Fulfilment services advice

Hola folks,

I am trying to get my head around online selling. I have a site up. I looked at some drop-shippers and realized, it gets very competitive and there is hardly any margin. Then I figured out. If I buy in wholesale from a manufacturer. I can have better margin. This also means spending money upfront on stocks, storing them somewhere and ship it when it sells online.

I digged around and came up with ship-wire and Amazon fulfillment. Looking for some advice from folks who have real experience from either of them. Few questions, I have in mind as I am confused to what these fulfillment centers really do?

a) Can I send stock directly from my manufacturer to Shipwire/Amazon?

b) Will they inspect the merchandise on my behalf and let me know, if some were bad, broken, leaking etc

c) When my product sells online and I am ready to ship stuff. Do these guys have their own shipping methods where I can get a rate or do I have to arrange my own shipping to the customer. Like a UPS pickup.

Thank you guys in advance.

Cheers

Hi Uncle Davy,

You are quite correct in the assertion that wholesale will always give you much better value than drop-shipping and that's for one very good reason. With drop-shipping the risk is low to zero, with wholesale the risk is much higher because you are having to outlay far more cash up front.

The bigger the risk, the more potential reward awaits, that's how this market works. After all, if everyone could just drop-ship a single product risk free and get the exact same value as someone spending 10K on buying wholesale, then everyone would stop buying wholesale and simply eliminate the risk completely buy drop-shipping.

In regards to the fulfillment questions, I don't have any personal experience. That said, I can confirm that with fulfillment, you have the products sent directly from your supplier to the fulfillment warehouse. They then store, pack and ship your items from there, so you don't have any involvement in that process.

In regards to checking products, I don't think they provide that level of service and doubt they would, but you should check with them directly to find out if that's possible.

In regards to shipping, I know that Amazon offer their Prime customers fee shipping options, so no doubt they would be using their own contracted shipping company for that. Is there other shipping options available, again I would doubt that, it just makes their job harder so I can't see anyone offering that, but again, it doesn't hurt to speak with them directly to find out what your limitations are.

Cheers

Thanks Mark. My understanding was similar to what you explained. I am going to email Shipwire. Was hoping someone might have live experience with them. I will update this thread later with what they say. Hope it helps someone.

I'm sure there will be members who will find that helpful,

Cheers UD

A lot of the training content is very much out of date. One of the training videos on deciding what to sell on eBay talks about eBay Pulse which was discontinued in 2013.

Hi William and thanks for your comment. I'll pass that through to admin for consideration.

Can you send me a link to the specific guide you're speaking of so it can be reviewed please.

Cheers