I'm trying to check with some people here for a recommendation for a reliable drop ship supplier with a good selection of products. I know this is a subject mentioned fairly frequently, however I'm trying to see if I can get a more recent opinion from some experienced members here. Thanks in advance from those of you who take the time to respond! Ian
If you're using Doba.com then you're paying too much. I did their 7-day trial and it took me about 15 minutes to figure out they weren't worth using. Supplier "Onyx": Claims 6500 unique items on doba.com In actuality: Through their fancy data export tool you can see exactly how many products this supplier ACTUALLY supplies - 1100. Mark-up in price from typical wholesale - $0.15-$1.25 For example: SKU# C-064BL from my current supplier(confidential of course): $3.25 USD Doba's price: $3.44 USD Cost to ship item to Canada with $100 worth of other items, after customs and shipping and handling, from my supplier: $0.75 CDN Cost to drop-ship: $3.50 USD Average profit on ebay at these prices: From my supplier, $2.00 CDN for an item that costs me $5.00 CDN in the end From Doba: -$4.50 CDN So I can import it into Canada, even paying UPS ridiculous brokerage fees and only ordering $100 worth of stuff at once (my supplier's minimum), I still make WAY more money doing it through my current supplier then through Doba. And I didn't have to pay $75 to get my current supplier from some fancy list, it just takes a business license and fax machine.
I didn't go thru doba so deeply, but looking at several suppliers, I know who they are without a second glance. Prices aren't too bad, in compared with similar services, but still. If you look on shopping.com or some other,s you have people marking stuff up 10% - which sucks and is my main problem with dropshipping.
Maybe you should figure out what you want to sell first. You can't get a lot of different things with one dropshipper unless that dropshipper is a middleman.
You also need to consider the cost of paying someone to do your shipping and receiving for you compared to the value of the product itself. If your profits for that product are only $2.00, but you're paying your drop-shipper $2.00 to ship it for you, then you just doubled your variable costs. However, if this is what you want, then you just spend more time+money on marketing and trying to get traffic then on fulfilling orders from the customers that you already have. This is where the eBay strategy falls apart because you're not as competitive as the guy who's willing to ship the same product himself for "free". In answer to your query about who my supplier is, like I said it's confidential but it's not hard to find them. I found them on wholesale-central.com, but it was through trial-and-error that I discovered they were actually worthwhile. Hint: Go with suppliers who have their own website, not ones that rely on wholesale-central's turnkey system.
I signed up at Doba, to my dismay, the net is flooded with bogus reviews and advertising, the facts are these: 1. Their so called wholesale prices are marked up 8% to 15% 2. They do not have even close to 250,000 products (more like 25,000 and half are sold out) 3. They are not Ebay certified, as I spoke directly to an Ebay superviser via Security section. They did not even know who Doba was, and forwarded the page that claims they are to their fraud department. 4. Some of their products are 200.00+ dollars over manufacturer prices (try and sell that on ebay, goodluck). 5.Their push to marketplace tool allows you to select a product and push it directly to your ebay auction or store, but what the don't tell you is that if you listed it for say a 7 day auction, and then the product runs out of stock 4 days into your auction, you are screwed, because you now have to pull the listing and you still have to pay the ebay fee's, and on something that is 500.00 + it gets expensive very fast (4.90). 6. They only dropship to the USA, Which really hurts because it takes out more than half your potential buyers. 7. If you are canadian and have a paypal account you cannot use paypal to pay for your items, like they advertise that u can. 8. Their customer support is awful, in the last 2 weeks I have e-mailed them 10 times and still have not gotten a response. 9. Ebay is saturated with other poor soles trying to sell their products. Summary After they mark up the wholesale prices, then tack on the dropship fee's, now add your ebay fee's, and your final value fee's and paypal fee's, it is nearly impossible to make a profit selling DOba's over priced products. Oh I forgot 1 other fee, they actually charge you a monthly membership fee of 38.00USD to get access to their marked up prices! They are a huge scam and ripoff, stay away and save your money do more research or beg someone who has found a legitimate supplier for their info. Which brings me to my next statement: Please Please Please, if there is anyone who knows of a good electronics/computers supplier can you please e-mail me the info, I would be forever in your debt. e-mail addy garp@accesscomm.ca Thanx
I was at this stage a few weeks ago. I looked, looked but couldn't find any good ones and so I gave up after I had some paypal problems. If you are trying to sell on ebay, I can tell you one thing: market saturated; If someone wishes to correct me, please do so. Checked out DOBA but apparently it's for US only .
because of ebay, uneducated sellers, etc... most people who have a real drop ship source are not going to reveal it. Once it hits ebay, the product value drops or the supplier has to increase the price to keep from destroying the product value. Some vendors I deal with have had to restructure their pricing to fit the internet and idiotic lowballers.
I have not used either of these two companies, and neither provide that good of deals, however they may be good companies to use until you can find a good droppshipper. http://www.megagoods.com/ http://closeoutproduct.com/ Hope this helps! Tom
You could always check out worldwidebrands.com They have a huge database of legit dropshippers and wholesalers.
I've been using wholesalemarketer.com with success in some small niches. I used to use megagoods.com. But after all, worldwidebrands.com is the way to go to help you find legit companies to drop ship for you.
I have free data links for my dropship products and several other sources that I use, if you are interested let me know. Jerry
I've used Worldwide Brands for a while and they are legit, best out there bar none, stay away from the all-in-one "we'll set you up with a website with products" type business offerings....