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Questions to ask your dropshipper before you start reselling

Richelle Monfort · 2016-04-11T06:54:01+00:00

Start by determining the products or types of products you want to sell. You have to choose the supplier/s that you want to work with. Once you have chosen your dropshipper, simply open an account with them and then you are able to list their products for sale without paying for them upfront. You only pay for them when you sell something, then you process the order and they ship direct to your customer. You make your money from the difference of what your selling price was and what the supplier's cost price is. Just bare in mind that you need to calculate all your costs when pricing an item. Listing fees, selling fees, transaction fees, shipping fees, absolutely everything or you can quite easily end up loosing money on the deal. You may have noticed that many use the term wholesaler in the same post as dropshipper. Just be aware that they are two completely different things. A wholesaler sells products in bulk with a set minimum order quantity, the more you buy, the cheaper the price. A dropshipper has a set price per unit, whether or not you buy 1 or 20 of the same item, they have no discount on bulk orders, but have no minimum order quantity like a wholesaler. Dropshippers like to call themselves wholesalers a lot of times because it's a good marketing term. People associate the word wholesale wholesale with cheap, so it gets thrown around a lot these day, but isn't relevant unless the supplier is offering you discounts on volume purchases. With dropshipping, you don't have to purchase products up front. The dropshipper allows you to advertise their products with your margin built into the price. Then at the time of the sale, you then place the order to ship directly to your customer and pay them their asking price and keep your margin. Just remember when doing your pricing model to calculate shipping and advertising costs To help you start off on the right foot with your dropshipper here is a relatively long but very helpful list of questions to ask your dropshipper before you start reselling their products: 1. Do you have any account setup fees ? 2. Do you have any monthly subscription fees ? 3. Will you charge us any extra fees, open or hidden charges, direct or indirect charges, etc. apart from the item selling price in order to ship the item direct to our customers with our label ? 4. After opening an account with you, how long do we have to wait to before starting to sell ? 5. Do you have handling or packaging fees ? 6. Maximum how long would we have to wait for a reply when emailing your customer support ? 7. How much do we need to spend to get a discount on each item ? 8. What is your minimum and maximum quantity order ? 9. What are your warranty policies ? 10. What are your guarantee policies ? 11. What are your shipping policies ? 12. Who pays import and export tax (Customs & Excise) ? 13. Ask about refunds - a. What are your refund policies ? b. Do you charge any refund fees ? c. Do you charge for charge-backs or failed credit card charges ? d. How long do we have to wait before you give a refund when a refund request is made ? e. Do you wait for the item be returned to you before giving a refund or do you give the refund immediately when requested ? f. If you refund only after the item has been returned to you then how long do we have to wait for the refund to be issued after the item has been returned to you ? 14. What are your return policies ? Do you charge any return fees ? 15. Who pays shipping for replacement deliveries ? (Our customer returning item to us and then we return it to you. Finally, you post replaced item to our customer. There is 3 delivery step here). 16. Who pays shipping for returns where no replacements would be made, us or you ? 17. Do they sell to the general public - a. Do you advertise on Trade Shows ? b. If so, then where and how long you've been doing it on these places ? c. If not, then what's stopping you ? 18. When did you start trading and when did you start dropshipping ? 19. Stock levels a. How often do you update your stock levels on your website ? b. When your short on stock and we make you an order, maximum how long would we have to wait for you to restock and dispatch it to our customers ? 20. Are you willing to include receipts when shipping the items with our brand names and addresses on the receipts ? If so, is there any extra charge for this? 21. When a customer complains against an order because the item didn't arrive or was found broken after opening the packaging, maximum how long does it take you to investigate and solve the problem? 22. Do you send automated/electronic notification upon receipt of order and release of shipment? 23. Can you please provide some examples of problems that arise with your drop shipping arrangement and how have you dealt with them? 24. Do you provide tracking numbers for your delivery/shipment? 25. do you also sell on Ebay? 26. Do you ship the items in packaging that plasters your business name all over them? 27. Are you able to give me competetive pricing so I can compete in the market? 28. Do you offer any incentive to sell more? 29. Do you have a datafeed that I can download? I also recommend downloading our SaleHoo New User Manual which you can find Link hidden: Login to view . (Note this guide is exclusively available to our members only) Hope this helps!

desiderare1

Hello,

I am now considering drop shipping model and analyzing all cons and prons.

My question is refereed to the following. When sourcing from a dropshipper, is it a common practice to ask for a samples first? If not, how as a seller of this (drop-shipped) product you can be sure about the real characteristics and quality of these products?

Thank you,

Lena

fudjj

Hi Lena and welcome to the SaleHoo community,

I would expect perhaps not so common, but you make a very valid point in regards to checking product quality.

Wholesaler's in general will usually send you a sample product first before you outlay a large volume of cash on stock sight unseen and tested, but you will have to still pay for it in most cases of course . So if you transfer that rule to Drop Shippers, it essentially involves you just ordering the product to test it for yourself before offering it for sale.

Could you imagine how much suppliers would lose if they happily just gave away free product to everyone that asked, that's a nightmare no supplier wants to willingly be a part of.

So I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for a Drop Shipper to offer free sample products any time soon :)

bigbrandsrd1

Hi Salehoo! I have a question: How does it works, when I have two differents supliers for my Store? How do a manage de shipping issue, in the case the clients gets products fros this two different supliers?

Thanks!

fudjj

Can anyone tell me what Bangood is like as I have them as a dropshipping Company but they have informed me that they dont put my business details on my packages that are sent to my customers?

Hi Gaetano,

Yes, that's how Drop Shipping works. The supplier )like Banggood) send the package blind, meaning that they don't include their details so the customer doesn't know they sent it.

Cheers

fudjj

It's fine using multiple suppliers, but you need to be aware of three things.

Different Shipping Times

Different Shipping Rates

Different Warranty Policies

The easiest way around this is to create your own uniform policy on each of those that encompasses those of each of the suppliers you are using. The down side to that, you may have to offer a much slower shipping time to compensate for your slowest supplier, so you have to take those sorts of things into consideration.

Ask yourself if it's going to impact your business if you do offer different shipping times and rates, if you don't feel this is going to be a problem, then run with it. You really just need to make sure it's obvious to customers making the purchases up front.

grhretail

Right. Good luck getting answers to 1-2 of these questions let alone 30 questions lol. 99% of the companies you'll be dealing with are from Asia and hardly speak English so this seems to be written by someone who has never actually attempted this and just assumes this is what you do.

fudjj

It was written by someone as a guide to help those that are unsure as to what questions to ask and by someone who has in fact actually spent time working and living in Asia themselves.

No matter where a supplier is, if they are unable to provide answers to questions, then they aren't someone you should be seriously considering doing business with.

caytugg

Hello all,

My company is just registered and I do not have any other license. Do you know if we need any licence to dropship wholesaler's/ supplier's branded products on amazon or ebay?

Thanks..

monillaroland

Hello there how does cash on delivery work as a dropshipper?

mybeardguru

Hello,

I am a beard product supplier that provides wholesale, blind drop ship and private label services. I have found that when a perspective retailer contacts me the easiest thing for me to do is email them a copy of my policies and a product catalog. This eliminates most of the questions and helps them decide if they would like to carry my products.

Thanks,

Mike

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