Establishing good routines for dealing with dropshippers

Hello,

I'm in the process of establishing a eCommerce site based on drop shipping.

I'm quite new to drop shipping, and my biggest concern is the lack of control - over exactly the logistics and shipping. I think that if I where in a position where I could avoided drop shipping to archeve my goals, i would.

The reason for this is that in my opinion, these steps that I outsource with a drop shipper, has an enoumous impact on my costumers experience of the brand that I'm establishing.

To minimize the risk of bad customer experiences I want to have in place good routines for solving any issues that might surface as fast and painless as possible.

Short in experience, I'm hoping anyone here can help me out with some templates that would get me started and help me cover all my bases. I'm guessing I have to make one for each drop shipper I deal with, or is it pretty much the same so that I can have the same routines with most drop shippers?

All help is appreciated.

Best regards

Hi Sigurd and welcome to the forum,

For someone short on experience, you certainly aren't short on common sense because you've just perfectly highlighted one of what I would consider being a negative in regards to dealing with a drop-shipping model.

There is quite simply one way and one way only that I'm aware of that you can do to try and mitigate any customer service issues that you may encounter and that is to have seamless access to your supplier.

By seamless access I mean have a supplier that will provide you with either an account's manager to service you or a direct line you can call to get a speedy resolution to your problem. Plenty of suppliers will prefer to have you email, I would suggest that if your concern is customer service, you should avoid suppliers that will only offer that as support.

You need open and fast communication channels to get fast resolutions to problems outside of your control. So when speaking with suppliers, put that high on your list. If they can't provide that level of customer service to you, just imagine what level of service you will be able to provide your customer ..........

Hello Mark,
thanks for replying and the nice welcome. :)

I'm currently considering the following drop shippers as suppliers for my site (all located on Salehoo):

• FocalPrice
• European Gift & Houseware
• Vie Belles
• Pleasant Hill Grain
• CKB Products Wholesale
• Simly Good Stuff Inc
• MegaGoods Inc
• Banggood
• Save Instant Trading Inc.

Do you (or anyone else) have any experiences or insights that can help me on my way?

Best regards

You'll find some member's personal experience on a couple of those on the forum at least.

As you mentioned, all are SaleHoo approved, so there are no issues in regards to our recommendation. Just bare in mind that our recommendation comes from the perspective of being a safe trading partner for members only.

You really need to discuss your priorities with suppliers themselves to ensure they can tick all those boxes for you personally.

Cheers

What di you mean by "being a safe trading partner for members only"?

Suppliers are approved by SaleHoo based on their previous public safe trading record and by providing options for members to recoup money in the event of a dispute between the two parties.

SaleHoo doesn't make judgments on criteria such as product prices, customer service and so on, because this type of criteria is subject to change.