Hi, I haven’t set up my Shopify store yet. Question first. My products will come from a US supplier so I think I will have to buy from them and place the products with a dropshipper or fulfilment house to process my orders and send them out. Which would be the best and most economical option for a start up? Thanks
Hi @Darkhorse999 ,
How exciting to hear that you’re thinking of embarking on your entrepreneurial journey with us!
The simplest option is to have your supplier simply send the inventory to you in bulk so that you can then ship it out to customers whenever you receive an order through your Shopify website. This is straightforward and uncomplicated, but you will likely have to factor in the cost of getting those products shipped over to you into your product or shipping prices.
A second but more complicated option would be if your supplier could also ship the products on your behalf to your customers. That is what dropshipping is: a retail fulfillment method where a store (like yours) doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party (like your supplier) and has it shipped directly to the customer.
This does, of course, need significant integration between your store and the supplier. That’s why dropshipping in e-commerce usually requires an app to achieve this - here is a list of all the available dropshipping and Print on Demand apps.
Obviously, this may not suit your needs, in which the third option is to have your supplier ship the inventory to a fulfillment center. Again, for this to be a seamless fluid process from customer order to shipment, it would need some sort of integration or app that connected your store with the supplier and the fulfillment center. That’s quite bespoke and may require third-party help because I don’t know of an app in our store that would manage all of that for you.
I would definitely suggest that you have a look at our general guide on Understanding Shipping, which includes a link to this fantastic breakdown of Ecommerce Shipping Solutions: Shipping Products To Customers (2022).
What kind of store are you building and what kind of products are you selling? Also, where are you based? I ask this, because that may be relevant to your fulfillment strategy. After all, if you are getting larger items from your supplier in the US it may take an entirely different shipping process than if you are receiving smaller items.
So if you could give me a little more context I would hope to be able to advise you a little better!