Drop Shipping Emerging To Ease Out E-Commerce Startups: All You Need to Know

Have you ever thought of doing an E-Commerce business, are you low on budget and are you tensed with all the operations you have to take into consideration? Don’t worry at all, the newly emerging concept of drop shipping is going to ease out your way tremendously. So now you might be thinking what does drop shipping stands for, isn’t it?

To make this precise and short, Drop Shipping is a method where you take orders from your customers and delegate it to the manufacturers who then will be completely liable for the dispatch and delivery of the product on your behalf. In this arrangement, the end customer will never come to know where the products are being sourced from and who is actually selling. All you have to do is to form an online store using dropshipping websites like Oberlo and extract products you wish to sell from vivid online stores available on Oberlo to your store and start selling right way.

Though Drop Shipping can be a blessing in disguise, it has its own pros and cons which eventually should be taken care before planning to start a Drop Shipping E-commerce start-up.

Pros

• Non Maintenance of Physical Inventory
  Drop Shipping eliminates your part in which you need to maintain a physical stock hence reducing costs involved in warehousing right away.
• Low Startup Costs
  Due to the pointer no. 1 start-up costs here are eliminated to the fullest or reduced to a very high extent.
• A variety of options for products
  With such an arrangement the options for products available are vivid and manufacturers are also in large quantities for a single product line.
• Emphasis on selling
  By using Drop Shipping at your disposal you can totally eliminate the need to concentrate on operations and totally devote your time to marketing and selling the products.
• Quick and Easy Setup
  Setting up such store online is very convenient and even easy for a novice to understand & operate. Drop Shipping can be started instantly within a few minutes of setting up your stores.
• Time-Saving
  The entire process of Drop Shipping is totally time-saving as various factors like operations, inventory handling, shipments are taken care by the third party hence letting you concentrate totally on marketing & selling products.
• Elimination of middlemen
  Drop Shipping eliminates the middlemen where you actually buy products from the manufacturers and they then ship the same to your customers.
• Exploring new markets
  With Drop shipping on board, you can easily explore new products and international destinations easily without indulging into R & D initially.
• Flexible Working Hours
  Since no physical inventory is maintained and no paper work is required, you can work as and when required. Totally flexible upon your availability and requirements.

With such wonderful advantages, it's quite possible to have a few disadvantages as well. Let’s just discuss the same below.

Cons of Drop Shipping Services

• Reliable & efficient Shipper
  It is not always possible that your manufacturer isn’t serving various others like you which ultimately goes against the manufacturer where he or she may prioritize others for the same products being sold by you.
• Mistakes are obvious
  Since your manufacturers who would be your shipper as well serves a number of others as well, 100 percent efficiency in completely shipping the products with 100 percent accuracy is something never seen anywhere. When the shippers are managing a lot of orders at the same time mistakes are ought to happen.
• Delayed Shipping
  Actual shipping from the date ordered may vary between 1 to 30 days since the majority of the products are international based and customers may not choose you if your estimated delivery time is anywhere more than 10 days or even less sometimes.
• Products may vary
  When you actually let customers buy from your online store and shippers to the rest, actual product ordered and shipped will vary with color, size or even type. This is a huge cause of worry when orders are in large numbers with your shippers.
• High Competition
  Drop Shipping cannot assure you cheap products since your products might be sold by the manufacturer at various other online places as well. Making the market more competitive altogether. Large stocking retailers get better deals than you since they are buying a huge quantity which eventually will attract the manufacturer.
• Self-branding is not possible
  If you tend to attract customer with branding and better packaging, it's totally not possible since you are not packing and shipping hence the quality of products and packaging cannot be assured at the shippers level.
• Customer Satisfaction is a big headache
  Just imagine a scenario where your store shows the product is in stock but until you fulfill all the formalities your manufacturer might go out of stock and might take a bit of time to get the same in stock again which eventually results in order cancellation and you might lose a reliable and loyal customer.
• Shipping charges may vary for your customer
  Since you are not buying products from one location and the shipping charges for various products bought from your store might vary. In this case, customers tend to not look at your products and go on to select some other who may possibly rest them with better shipping deals.

Conclusion:

Now that you have gone through the probable pros and cons of choosing Drop Shipping, we are sure you can ascertain the results of the same in the case being used for a new E-Commerce start-up. Safe playing and with a lot of R&D you can literally make Drop Shipping a boon for you and your business else, it may cause worries and prove a big nightmare which might go against your brand name as well. This method may yield you with huge sales and profit but at the same time can become a cause for your worry if not implemented properly. Hence make sure you do your research and talk to a few who already are into the same. Probably a Drop Shipper who discontinued might guide you and give exact pros and cons which will be helpful to your new startup. All the best, please leave your comments below in case you need further clarifications on the above topic.