Tuesday 27 August 2013

Dropshipping Fundamentals and Gains

By Amanda Tan


What's dropshipping and how does it work? Is it really a kosher supply chain management model? Can anyone milk this system? The reality is that drop shipping is actually a blindingly simple process and a cheap entry point to selling and purchasing online.

The dropshipping financial model works as follows: a retailer finds a product from a corporation that is willing to drop ship, and then lists that product on an online auction or an eCommerce website. The retailer, then, is in charge of the promotion of that product and collecting the payment for it, but they are never actually in possession of the item.

Here are the first 2 benefits of drop shipping. Potentially the most vital one is that you never need to stock the inventory yourself. What this suggests to you as the retailer is that you don't have a huge capitol investment duty when you start your business - you do not have to purchase all your products up front. You simply list the item the supplier is happy to drop ship and then collect the payment. And this is the second benefit of drop shipping: a positive money flow cycle - meaning you receive the money before paying the supplier for the product.

This brings us to the next step of the drop shipping business model - collecting the payment and transferring the order. Once a customer has selected your product and made their payment (including the shipping costs) you then send the wholesale price and the delivery fee to the provider, together with the order for the product. The supplier, then, is in control of accomplishment and will deliver the item to the buyer. As you can see, the retailer is left with the difference in prices, without ever having to see, package, ship, or store the products.

The advantages from this step should also be apparent. Not having any inventory available yourself implies that you do not have to fret as much about unexpected shopper or market shifts. You'll never get stuck with rooms full of outmoded clobber because you've never really bought any inventory. You have only handled the payment and the order. The provider is the person that handles the other bits of this supply chain equation.

And the part of the equation that the drop shipper looks after is no tiny thing. Drop shipping frees up big amounts of your time that would generally be taken up with activities like stocking inventory, packing products, and standing in a queue after line after never-ending line at the post office.

These are the basics of drop-shipping, but there are some other advantages that are a natural outgrowth from those already said.

Without the requirement of a warehouse or other location to store your products you'll cut down on your overhead costs, and without the need to buy stock in large quantities, you can minimize the risks of overshooting projections and getting stuck with unwished-for goods.

When you use the drop-shipping model you can use all this freed-up time to investigate your market and discover all the products that can perform the best for your business. Markets and industries vary all the time, and a drop shipper can help you be flexible enough to keep up with those changes.

Drop shipping also gives you an opportunity to look like one of the "big guys." You can offer as many or as few products as you like. Concentrate on a single product or become an one stop destination for a huge variety of high-demand items.

The products you offer will, of course, depend on the providers you can find. Some are larger than others, but if you would like to succeed at online selling, reliability is way more crucial that just size. As you begin to get to the large potential online, you must know you'll be able to swiftly and reliably fill consumer demand.




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