Hi fellow snr enterpreneur, I've just read a few article about business on this forum and came across the term "drop shipping". I dont quite understand this term and the process of it. May I know if it works for retailer? i.e. real physical retailer shop? (Not online business) Cheers, toby
Basically they are companies that ship items for you, many times under your business name. Basically you sell the product, pass along the shipping info to them, and they send it for a fee You handle the customer service etc, they just ship the product.
Basically, you offer a product for sale, then someone buys it from you. After you get paid, you buy the product from someone else, and they ship it to your customer. You hold no inventory, just move money around.
thank both of you very much. So in fact ship dropper is the meaning of having a shipping company to ship stuff for you. My initial thought was :"having a ship drop is to share some products with someone else and get the ship to ship both of your products together to save up cost".
The advantage to dropshipping is that you carry no inventory, as bschneider5 indicated. In most states if you are selling something that requires inventory, you have to rent a warehouse (e.g. Uhaul rental space) to stock your goods and this can cost quite a bit over time. Unless you are sell lingerie or something small that you can sneak into your garage. The disadvantage is that you are potentially selling the same thing that thousands of other websites are selling. The market gets saturated with the same stuff. I haven't tried it but I would guess that finding a dropshipper that ships to a small group of people and has a unique product would be the best.
I'd refrain from calling yourself an entrepreneur until you 1) know what it means, 2) ARE one and definitely 3) know how to spell it. Otherwise you really look like an ass. And yeah, a drop shipper stocks and send the goods for you while you do the marketing and customer stuff. E-mail/fax them the order and they will fulfill it. You collect the money and pay them (later).
tops30, you may get it wrong about fellow snr entrepreneur. What i Mean was "you"all are my respected entrepreneur. I din't mean by "me". I think i used the wrong word "fellow". As a matter of fact, i'm very new to this term and would really appreciate any guidance thank you tops30 for pointing out the word
Dropshippers ship the product directly to your customers, so you dont have to worry about carrying any inventory.