How does dropshipping fulfillment work?

Hi there,

Let's say that I bought the product from a dropshipping company. Then I sold it on eBay. And then I got to go back to the site and enter of the my customer's address info to the dropshipping company's checkout page. But the my purchase price is $10 and the my selling price is $20. Now what? Will I send a mail to the dropshipping company for price adjustments every time? Is there not a short way? I mean, Can I add this as a note in the payment step?

Thank you in advance.

Hi Mustafa,

You don't adjust anything, you just pay what your cost is. So if you have sold a product for (lets say 20) and it costs you a total of 10 (with shipping) then you pay the 10. The buyer pays you your price, which was 20 and you gross (before costs) a profit of 10 dollars.

That's exactly how dropshipping works, unless I've misunderstood the question?

Thanks for reply Fudji.

But I wonder that, If I don't tell them (dropshipping company) I'm dropshipper and they send product to my customer and my customer looks at the price on the bill and wow! He/she thinks like that: I bought this for $20 but real price was $10! Scam alert! And negative feedback goes to eBay...

Hope to tell myself..

Dropshippers use a method called "blind shipping" to send items. Blind shipping means that the order is sent without sensitive information like, the cost or the supplier's name. When you open an account with a dropshipper, you are in essence signing on as an agent to market and distribute their products.

All the dropshipper is doing is sending the order direct to your customer, instead of sending it to you to forward. So you are the one that has to invoice the customer, the dropshipper invoices you.

So your customer only ever knows what is on your invoice, they don't see any details about what you paid for the item or from where you purchased it.

what you should have done is taken the shipping price into account so you can either charge shipping fee or include it into your price.

i know on my small items i charge shippign most of the time.

Sometimes I get some items from AliExpress. So, I realize it's not going to item price information to the customer. Oh, I'm relieved.

Thank you so much for replies guys.

When you say you are getting the item's from AliExpress, are you dealing with dropshippers?

Not all suppliers on AliExpress are dropshippers, only dropshippers will ship blind. So it's important to make sure you are only dealing with companies who will blind ship for you or that sensitive information you are trying to protect will be getting sent to your customer.

So then I shouldn't use AliExpress. Thanks Mark

AliExpress is just a directory, it's not a single supplier, there are lots of different suppliers on there. You just have to make sure that you are using a dropship supplier if you want blind shipping. So always ask the supplier if they drop ship or blind ship if you're not 100% sure.

Dropshipping and blind shipping are essentially the same thing, with one major difference. Where a drsopshipper sends direct to your customer without an invoice as standard practice. Wholesalers/retailers who do not offer dropshiping, but in fact offer blind shipping, means that they send the order to your customer with the invoice (unless they agree to not to), but it will have their name on it, with only the price blanked out.

Blind shipping is most commonly used by retailers when buying from wholesalers. So for example, it a product is out of stock and the retailer has that on back order for a customer, then they can ask the wholesaler to send that direct to their customer as soon as it arrives back in stock to save time. So the wholesaler will then just blank out the wholesale price on the invoice and send direct to the retailer's customer.

In this situation it doesn't matter that the suppliers name is on the invoice because they are a wholesale supplier and the retailer's customer wouldn't be able to buy direct from them anyway, so long as they weren't a registered business and open their own account. The important thing is that the wholesale price is blanked out so the retailer's customer can't see the margin they have made on the sale.

So remember, dropshipping is zero invoice to your customer. Blind shipping is invoice, but limited sensitive information provided as standard practice.