People who dropship
Discussion
After reading about dropshipping online the other day, i mentioned it to a friend an found out he actually does it on his spare time. Its probably a really pointless question, but one of those that will niggle at me til i know. It would be self employed if hes doing it for himself obviously, but to be doing it would he need to have a company bank account i.e be registered as a business etc or would he just use his personal account? Thanks to anyone who can spare the time to answer
We supply hundreds of resellers this way.
Generally, the ones that aren't in business to start with do it from a personal account (although a 'Sole trader' bank account can be opened very easily), but we do find the ones that make a success of it tend to incorporate within a few months and start to take it seriously.
One thing we refuse to do is supply 'large' retailers. We support small business only, which means we see quite a lot of cottage industry start-ups like this.
Whatever you do, don't tell PayPal you're drop-shipping as they will close your account!
Generally, the ones that aren't in business to start with do it from a personal account (although a 'Sole trader' bank account can be opened very easily), but we do find the ones that make a success of it tend to incorporate within a few months and start to take it seriously.
One thing we refuse to do is supply 'large' retailers. We support small business only, which means we see quite a lot of cottage industry start-ups like this.
Whatever you do, don't tell PayPal you're drop-shipping as they will close your account!
maser_spyder said:
We supply hundreds of resellers this way.
Generally, the ones that aren't in business to start with do it from a personal account (although a 'Sole trader' bank account can be opened very easily), but we do find the ones that make a success of it tend to incorporate within a few months and start to take it seriously.
One thing we refuse to do is supply 'large' retailers. We support small business only, which means we see quite a lot of cottage industry start-ups like this.
Whatever you do, don't tell PayPal you're drop-shipping as they will close your account!
Im interested in what you sell tooGenerally, the ones that aren't in business to start with do it from a personal account (although a 'Sole trader' bank account can be opened very easily), but we do find the ones that make a success of it tend to incorporate within a few months and start to take it seriously.
One thing we refuse to do is supply 'large' retailers. We support small business only, which means we see quite a lot of cottage industry start-ups like this.
Whatever you do, don't tell PayPal you're drop-shipping as they will close your account!
lawrence567 said:
jonny70 said:
Im interested in what you sell too
Just ordered something from Maser myself, it came about 10 minutes ago 
Drop me a pm if you get any issues, I'll personally sort it out for you.
Potential drop-shippers - Apologies not to get back to you sooner, but existing clients always come first! Info on
if you're interested.ETA
LinksEdited by Big Al. on Thursday 6th December 22:41
lewisf182 said:
I'd be interested too maser. I drop ship a few things but they are from chinese re sellers so dont get the best prices that I would if I were to go direct to factory. Then again I guess with the fairly small amounts I buy it wouldn't be worth it for them
Direct to factory = big bucks. Big savings too, but you'll end up with big stocks of a single product line, which isn't always ideal if you're not cash rich.Drop-shipping works on the principle of near-zero investment. As a reseller, you can access hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock, available for immediate dispatch, with pretty much no investment at all (just website setup and card processing costs). The other beauty of drop-shipping is zero investment in warehousing or staff.
The idea is, I spend millions on stock, warehouses, systems, order management, stock management, product photography and a stack of other things, and share these costs out between a few hundred clients. When you work it backwards, the reseller gets the benefit of all of these elaborate business systems for just a few pounds a month each.
To set up on your own, you would need some serious time and investment, to set up as a reseller, you just need a little time.
That's not to say it isn't hard work, it is. Dealing with the public can be 'challenging' sometimes. But taking out a huge chunk of the fulfilment stage by effectively outsourcing it means you get time to actually run your business, rather than running a warehouse.
It's the old trap that most small business owners fall in to, they end up trying to run the whole thing themselves, and actually never end up moving forwards. They effectively become employed by their own business, rather than actually running it. Outsourcing all of your product purchasing, fulfilment and warehousing frees up a lot of time to do other, much more useful things!
maser_spyder said:
Direct to factory = big bucks. Big savings too, but you'll end up with big stocks of a single product line, which isn't always ideal if you're not cash rich.
Drop-shipping works on the principle of near-zero investment. As a reseller, you can access hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock, available for immediate dispatch, with pretty much no investment at all (just website setup and card processing costs). The other beauty of drop-shipping is zero investment in warehousing or staff.
The idea is, I spend millions on stock, warehouses, systems, order management, stock management, product photography and a stack of other things, and share these costs out between a few hundred clients. When you work it backwards, the reseller gets the benefit of all of these elaborate business systems for just a few pounds a month each.
To set up on your own, you would need some serious time and investment, to set up as a reseller, you just need a little time.
That's not to say it isn't hard work, it is. Dealing with the public can be 'challenging' sometimes. But taking out a huge chunk of the fulfilment stage by effectively outsourcing it means you get time to actually run your business, rather than running a warehouse.
It's the old trap that most small business owners fall in to, they end up trying to run the whole thing themselves, and actually never end up moving forwards. They effectively become employed by their own business, rather than actually running it. Outsourcing all of your product purchasing, fulfilment and warehousing frees up a lot of time to do other, much more useful things!
Out of interest; do most of your customers have it automated so that when a customer buys from their site you automatically ship it? What sort of software links the two sites?Drop-shipping works on the principle of near-zero investment. As a reseller, you can access hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock, available for immediate dispatch, with pretty much no investment at all (just website setup and card processing costs). The other beauty of drop-shipping is zero investment in warehousing or staff.
The idea is, I spend millions on stock, warehouses, systems, order management, stock management, product photography and a stack of other things, and share these costs out between a few hundred clients. When you work it backwards, the reseller gets the benefit of all of these elaborate business systems for just a few pounds a month each.
To set up on your own, you would need some serious time and investment, to set up as a reseller, you just need a little time.
That's not to say it isn't hard work, it is. Dealing with the public can be 'challenging' sometimes. But taking out a huge chunk of the fulfilment stage by effectively outsourcing it means you get time to actually run your business, rather than running a warehouse.
It's the old trap that most small business owners fall in to, they end up trying to run the whole thing themselves, and actually never end up moving forwards. They effectively become employed by their own business, rather than actually running it. Outsourcing all of your product purchasing, fulfilment and warehousing frees up a lot of time to do other, much more useful things!
naturals said:
maser_spyder said:
Direct to factory = big bucks. Big savings too, but you'll end up with big stocks of a single product line, which isn't always ideal if you're not cash rich.
Drop-shipping works on the principle of near-zero investment. As a reseller, you can access hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock, available for immediate dispatch, with pretty much no investment at all (just website setup and card processing costs). The other beauty of drop-shipping is zero investment in warehousing or staff.
The idea is, I spend millions on stock, warehouses, systems, order management, stock management, product photography and a stack of other things, and share these costs out between a few hundred clients. When you work it backwards, the reseller gets the benefit of all of these elaborate business systems for just a few pounds a month each.
To set up on your own, you would need some serious time and investment, to set up as a reseller, you just need a little time.
That's not to say it isn't hard work, it is. Dealing with the public can be 'challenging' sometimes. But taking out a huge chunk of the fulfilment stage by effectively outsourcing it means you get time to actually run your business, rather than running a warehouse.
It's the old trap that most small business owners fall in to, they end up trying to run the whole thing themselves, and actually never end up moving forwards. They effectively become employed by their own business, rather than actually running it. Outsourcing all of your product purchasing, fulfilment and warehousing frees up a lot of time to do other, much more useful things!
Out of interest; do most of your customers have it automated so that when a customer buys from their site you automatically ship it? What sort of software links the two sites?Drop-shipping works on the principle of near-zero investment. As a reseller, you can access hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock, available for immediate dispatch, with pretty much no investment at all (just website setup and card processing costs). The other beauty of drop-shipping is zero investment in warehousing or staff.
The idea is, I spend millions on stock, warehouses, systems, order management, stock management, product photography and a stack of other things, and share these costs out between a few hundred clients. When you work it backwards, the reseller gets the benefit of all of these elaborate business systems for just a few pounds a month each.
To set up on your own, you would need some serious time and investment, to set up as a reseller, you just need a little time.
That's not to say it isn't hard work, it is. Dealing with the public can be 'challenging' sometimes. But taking out a huge chunk of the fulfilment stage by effectively outsourcing it means you get time to actually run your business, rather than running a warehouse.
It's the old trap that most small business owners fall in to, they end up trying to run the whole thing themselves, and actually never end up moving forwards. They effectively become employed by their own business, rather than actually running it. Outsourcing all of your product purchasing, fulfilment and warehousing frees up a lot of time to do other, much more useful things!
We export 'live' stock via xml and CSV every five minutes, so resellers can automate their inventory levels (most don't!).
We do have an order import function, but it's for larger resellers only, as we can't support their end of the management (which ideally needs a good developer).
Otherwise, we have a multi-basket checkout system, upload all of your orders in one go, check-out, and pay for all the orders in one go. We split to individual orders and start to dispatch normally within 8 minutes or less.
The fully automated system is excellent. Inventory management goes out, xml orders come in, auto-billing takes place on a daily basis, or at a pre-determined level.
Orders coming in depends on how the reseller runs their system. Normally, they would want to do some sort of fraud checks on all retail orders, once this is done, set the order to pending (or whatever) which generates the xml file in to us. Once dispatched, we ping an xml file back with the tracking, which could automatically mark the order at their end as completed, and automatically forward on the tracking to their customers.
It's quite a lot of time, effort and investment to get everything fully automated, so it's only really worth it for the very serious, high spenders (or the tech savvy).
Maser how do you deal with the numpties that will take your product line and sell it at 0.01% profit just to get the sale over the next person selling the same thing?
This is the biggest problem with drop-shippers I think, there is no barrier to entry. Like common sense or business nouse!
That said, if you've anything complimentary to our Balance 1st business I'd be very interested in hearing about it.
This is the biggest problem with drop-shippers I think, there is no barrier to entry. Like common sense or business nouse!
That said, if you've anything complimentary to our Balance 1st business I'd be very interested in hearing about it.
I'm sick to the back teeth of Garage/Bedroom "wantrprnurs" using what should be a restricted B2B facility (Drop ship fulfilment) to screw pricing on just about everything.
READ UP ... (hopefully you'll realise the damage you're doing to business and the macro economy at large)
-Manufacturer A invests in R&D, tooling sales marketing ETC....
-Makes a good product, has a good brand makes a margin......
-Sells the product to a retailer in a home market, a distributor in an overseas one perhaps.....
-Bricks & Mortar / Multichannel retailer has HUGE overheads & provides a good service (most of the time)
-One of the disti's choses to include your product in "Drop ship XLM / CSV" list ....
-One idiot undercuts another idiot by 5% and thus the compounding race to 0 begins
-Now margin has been so squeezed and the value stripped form Manufacturer A's products he cant afford to launch new lines, closes factories Etc Etc Etc
But it's ok, some clueless twonk in a middle England garage made 7% margin before shipping and returns. Bravo, go apply for Dragons Den.
Look, selling on line will save small businesses, large scale drop-shipping is one massive race to 0 .
0% margin for all that is....
Now, please just go about your normal life.
READ UP ... (hopefully you'll realise the damage you're doing to business and the macro economy at large)
-Manufacturer A invests in R&D, tooling sales marketing ETC....
-Makes a good product, has a good brand makes a margin......
-Sells the product to a retailer in a home market, a distributor in an overseas one perhaps.....
-Bricks & Mortar / Multichannel retailer has HUGE overheads & provides a good service (most of the time)
-One of the disti's choses to include your product in "Drop ship XLM / CSV" list ....
-One idiot undercuts another idiot by 5% and thus the compounding race to 0 begins
-Now margin has been so squeezed and the value stripped form Manufacturer A's products he cant afford to launch new lines, closes factories Etc Etc Etc
But it's ok, some clueless twonk in a middle England garage made 7% margin before shipping and returns. Bravo, go apply for Dragons Den.
Look, selling on line will save small businesses, large scale drop-shipping is one massive race to 0 .
0% margin for all that is....
Now, please just go about your normal life.
Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff