Forum Moderators: buckworks
I have found good information by visiting the trade sites that support the industry I'm interested in selling products for. The trade sites often have member listings and within those listings they will often include how the manufacturer distributes their products (wholesale, retail, drop ship, etc...). Not all trade sectors are up to snuff though so don't be surprized if you don't find any mention of the drop shipping either!
As for collections, I've never tried them for the exact reason you mention. Too hard to tell if it's a good buy or not.
Drop shipping is one way to go - very little investment, other than your time with building a site. Another alternative is to buy the inventory yourself and house in a warehouse that will ship the products for you.
That might be a game you get into later though.
As a store-based retailer, we sometimes boycott suppliers who dropship one or two pieces for small web competitors of ours.
why boycott wholesalers who drop ship? I believe there will always be a place for retail stores simply because people still like to "touch and feel" what they buy. The little guy needs to be able to get into the game too, don't you think?
You can make drop ship arrangement work for you, but you can not compete on price since the quantities you are buying will not warrant the same kind of pricing as buying 100 or 1000 quantities at a time. The benefit to you is that any risk of the product depreciating over time, storage costs, shipping supplies, etc are non-existant with a drop ship arrangement.
You can make it work, just don't expect to get the same pricing as retailers that buy their own merchandise in quantity.
Essex_Boy, could I get some info too please?
My wife and I have a small business with little of our own handmade products and I'd like to get into drop shipping if possible. We started off selling on eBay and then got our own website and ecommerce store site which I'm working on.
Thanks for any members input and advice.
Drop shippers can and will offer deals to you. But you first have to prove that you can move product for them. If you become a valuable ally, you can negotiate better pricing and services.
I've been working with a drop shipper whose site is not optimized for search engines. I sell the same products for them at a higher cost. Since I move a lot a volume for them, they have now waived the drop ship fee and will give me better pricing on some items. But to get to that point, it took me a year of sending them consistent business.
Genuine wholesale marketeers do not charge a monthly fee or yearly memberships in order to sell their products, and the turnover or payout for the retail merchant is anywhere from 40% to 60% of their original cost.
The only time you should have to pay any money up front is when you are going into a franchise type of situation. (becoming an actual dealer of a certain branded product)
Most small electronics firms will require a minimum purchase of around $500.00 USD for X amount of units.
Still others, will sell to you and the public, (without fee) and offer better deals on pricing for bulk orders.
The rules may appear to be somewhat mixed, but no where will you find monthly memberships or yearly dues associated with a real wholesale products distributor.
Some time ago we started charging a very small startup fee, as we were getting a lot of people signing up who then never followed through or placed an order. However, we don't charge any additional per-order fees.
I'd look askew at any organization that wanted a large up-front fee and/or charged you extra for drop shipping.
I wish I could direct you to the best place to look for wholesale-priced drop shippers, but frankly I don't know how our drop ship customers find us. We don't advertise our drop ship services, and as far as I know we're not listed in any of the drop ship guides/Web sites.
As another poster mentioned, many times you can be successful simply by making a better Web site and/or doing better marketing than the source. There are certainly a lot of suppliers (particularly, importers) that have horrible or non-existent Web sites; if they'll do drop shipping and give you a decent price, I would suggest trying them.
One of the best resources that I found for finding drop shippers is <snip> My Drop Ship Source Directory. I found my first supplier there and have since found a few more. I now have about 10 suppliers of many different products. They do charge a fee for a lifetime membership but they do guarantee that everyone listed is legitimate which for me was worth the money after I had already spent months searching the web. They also offer a lot of tips, tools, etc. to help you get started.
Hope this helps.
[edited by: lorax at 7:32 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLs please. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
many thanks
Thanks.
Depends entirely on the product(s) you sell, how competitive the market is, and how savvy your marketing and SEO skills are.
