The drop shipping business model can help businessmen spread their presence and expand their product line without really worrying about inventory holding problems. The model is simple enough:
- Customer places an order with you, paying the retail price of product
- You forward the order fulfillment request to a supplier, paying the wholesale price of product
- The supplier directly ships the product to your end customer
The benefits are obvious. However, there are challenges too, because your business doesn’t own or control the product logistics aspect, and hence has to be very well integrated with suppliers to make drop shipping a success. One of the best ecommerce website builders, Shopify, apart from powering up millions of product and service businesses, also supports ecommerce for drop shipping based businesses – you can ready this in anyShopify review. With some of its best drop shipping apps, you can maintain tight control over the whole process, and make your business super agile, and super successful.
Here are the best of them:
Oberlo
This powerful app helps you import thousands of products from AliExpress and Oberlo marketplace to your e-store with a few clicks. The best part – all prices and stock information is automatically updated from the original listings into your website’s listings. Plus, you can easily enhance product listings by changing the title, description, images, and more.
Oberlo makes it super easy for you to fulfill orders via drop shipping; once you receive an order, you just need to click a button to confirm your order from your supplier, after which Oberlo is automatically updated about order statuses (with integrated order progress tracking). Oberlo offers you filters using which you can import specific kinds of products (such as those with very fast deliver times).
You can connect your existing products to Oberlo, manage pricing by specifying rules around profit margin, and even connect with fellow drop shipping business entrepreneurs using the Ask Oberlo service.
SMAR7 Express
SMAR7 Express offers you one click drop shopping service via AliExpress and Etsy integration. All you need is a single click to connect your store listing to an AliExpress listing, and then another click to place the order for the product on AliExpress (to be directly delivered to your customer). This ensures that all your time is free for business development instead of fulfilling orders one by one.
SMAR7 Express imports AliExpress products to your store with all the product description content, images, and product variants. With E-Packet Optimization feature, SMAR7 Express makes sure your customers get quick deliveries via e-packet shipping option whenever available. Start with a 7 day free trial to get a hang of the service. The customer support is responsive enough. Plus, there are tonnes of video tutorials available online to help you use this app to the best extent.
Inventory Source
One of the most widely used drop shipping apps, Inventory Source connects your Shopify store to hundreds more than 150 verified drop shipping service providers including wholesale merchants as well as specialty products suppliers. With a few clicks, you can add thousands of product listings to your web store. These listings are automatically updated to reflect the latest prices and stock availability.
Inventory Source also works with other e-commerce platform, like Amazon. For beginners, it offers intuitive push button controls for catalog and pricing management. Seasoned businessmen can use the full range of advanced features to make the most of the expansive reach of Inventory Source. With responsive customers support, expanding network of verified suppliers, and focus on complete business process automation, Inventory Source is a really powerful app.
Spocket
Just like Oberlo connects you to AliExpress, Spocket connects you to Etsy. So, you have a potential selection of 8+ million products to integrate into your store. A caveat – you need to contact the Etsy seller to make sure he/she is ready to offer a drop shipping based service to you. Integrating Etsy products to your store is easy enough; plus, all the inventory, fulfillment, and shipments are taken care of by the Etsy seller.
However, you need to manually pass the orders to Etsy via Spocket every time, which is a bit of a hassle. Thankfully, Spocket is working to build a database of Etsy sellers that pre-agree to re-sell their goods, which will make this app a must have for anybody looking to drop ship designer and handcrafted goods.
MXED
Licensed pop culture merchandise has a massive market out there. However, sourcing products from franchises such as Marvel, Harry Potter, and Star Wars can be very difficult and expensive for businesses. If you wish to sell these merchandise, MXED is a good option. The best part – you don’t infringe on any trademark rights by selling these products via MXED.
You don’t need to manage anything about the inventory, shipping, fulfillment, or logistics. Just integrate the MXED app with your store, and all sales with automatically be synced, and then fulfilled by the MXED system. Automatic pricing and inventory updates ensure you never end up underselling or committing for orders without sufficient inventory.
Printful
Printful brings the power of drop shipping to all designers, photographers, and artists out there. With this app, you can transform your Shopify store into a super agile enterprise. Printful eliminates the requirement of machinery, stocking, and printing supplies; all you need is to offer your design based products, and let Printful take care of the printing and logistics.
Currently, Printful offers its printing and fulfillment services for California, North Carolina, and Europe. You can order sample printed products at 20% discount and with free shipping to see for yourself as to what the finished product looks like. Printful offers white label service, which means your brand shines like a star, with no Printful branding on the products.
Keep your inventory at a Printful warehouse, connect with its in-house designers for inspiration and service, get high quality e-commerce ready photographs of your products delivered to you (for creating listings), and decide on your profit margin.
Kite
If Printful doesn’t work perfectly for your design and custom printing business, try Kite. This service helps you deliver custom tablet and smartphone covers and cases, towels, flip flops, and apparel to customers by letting Kite partners take care of the printing, logistics, and fulfillment process. There’s no membership fee, and you’re charged only on per sale basis.
Worldwide shipping, on demand printing without any minimum order requirements, reporting and dashboards, a wide and expanding product selection, and helpful FAQ page to get you started – all make Kite a worthwhile drop-shipping app for your design and customization business.
Gooten
Another drop shipping app, Gooten lets you offer hundreds of custom printed products to your customers. Product categories include kitchen and bathroom accessories, home décor products, pet accessories, regular printed products like flipbooks, posters, cards, and wall arts, apart from many more. The app is free to use, and there are no minimum orders.
Plus, you get worldwide shipping. All you need is to integrate the chosen product listings to your Shopify store via Gooten, and let them be printed and shipped to your customers once you receive orders, via Gooten. Its dashboard helps you clearly track the status of all orders.
Modalyst
Modalyst lets you add unique products from over 40 categories to your e-store, from Wish.com and Modalyst’s own database. With real time integration, your e-store listings remain updated in terms of listing content, prices, and inventory. The differentiating element – you get access to millions of high margin products, as well as unique products via the Wish and Modalyst integration, respectively.
One click sourcing, real time listing upgrades, single platform for managing the complex supplier ecosystem, filtering to focus on products with smaller shipping times, auto sync of tracking numbers – all make Modalyst the perfect, hassle free, and scalable drop shipping app for Shopify stores.
Pillow Profits Fulfillment
Here’s another Shopify app to help your sell customized products with ease. Pillow Profits Fulfillment lets you add product listings for all kinds of footwear, pillow covers, socks, and bedding with your custom designs on them. You get digital photographs of how the final product will look with your design on it, so that you can create good looking product listings. All orders are automatically synced to the app, and Pillow Profit Fulfillment takes care of everything after that.
From manufacturing to printing, fulfillment to logistics, everything is managed behind the scenes. The cost of shipping is included in the pricing you get from this app. Pillow Profits Fulfillment delivers worldwide, although the automatic shipment tracking doesn’t work for all the countries. Start with a 7 day free trial to take a look at the product selection.
Concluding Remarks
Drop shipping could eliminate one of the biggest challenges of setting up a successful ecommerce store. Shopify helps, with all its powerful drop shipping enablement apps. From one click product integration to end-to-end fulfillment services, you get it all, across product categories. Check out a few of the apps we’ve covered here and get started.
