How to Save on Shipping Costs While Making Money in Your eCommerce Business
Looking to make money in your ecommerce retail business, but not interested in having to maintain and organize your inventory? Dropshipping could be ideal for you.
Dropshipping is a method of retail fulfillment where you don’t need to keep the products you sell online in stock. Instead, when your store sells a product, you essentially purchase the item from a third party, who ships directly to your customer.
You never have to touch or manage the product directly because you’re only purchasing inventory as-needed from a wholesaler or manufacturer when you receive an order.
Benefits of Dropshipping
Many ecommerce retailers choose dropshipping to fulfill customer orders. The method offers plenty of attractive benefits.
First, less capital is necessary. This is especially helpful to relatively new businesses or entrepreneurs just getting started. You can still carefully curate a selection of goods that fit the theme of your retail business, but you don’t need the upfront money to purchase an inventory or pay to warehouse it.
Secondly, dropshipping doesn’t require that you work from any specific location or that you need to be near your warehouse at all times. You can run a dropshipping business from virtually anywhere, as long as you can communicate with your customers and suppliers.
And finally, with dropshipping, it’s easier to scale your business and test products. Retailers launching a new store can use dropshipping to determine how popular a product category will be before purchasing inventory. Dropshipping also lets you grow your business without requiring more and more of your time or necessitating hiring a staff. You can expand and develop your business without adding lots of work.
Dropshipping Alternatives
Unfortunately, dropshipping doesn’t work for every online retailer. Dropshipping comes with a unique set of downsides that are impossible to overcome, like low profit margins, lack of autonomy over inventory going out-of-stock, and limited customization options.
When you start an ecommerce business, you might find that dropshipping isn’t ideal because of these. What you need, then, is an alternative to dropshipping that lets you manage your inventory with as little time commitment as possible and that handles all shipping, so you can spend your time focusing on growing your business.
In short, you need to work with an ecommerce fulfillment company like Shipping Pilot. Shipping Pilot can even warehouse your inventory for you, fulfill your orders, and get you deep ecommerce shipping discounts, so your business attracts more customers and saves money over time. Best of all, we don’t require contracts or minimums — just pay as you go.
Our services include:
- eCommerce Fulfillment
- Subscription Box Fulfillment
- Amazon Fulfillment
- FBA Prep Services
- Seller Fulfilled Prime
- Crowdfunding Fulfillment
- Fulfillment Pricing
- Warehousing
Shipping Pilot will collaborate with you to help you determine the best route for your new or established online retail business. Contact us to learn how partnering with Shipping Pilot is right for your business.
