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The declining economy has led to an increased trend toward drop-shipping transactions and has allowed e-tailers to remain competitive while brick-and-mortar stores hedge their bets as they see physical retail sales and profits slide precipitously. By tapping into drop-shipping programs, e-tailers can effortlessly expand product lines to meet shoppers' demands without the overhead risk, inventory investment or storage requirements.
This is a nice article.
I wanted to add that manufacturers and suppliers that have product that they want to sell through drop ship retailers...make sure you have your ducks in a row before you start drop shipping.
If you have traditionally done b2b wholesale fulfillment (pallets or minimum orders), make sure your IT systems, warehouse and support team can handle direct to consumer shipping. This can be very different along a few axis:
* Automation is a must
* Tighter turn-around times
* Accuracy must be high (buyer and dropshipper problems if you don't)
* tracking and inventory levels need to be fed to your drop shippers
* drop ship retailers need hard/fast rules for things like pricing or you can have big channel conflicts.
* There are other issues that drop ship automation tools can help with.
I put up a blog on practical e-commerce about this and copied on the shipwire.com/blog site if you want to learn more.
Shipwire should write a whole article on this as we get asked a lot to help manufacturer drop ship enablement. Best,
Nate
Shipwire team
ecommerce order fulfillment.
I wanted to add that manufacturers and suppliers that have product that they want to sell through drop ship retailers...make sure you have your ducks in a row before you start drop shipping.
If you have traditionally done b2b wholesale fulfillment (pallets or minimum orders), make sure your IT systems, warehouse and support team can handle direct to consumer shipping. This can be very different along a few axis:
* Automation is a must
* Tighter turn-around times
* Accuracy must be high (buyer and dropshipper problems if you don't)
* tracking and inventory levels need to be fed to your drop shippers
* drop ship retailers need hard/fast rules for things like pricing or you can have big channel conflicts.
* There are other issues that drop ship automation tools can help with.
I put up a blog on practical e-commerce about this and copied on the shipwire.com/blog site if you want to learn more.
Shipwire should write a whole article on this as we get asked a lot to help manufacturer drop ship enablement. Best,
Nate
Shipwire team
ecommerce order fulfillment.
I could not agree more. My business is based off of drop shipping. It is great as I have to carry very little inventory which has allowed me to become much more profitable (even in this environment). What is really critical is having software that automates this process. I really can't recommend Nexternal (www.nexternal.com) enough. Their drop shipping module is phenomenal. It has completely automated my drop shipping relationships and it would not be a stretch to say it has changed my life. Highly recommended.
