Dropshipping - Purchasing in Bulk or One At a Time

Hello - I am brand new to the world of dropshipping and trying to figure out the most cost efficient way to purchase products. The questions I have may sound stupid but I'll ask anyway. :)

I understand that if you purchase in bulk or wholesale, you can get a much better price on items. I would like to do that but I don't quite understand how this would work with drop shipping. Would I be able to purchase items in bulk, leave them with the supplier and when a customer purchases an item, I would go to my supplier site and they would ship the item directly to my customer and deduct the item from my inventory? Is this how purchasing in bulk works with drop shipping? If not, there's no point in purchasing a bunch of inventory if I have to store it.

Ideally, I'd like to purchase only what I need (for example, if a customer orders one item, I buy only that one item from my supplier) but not sure if that's the most cost effective approach.

I appreciate any insight! Thank you!

Hi Beth and weclome to the forum,

I think you may be getting both Dropshipping and Wholesale confused as they are two completely different supply chans. You can see more here Link hidden: Login to view

I think that will make it a lot clearer for you. So you either use Wholesale or Dropship, but they are both different. You can of course use Wholesale and then sell through a fullfilment service like Amazon FBA. So that is essentially you buying in bulk and they vthen store and ship your items as per your orders, so that may be something you might be interested in.

Cheers

Thank you, Mark. I think what confused is that for some suppliers that offer drop shipping, you need to purchase a certain number of units which doesn't make sense if you just need to send one item to one customer. I just need to do more research and locate drop shipping suppliers that will send one item.

Hi Beth,

The classic definition of dropshipping is shipping a single unit at a time, but there can be some confusion in and around the term "unit" Most of the time "unit" will mean a single item, but "unit" can also be definined by a carton of items. For example, 12 ink cartridges in a single carton. so they will define the carton as a "unit" and only dropship in that quantity.

So without trying to confuse it even more lol, that is essentially bulk dropshipping (for want of a better term to describe it)

Perhaps the best way to define the difference is to say that a wholesale supplier will only ship direct to the customer making the purchase and of course that has to be a bulk purchase based on the supplier's requirements. Where as a dropshipper will ship direct to your customers, not to you (the account holder)