You have started your drop shopping company,and you are making sales. Exciting! Your reward? Now you have new problems to solve. With a drop shipping business, your ability to manage suppliers and the supply chain is critical. If one of your customers does not receive their order, pointing the finger at a lazy supplier does not impress anyone.
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The Two Ways To Solve Growth Problems
How do you solve headaches with your drop shipping problems? There are two methods you can use to solve this problem. First, you can rely on yourself and your employees that to develop supplier management skills. If you have a strong background in supply chain work, this approach makes sense. For everyone else, you should look for automation tools and platforms to ease the burden.
Oberlo is one of the best tools on the market to improve supply chain management. As E-commerce Platforms points out in its Oberlo review, this powerful tool now comes preinstalled for Shopify users. That said, you still need to take the take time to learn the tool and put it into action. Here are three ways this tool takes the hassle out of your drop shipping business.
Avoid packaging hassles
At first, you might not think much about packaging. Customers only care about the product, right? Inf act, there is much more to the picture. If a customer receives their order and the packaging is damaged, they will immediately have a negative impression. If the product inside is destroyed, that impression will be confirmed. You might not be able to control the product once it is shipped,but you can do your part.
With Oberlo, the packaging is handled directly by the supplier. For this benefit, there is a small trade-off. As the Oberlo FAQ states, “It is necessary that the supplier’s return address is addedto the package for customs purposes.” Honestly, it is one less problem for you to worry about in your business.
Fast Integration With Ali Express
What if there was an easy way to tap into a large network of suppliers for your dropshipping business? Instead of spending hours and hours researching new suppliers, you can merely use Ali Express. Offered by Alibaba Group, this service is designed to make it easy to locate suppliers and get your dropshipping business off the ground.
AliExpress offers products in multiple categories including luggage, computers, home and garden, clothing and sports goods. From a shipping perspective, AliExpress provides shipping to practically every country on the planet. It is a powerful resource for your drop shipping business. With Oberlo, you can pull new products into your store directly from Ali Express. That means you can import product photos, product descriptions,and other information so you can sell more quickly.
Tip: Make sure to carefully set the price on your store after you import the item from Ali Express. Your pricing needs to account for profit, taxes, marketing expenses and everything else your business needs to be sustainable.
Change Supplier Changes Quickly
How do you recover if a supplier fails to live up to their commitments? In an ideal world, you will have two or more suppliers for every product you sell. You may not have time to set up those arrangements right now. In that case, you need an easy way to switch your store to a new supplier quickly. With Oberlo, you can change suppliers rapidly. There’s no need to write new code. Just go shopping for a new supplier.
Tip: Make a note to look for new suppliers every 2-3 months just in case. This is an excellent way to manage risk in your organization.
Investigate “White Labelling” For Your Products
In early 2018, Oberlo announced that they are working on white label arrangements. This is an exciting development for drop shipping businesses that want to develop a unique brand. In essence, this will bring the option to customize the design and branding of products that are shipped.
It is not clear when this capability will be offered. Therefore, I recommend asking your suppliers if they offer a white label service. This approach will help you to build your brand loyalty,so it is worth investigating.
What To Do After You Implement Oberlo
With Oberlo in place on your Shopify store, you will have fewer supplier problems to worry about. However, Oberlo does not solve your marketing challenges. You still need a repeatable, profitable way to attract new customers. To help you achieve that goal, I recommend the book “Dot Com Secrets” by Russell Brunson. It is the most comprehensive Internet marketing book on the market.
