shift car — you need to change the gears on your own using your own knowledge of the clutch and the speed of the car. The tech itself is very basic and has been around for a long time, but the effort needed to make it work is quite high. A manual car requires your full attention at all times or the car may stall. Rather inconvenient really.

 

Similarly, if you’re not using any integration technologies to connect your website and the dropshipper’s you’ll need to do everything manually. This includes inputing prices, photos, product specifications and importantly, stock.

 

You will have to place the catalogue on the website and constantly change it whenever there’s an update on the dropshipper’s end. For example, whenever the stock of a Chesterfield sofa runs out, you’ll need to reflect that on your website — they can’t ship what they don’t have, and your customers won’t be happy to order an invisible product in an invisible parcel.

 

The dropshipper plays no role in this directly and there’s absolutely no fancy tech needed. You just need a lot time and dedication, with a knack of not letting monotonous work bore you. You’ll likely need to do this every day. A list of parameters you’ll need to update is

 

• Stock quantities of various products
• New photos or product descriptions
• Changed dimensions
• Any new products, designs and collections

 

You won’t need to pay for expensive technology if you use this, and it’s the simplest way to integrate when you’re a new business. However, apart from the laborious nature of the work, your customers may complain that the data isn’t updated frequently enough. You may need to upload data multiple times a day to make your website up to date.

 

Semi automatic

 

 

The slightly incongruous name aside, semi automatic is perhaps the best compromise between doing everything manually and using technology to integrate completely. To stick with the car analogy, if the manual method is, well, a manual car then this one is an automatic car with no cruise control or fancy self driving. It’s not particularly clever but gets the job done — you can focus on the road and the conversation around you and not as much on the process of driving the car itself. Plug and play really, you press the car into gear and it drives at your command.

 

Coming back to the non-automobile world, a semi automatic approach implies that the integration between your website and your dropshipper’s is present but not complete. To be more specific, when you start working with a dropshipper and upload their products onto your website to sell them, they’re likely to send you a document called a CSV — Comma Separated Values.

 

Don’t be concerned by the tech-y name, a CSV is simply a line of communication between your website and the dropshipper’s database. It includes everything that you need to update on a daily basis — including stocks, product prices, new photos and descriptions. Think of a CSV as a telephone line, all it does is talk to your website about the dropshipper product data. That’s it! Most dropshippers update their CSV’s at least once a day, and usually more than that, so you’ll constantly have to upload it to your website backend so you stay up to date. The procedure is simple and will be described when you set up with a dropshipper.

 

The advantage here is that you don’t need to have a ton of technical knowledge to work with CSVs, neither will you have to spend hours every day updating your website before legions of annoyed customers complain about being unable to order their favourite coffee tables. Of course, the downside is that a CSV is only as accurate as how often your dropshipper updates them so you’re largely at their mercy. It isn’t real time — but an effective dropshipper knows this and updating a CSV would be one of the most important tasks of their day.

 

Automatic

 

Last bit of car analogy here, we promise. Think of the car of the future, a fancier Tesla if you may. It may cost you an absolute fortune to buy, and a slightly smaller fortune to set up the electric chargers and the little bits and bobs that an expensive vehicle requires. But once you start using it, it essentially pays for itself and indeed drives itself. All you need to do is get your morning coffee and croissant — you can use both hands after all — and watch as the car does all the work for you while you sit in the driving seat and take the credit. The price may be eye watering but it’s convenient, not to mention cheap to run. There could hardly be a more apt analogy for what automatic integration does for your dropship business.

 

The business end of an automatic integration system is something called an API — Application Programming Interface. Again, don’t be fazed by the fancy terminology. Programmers tend to love their acronyms but they love simplicity just a little bit more. An API is simply a link between two applications, whether that be you receiving a WhatsApp from a mate and opening it in real time, or your dropshipper’s website and yours being integrated so that you share all the relevant information in real time.

 

Of course, this is the most technologically advanced stage of integration and lots of dropshippers may not even offer it. But if they do, and you have the capital to spend on full integration, it’s advisable to go for it. The technical specifications are a bit beyond the scope of this scope, and indeed of most people’s DIY skills, so it’s probably a good idea to hire a developer to integrate your website to your dropshipper’s through an API. A key part of being a dropshipper is knowing how every part of your business works, even if you don’t know the exact details. This is what this book is all about .

 

APIs ensures that everything on your website is connected to your dropshipper’s database — stocks, product photos, the whole package. The best part is that this ensures real time integration. There’s no time lag in terms of updates. The future is here, and its only a bit pricey. Completely worth it though in the long run.