Blink an eye. That’s the time it takes for a business inventory buyer to click and make an order on a web site. Blink again. The order is processed by the web site, sent to the warehouse,and the order is shipped within 48 hours. Welcome to the digital supply chain, historically housed within one company. Today, new models for e-business are breaking up the digital supply chain in the form of bulk drop shipping– lightning quick business to business transactions of wholesale case lots.
Bulk drop shipping is the term used for a web property or web site, taking and processing orders from business owners for wholesale products not physically stored in stocked inventory. Instead, the wholesale order items are housed in another warehouse and shipped from direct from the supplier to the buyer. Bulk drop shipping has come into its own as a successful e-business niche due to the speed at which payment and information transfers from a web “store front” to suppliers.
It is not a new notion. For over a century, brick-and-mortar stores have held catalogs of merchandise available by mail-order. The store takes the money, with a small markup, and the customer would pick up the goods in a few weeks after they arrived. Our digital age makes this process a much faster purchase, especially for business to business transactions! Bulk drop shipping is so fast the business inventory buyer doesn’t even notice the products are not kept in stock by the web site owner!
Each component of a bulk drop shipping business must be robust for success.
To start, a web entrepreneur needs a strong business relationship with a reliable wholesale supplier. Bulk drop shipping web businesses may need many wholesale suppliers to fill a web site’s online catalog. It can be trial by fire to first find wholesale suppliers, find the ones willing to work with you, and then hope the suppliers are reliable to ship orders out! Many bulk drop shippers use some type of supplier listing or service to handle this headache.
Second, a bulk drop shipping web site needs to attract business inventory buyers to the wholesale products available. If business inventory buyers were bees, your bulk drop shipping web site needs to be the prettiest flower in the garden and the easiest to get pollen from! An easy to use and appealing web site is a must, but it is positively vital the information in the online catalog is up to date. Inventory buyers also expect secure shopping cart applications. These foundations of an online store are the walls and windows to a brick-and-mortar store. A faulty database or non-secure shopping cart application is the same as shoddy construction and your bulk drop shipping e-business won’t be around for long.
Finally, it is up to the bulk drop shipping web business to provide buyers with customer service, resolve concerns, and seek repeat business. You can use innovative advertising, repeat customer reward programs, shipping cost deals, and affiliations with feeder organizations to keep your drop shipping business hopping. The appeal of a relationship with a bulk drop shipper for warehouse owners is the freedom to focus on what they are good at: maintaining merchandise and handling shipping orders. At the end of the day, you are the middle man or woman for the transaction handling between case lot buyers and wholesale suppliers. And you can take a tidy profit for the trouble.
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