I am starting an online store for a friend. He carries sporting equipment in his brick and mortar store. I told him he could either carry the inventory himself (some of which he already does) or also drop ship from his suppliers. I told him to give me a list of the products he wants to put online and an inventory amount of each product (that he physically has in the shop). My question is if he tells me (as an example) to put X product online in all 8 sizes how does he know his supplier will ALWAYS have that product (for the drop ship products)? How does the manufacturers inventory link with his online store software? I am using wordpress in conjunction with Cart66 to accomplish his ecommerce needs. So far everything is manual. I manually create each product and enter a quantity. When an order is placed he gets an email takes it off the shelf packages it and sends it out. This is his and my (design wise) first online store so I did not consider what I assume is a more robust solution like Magento or something else. That may be something to consider after getting his feet wet with this system as online sales creates a whole new workload for a business. If a more robust solution has some sort of linking capability for product inventory that works along with the manufacturers servers or something like that I am unaware of that feature. I suggested he contact his suppliers and ask them how it works as well. Since this is my first attempt at creating an online store I unfortunately do not know if I am doing things the hard way and if any system I am using is lacking in any way. Thanks iso
I would definitely recommend speaking with your suppliers and explain how you want to drop ship from your online store. This way you can have a better idea on what their inventory levels are and turnaround times for product that is not immediately available. The same concerns apply to the inventory your friend has in his shop, since the product could be purchased the same time a customer is looking online. Having an integrated inventory system with the store would eliminate this scenario. In regards to the manual uploads of product, you can see how this works out in the beginning. But you might find it hard to manage down the road and in need of a more robust/automated system. I’ve also heard good things about Volusion as a total ecommerce solution.
That's the reason why Drop Shipping sucks. As a business you have to rely on the supplier and HOPE they have the product in stock. If they don't have the product you have to TRUST and HOPE they order it to get it in. Meanwhile, YOUR customer will be flooding you with questions that you can't answer thus leading to a return of funds to the consumer....not from the drop ship company =) It sucks. Run. It's better to be an affiliate and have nothing to do with the transaction than to play monkey in the middle.
1. Are they reputable? 2. Is their process automated? 3. What’s their typical lead time? 4. How do they handle returns? 5. Will they be accountable for problems? 6. Do they send automated confirmations? 7. Do they print customized packing slips? 8. Do they have a minimum quantity restriction? 9. Do they charge you to set up an account?
Most drop-shipping companies that are legitamate send out email alerts when products become out of stock/in stock so that is how you will know. Other than that be honest with your customers. If the product is out of stock, just tell them that and you will place the order on hold and ship when it gets back in or replace it with a comprable product.
Data is all-important before considering a drop shipper. I run many DS websites and have for years. Before starting any DS website I query the vendor, study the data provided and then research the pricing presented before I lift one finger to build the website. You'll find many games played by DS vendors and oftentimes you'll find they have their own retail websites that have a long history and selling items to your potential customers at or below your "wholesale" price. Research is key before beginning any DS venture. I've researched hundreds of vendors and only a few made the cut. I don't invest my time to build websites to compete against the supplier or their "preferred" clients. If there isn't enough markup from my wholesale price and what I see other sites selling the items for then I toss those vendors in the trash. You'll find that is the VAST MAJORITY of DS vendors if you perform your due diligence before building the website. There are some nuggets out there but you pan through a lot of sand before finding them.
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It happens sometimes even when the manufacturer has an RSS feed to their inventory. Live with it. I'm not sure if being an affiliate is much of an answer, though. How does that help to get a tiny little portion of the profit for an order that the place you are an affiliate of has to refund when they are out of stock or their dropshipper is out of stock of? Being an affiliate is the lazy way of doing e commerce. Far fewer people make serious money as an affiliate as actual e commerce website owners do. If it is a product line that has multiple suppliers, you should constantly be looking for new suppliers and should send some of them business occasionally - even when their price is a little higher. That way, when something is out of stock at your main place, you'll have backup places that you can hopefully use.
He doesn't. He is taking a risk and assuming that the supplier will. Or, if the product is popular, as there would be many suppliers of the same product, he might have various suppliers, therefore reducing the risk.
I get weekly reports from some of my suppliers letting me know what products are out of stock, and some of them are just bulk manufacturers so they rarely are out of anything and just let me know periodically when something changes or if an order cannot be fulfilled. More advanced suppliers and larger companies should have APIs you can connect to automatically.
Most LEGITIMATE dropshippers don't label themselves as dropshippers. Most of the real dropshippers are real wholesale distributors that don't deal with the general public.