Your guide to efficient order fulfillment
Your customers rely on you to ship your product in a timely and efficient manner—but you’re busy handling every other aspect of your business on top of worrying about all the coordination that plays into shipping.
With drop shipping, you wouldn’t have to worry about handling the logistics of shipping along with everything else. But what is drop shipping? How does it work? And what should you look for when choosing a drop shipper? Let’s find out.
What Is Drop Shipping?
Let’s start easy: drop shipping is just a fulfillment model!
It allows you to stock items online that you don’t physically have. A drop shipping provider can fulfill the orders for that product, so you don’t have to experience the hassle of fulfillment.
Shopify puts it this way: “Drop shipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product using the drop shipping model, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the seller doesn’t have to handle the product directly.”
In short, you receive an order, you forward that order to your supplier, and then your supplier fulfills the order.
This handy graphic illustrates how drop shipping works at Petra in 4 easy steps:
How Does Drop Shipping Work?
It’s simple: as a retailer, you partner up with a drop shipper (like Petra)—which is usually a manufacturer or a wholesaler—and they house, package, and ship products directly to your customers on your behalf! Let’s break it down step by step:
- Your customer places an order on your online store or marketplace.
- You either manually or automatically send the order to your dropship supplier.
- The supplier picks the product, packs it into a box, and ships the order directly to your customer under your name with all of the necessary tracking information—the customer never even knows it was drop shipped!
And that’s it!
But wait, there are even more perks than you might have initially realized:
- Drop shipping is easy to set up and use—find a supplier, have an online storefront, and start selling! If you’re new to ecommerce, this isn’t a bad place to start.
- Setting up a drop shipping line is less costly than you think. Order fulfillment usually requires you to have a warehouse, organize, track, label, pick, pack, and ship your products. Since you don’t have to purchase products or house them, all you really must do is worry about setting up your products online!
- No exorbitant overhead costs. Since you’re not stocking inventory, you don’t have to worry about renting or leasing space to store products!
- Without the restrictions that come with physical inventory, drop shipping allows you to update your inventory quickly, and while saving money.
- Since drop shipping allows you to only pay for what you sell, you can test your new items without the risk of carrying outdated inventory.
- You can supply your own labels to many drop shippers, so it looks like your customers received their package personally from you rather than a drop shipper.
- Time is money! Organizing stock and preparing deliveries can be extremely time-consuming. Using a third party to ship items leaves you with time to focus on growing your business.
If you’re a startup, drop shipping also minimizes your risk of losing money. Since you don’t need to pay upfront to acquire inventory, you won’t lose that money if the business doesn’t pan out. You’re also less susceptible to loss of revenue as a result of changes in trends.
Finding the Right Supplier
If you’re looking to start drop shipping, you want to find a company with a track record of efficient and effective picking, packing, and shipping. Remember, just like in any other aspect of business, nothing beats experience!
Another important factor is technology; do the companies you’re vetting offer adaptable technology and/or integration services?
A Better Lemonade Stand puts it this way: “When choosing your drop shipper, make sure that they have the technological capabilities to keep up with the times. If you need to scale your business, it would be a shame if you had to break a great business partnership with your drop shipper just because they wouldn’t be able to keep up with your growth.”
Finally—and perhaps most importantly—browse their product catalog to see if what they offer matches your business type. Do they offer products that fit the style of your business? Are the products they offer quality? Don’t be afraid to do as much snooping as you need to find out which supplier best suits your needs.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to simplify your business, drop shipping is the route for you. And Petra offers drop shipping fulfillment solutions! With no minimum order, same day shipping, detailed product data, and more, our drop shipping solutions are here to meet your business needs. Learn more at petra.com, and don’t forget to browse the rest of the Petra blog!