General branding advice

Hi everyone!

I'm new to dropshipping, and right now I'm deciding whether or not to make my own brand or resell already branded products. My goal is to eventually make my online business an asset in the future.

What do you think the pros and cons are?

Hi Harrison,

Unless you have a decent cashflow and solid business plan behind you, I'm not sure if there's any value in trying to develop your own brand right from the start. Perhaps down the road, once you have yourself a firm footing in the marketing, would be a much better time to develop your own branding.

I guess it really depends on what you are setting out to accomplish.

Branding can be a good strategy if you have solid financing and a good business model. It requires you to have a firm, a product development team that takes care of marketing, sales, operations and R&D. A brand doesn't stop with the product itself coz part of the brand is a communication with the customer that takes care of after sales concerns - in other words, relationship building with customers. This and many more along the way will help build your own brand. So if you are up for this, you should have a very good theoretical background and experience to back you up.

I expounded my research on this and I found this article:

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I hope this helps.

Hi Harrison,

Having your own brand or not does not dictate if your online business will become an asset in the future so the first step is try to figure out your business plan. As a starting business, you can plot your plans according to your will (i.e. the type of product you want to dropship, your target market). You mentioned you are new in dropshipping so most likely this is the mode of selling you want. In dropshipping, there are those who can offer private labeling, reselling, or do both. The closest thing to branding would be Private Labeling. The advantage there is you will get a unique proposition against your competitors however, product quality good for private labeling will not be at best (most of the time) for you to be able to manage your costs. And you would rely heavily on your manufacturer. Whereas, if you decide to resell branded products, you have to make sure you found a good niche to avoid selling what the majority is selling and you can contact more suppliers offering the same brands. The silver lining here is, there is already an established market that you can cater to.

Either way really works. As a budding online business, you can brand your e-Commerce store and build up your marketing and focus on good service. There's nothing like going for the extra mile in taking good care of your buyers! It would always work out in your favor in the long run.