8 Struggles Of Being In The Dropshipping Industry

You may have heard of it, or maybe not, but drop shipping is a commonly used tactic for e-commerce businesses. Instead of having products in-store and paying for warehouse and retail space, drop shipping allows businesses to route online customer orders to the supplier. The supplier directly ships the order to the customer. Sounds easy, low-cost, and stress free –right? Wrong. Well, everything but the latter part. Dropshipping allows for no middle-man, eliminates inventory risk, less capital require, and it's easy to get started. But, before you start up an e-commerce business selling solar powered cooling hats (yes, that’s an actual thing) I’d say – cool your jets.

1. You never really know your inventory.

memecenter / Via memecenter.com

So vain of you to think you're your manufacturers only supplier. You're most likely not, which means the biweekly inventory reports they send you are practically useless.

2. Although they try, suppliers aren't always in cahoots with the production time you tell your customers.

memegenerator / Via memegenerator.net

"MUST SHIP BY" - highlight it, bold it, italicize, it. You're not yelling at them, simply accentuating it's importance. But, also probably yelling at them.

3. You take the brunt of upset customers who didn't receive all the items in their order

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4. One order can have items from multiple manufacturers

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This means multiple purchase orders, and probably a call from a confused and frustrated customer asking where the rest of their order is.

5. Customer status updates from your supplier require a minimum of 3 emails to the Operations Manager

They're busy doing.... things, duh.

6. Your product is back ordered? Thanks for the heads up, GUYS.

Sometimes the supplier will neglect to inform you of a back ordered item. Say goodbye to the lead time you promised your customer.

7. "I'll follow up with you by the end of the day"

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It's your favorite phrase to customers to buy you some time.

8. Getting a tracking number is like winning the lottery - f'get about it.

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This is frustrating for your business because when customers order something online, they want to know exactly when it's going to arrive because hello instant gratification.

9. With everything said and done, it's a great business to be a part of if your focused, organized, and hardworking.

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Cheers to the dropshipping community.