Thread: Do you use dropshippers for your online business?

Originally Posted by RaisingWealth

I'm doing a poll to see if dropshippers are a viable route for starting an online store.

Obviously it depends on the industry but overall can they be profitable.

When you've finished the poll post your experience.

Yes it is a VERY viable route to start an online store. That is how I ran my entire store before I sold it (www.pbparadise.com). I set up the oscommerce, skinned it, coded a lot of the plugins and contributions, and made it all automated. To the point where it would work like this:

1) Client buys product
2) System recognizes the product purchased
3) Accepts credit card payment
4) System checks 4-5 suppliers I had connected to via the backend
5) "Sees" what supplier has the product in stock
6) Dispatch email to client confirming order, to supplier with DROPSHIP address, and to me letting me know order was made.
7) 3 days later client gets paintball gun with my packaging/promo goodies, and he never knew it came from Texas and I was in NC.


ONLY ADVICE I CAN GIVE YOU IS MAKE SURE THE SUPPLIERS ARE REPUTABLE!!!
Check references, order a few times and dropship to friends/family, call them up and see how responsive they are.

Thanks,
Tom C.
www.aptohosting.com

Originally Posted by aptohosting

That is how I ran my entire store before I sold it (www.pbparadise.com).

Did you sell that site to a Fastlane member? I swear I have been on that site before - but it would only have been from linking to it from either here or the RD forums (which I haven't been to in a while).

Originally Posted by royemunson

Tom,

was it tough to automate the order part?? I like the idea of having the system
search the suppliers and finalizing the order automatically.

Joe

Yes it was really tough, took 3-4 weeks, and lots of time on the phone with suppliers "IT Department". They barely knew what PHP was, much less help us integrate into their system. Regardless they let us have access and we are able to finagle our system around theirs! However, if you need to do it with an existing supplier we can help!

Did you sell that site to a Fastlane member? I swear I have been on that site before - but it would only have been from linking to it from either here or the RD forums (which I haven't been to in a while).

I sold www.pbparadise.com to a member of another domain forum.

Tom

according to the site, pbparadise.com is up for sale again.

I was looking for a nut dropshipper at one point, but had to let it die because no time to launch it right.

I dropship for my online store. The biggest problem is inventory. I hate having orders and not being able to fill them. But on the other hand you can't exactly stop offering the product for sale when there's no inventory either.

Because of this I'm stocking a few of the popular items so that I can ship them out when the dropshippers run out.

what drop shipping companies do you use? Ive heard of Doba and Shopster. Are there any other good ones?

I'm not sure if this is new or not, but Amazon has a Amazon WebStore (AWS) program that does droppshipping, as well as integrates into your own existing products.

http://www.amazonservices.com/websto...=AZEnumSearchT

I spent some time there the other night reviewing the integration and it seems pretty rock solid. More importantly, it appears the site can be customized and branded to your own identity (with the exception to a "powered by").

So for those interested in niches, you can utilize AWS and pull specific products from the Amazon offerings as well as your own.

An example of a AWS powered store: http://augustinajewelry.com/ (Looks pretty custom which is the key!)

I've used dropshippers for certain products throughout the years, and then we stock inventory for the majority of products in our Warehouse. The e-biz / mail-order game is a tough one to crack, but you've got to go with your gut and load up on popular items that might sell out quickly. There have been a bunch of times when I have bought out inventory on a hot item, only to be the single seller with that item in a few months when everybody else is sold out, and there is a backlog in China. At that point you can really crank up your prices. On the flip side, there have been times when I've loaded up on something that I thought would be popular, only to find out some guy is undercutting me and we're stuck with 1000 units of X. As with any business, if you get big enough -- you can equlaize pretty quickly.

Cheers,

- Hakrjak