Drop shipping offers an easy entry point into online marketing and sales. A drop shipper is a wholesale supplier or manufacturer that will send individual items straight from their warehouse to your buyers' homes, on your behalf.
For an online ecommerce business, drop shipping presents several considerable advantages:
* There is no risky inventory investment.
* There are no storage or shipping issues.
* It lets you offer an extensive product lineup.
* It provides a model for testing out new products and identifying hot sellers (that you can then purchase in volume for higher margins).
That's not to imply that drop shipping is the end-all solution for all internet sellers. It poses certain limitations as well:
* Because the majority of the work falls on your wholesaler, the profit margins are notably thinner than if you were purchasing in volume. They are true wholesale prices, but they are wholesale prices on single items, rather than bulk lots.
* Since the supplier is handling the shipping, you have less control over that area of your customer relations. Any late deliveries or poorly packaged products will reflect badly on your business. For this reason, it's always a good idea to place a small test order with a drop shipper before listing their products on your website.
Finding legitimate wholesale drop shippers isn't easy. One way to find reliable sources is to attend tradeshows. The wholesalers and manufacturers you'll meet there have been vetted by a trade association. Not every vendor at a trade fair will be willing to drop ship, but many will; and you'll feel confident that they've been verified.
You can also check out industry publications. Trade magazines are a good source for finding wholesale suppliers. Lastly, you can call the manufacturer of the product you're interested in selling. Ask them for a list of their factory-authorized wholesale suppliers. Then call the wholesalers on that list to see which ones are willing to drop ship.
