Can I register a business at my home address in the UK? Find out if it's right for you and explore alternatives like virtual business addresses for added privacy.
Dropshipping and fulfilment services can make it much more accessible for someone to start an ecommerce or e-retail business. It involves facilitating the sale and delivery of goods to a customer, either directly from a supplier or via a fulfilment service. It’s often cheap to get going and therefore poses less risk to the dropshipper, and with the right product and marketing, it can be easily scaled to create more revenue.
Dropshipping is an e-retail term where someone facilitates the selling and delivery of an online product without physically handling the goods. Dropshippers will communicate with third party suppliers and make orders on behalf of a customer who has ordered through them. Dropshippers will charge a price higher than their supplier offers and takes the difference as revenue. The process can vary depending on the dropshipper and the size of their business, but here’s a rough guideline as to what happens:
Dropshipping can be an excellent way for someone to start with ecommerce as they do not need to manage and purchase large amounts of stock to get started.
Fulfilment services are used heavily in conjunction with dropshipping. Anyone offering fulfilment services will have a warehouse that can be used by people to store and manage their inventory, and some solutions will include access to inventory management software.
By utilising the services of a fulfilment company alongside your dropshipping business, you may be able to transform your operations and make your business more successful. Here’s how the dropshipping process could look when also using fulfilment:
One of the significant differences here is the time it can take for the customer to receive the good. If a dropshipper is sending goods directly from a provider, this can often mean long delivery times. Fulfilment users, on the other hand, will already have the stock ready in the country of the order, meaning that the customer can receive their product at a much faster rate.
Dropshipping and fulfilment services can be a fantastic option for anyone considering ecommerce. You do not have to use a fulfilment service straight away, and trialling your idea by dropshipping can help you decide whether to invest in wholesale stock to sell.
Getting started with dropshipping is as simple as finding a product you want to sell, setting up an online store and having an efficient shipping process in place. Here’s an example of how a dropshipper can get started:
Our dropshipping and fulfilment service is for businesses that want to sell products within the UK and EU. The cost to send individual products to the UK or EU when an order is placed may become too costly for you to profit, or the higher price may deter customers from making an order. It can also lead to extended delivery times, and when many online retailers offer next day delivery, this can often result in the loss of a sale.
Have your goods delivered to UK Postbox in bulk and we’ll store them within our secure mailing facility. When an order is placed for you, we’ll fulfil and post it on your behalf on the same working day. Here’s what else you can benefit from:
Our solution has been created for start-ups, small and large-scale dropshippers. Our contracts are flexible, and ultimately, we want to work with you to create a solution that makes your business viable. Please get in touch with our business support team if you’d like to learn more.