Getting Started & Evaluating Drop Shipping Solutions

Drop Shipping (also called “Endless Aisle”, “Virtual Supply Chain”, etc.) can be a very efficient and financially attractive way of expanding a retailer’s reach into existing or new markets.

By expanding the number of products and vendors you work with, you can provide a wider assortment than you would normally have when restricted by physical inventory.

With that said, it can also be overwhelming if not handled correctly. While you are increasing margins by reducing warehouse and transportation costs, you also run the risk of reducing control over the customer experience.

Retailers who have successfully executed on a drop ship order fulfillment model have taken the time to clearly identify what they want to control and set clear expectations for their vendor community.

Because of the distributed nature of the drop shipping model, you need to consider the impact on both your systems and vendor relationships.

Using drop shipping, you will need to have a much tighter relationship with your vendors and their systems than you would in a traditional supply chain.

For example:

• Instead of integrating with a single repository of inventory, each vendor will be a source of inventory, so you will need up to date visibility between your organization and theirs.
• To ensure good customer service, your vendors will need to be able to accept electronic orders and provide timely status updates directly to your systems.
• Because your e-commerce website will now have products from multiple vendors and locations, you will need to be able to take a “consumer” order and break it up into multiple “vendor” orders and in turn, consolidate order status updates back into a single consumer view.

DropShip Commerce’s products are designed to specifically address these challenges by helping augment your current systems to support this complex fulfillment model.

Because of this, we have extensive experience in helping retail organizations prepare for drop shipping as well.

Download “Getting Started With Drop Shipping” and “Evaluating Drop Shipping Solutions” White Papers.