What is dropshipping?

There’s a good chance that something you’ve purchased was dropshipped to you. But what is dropshipping? Dropshipping is when a third party ships a product for an online retailer. These dropshipping companies can either be manufacturers, wholesalers, warehousers, or facilitators of arbitrage. If you’ve purchased a shirt that was printed and shipped by a company that a designer works with, that’s dropshipping. If you’ve purchased something from an Instagram ad from a brand, and the product showed up in Amazon packaging, or imported from China after the transaction, that’s dropshipping. Many brands both large and small operate on this business model as it allows for businesses to sell without holding any inventory at all.

Again, the biggest benefit to businesses that dropship is that they don’t have to hold any inventory for the dropshipped items that are listed on their online store. With dropshipping, a business can list a product on their website, to be fulfilled by another company, usually without the end customer ever knowing the difference. This means you can get up and running with a dropshipping business in very little time, and begin making sales, all without ever even creating a product yourself.

Dropshipping is a great opportunity for influencers or artists to monetize their audience, or for traditional retailers and small businesses to expand their offering. If you’re an influencer and want to generate revenue from your online presence, dropshipping products can give you revenue without the hassle of R&D or needing specialized knowledge. If you’re an in-store retailer with an online store, you can add dropshipped products to your online offering, giving your customer base a deeper offering online.

To dropship, all you need to do is install a dropshipping app to your online website. The Shopify App Store has many dropshipping apps to choose from, whether it be apps that allow you to ship products from Amazon or Alibaba, to apps that connect you with a coffee roaster that will dropship ready-made coffee after a purchase clears on your website. Squarespace offers the same functionality, by letting you connect to apps that will print and dropship apparel and home goods that you design.

Again, you don’t need to know how to screenprint to get started selling t-shirts. You don’t need to know how to print your designs to a rug or a canvas to begin creating a collection of home goods for your brand. You no longer need to take a trip to China, find a manufacturer, and set up the logistics of importing if you want to sell a line of products that can be found on Alibaba. Dropshipping is the quickest way to get started selling online. All you need is an idea to follow, and the effort needed to set up your new online store. Now that you can sell almost anything at the click of a button, what do you want to sell?