Sourcing products from Alibaba and selling them on eBay, Amazon or other shopping websites is a proven e-commerce business model which brings considerable profits. Being e-commerce starters, a lot of online store owners choose to drop-ship from China directly. It sounds a convenient and money saving way to start an e-commerce business, but the business owner may find themselves suffering from different kinds of unanticipated problems.
Unhappy consumers. Some consumers don’t like the ship from China products, or products with Chinese letters written on the packages/shipping labels. They presume that the products made in China or ship from China must be in poor quality, which is a sad thing to say for a Chinese. On the other hand, even for the consumers who have no bias against Chinese products, the fact that an online store uses drop-shipping may generate a low level impression and make the consumers place less trust in the store.
An e-commerce brand has to show its capabilities and expertness to the customers, no matter it’s been established for a long time or not. With limited time and labor, the e-commerce owners can outsource this part of job to ChinaDivision, if he/she decides to not let the customers know that their products are made in China, ship from China or drop-shipped. ChinaDivision can provide the professional packing and special shipping methods that will not show any sign of shipping from China.
Unprofessional packing. Drop-shipping the products with complicated SKU(such as clothes and accessories) can be tricky, since the suppliers in China are in responsible for picking, packing and shipping to the consumers, once they made mistakes or being unprofessional, the consumer will receive the wrong products. Some online sellers who drop-ship even give up selling these products just to prevent the possible unprofessional packing and high mistake rate.
The drop-ship suppliers in China have to deal a lot of orders every day, but their main task is still to sell their products, drop-shipping is just their supporting service. The e-commerce business owner who has concerns about the drop-ship suppliers’ expertise in packing and shipping can try to seek help from ChinaDivision, as a dedicated order fulfillment company in China, ChinaDivision can do the same job more professional.
No branding. Brand building is a long process, it needs persistent and detail oriented work. The online sellers may find it tricky when sourcing products from drop-ship suppliers in China. The consumers may receive products with no logo, or worse, other brand’s logo. Ask the supplier to put the products in customized packages may be easy, but there are more an e-commerce business owner can do. You can see the branding tips by reading this article Branding Tips for Sourcing from Alibaba
Poor products quality. Since the store owners don’t have the chance to inspect the products before shipping, the consumers may receive very cheap-looking products. Although the online store owners always order small quantity of samples before listing the products in the store, the products of different batches may have different quality or texture. It is difficult to do the quality control strictly if the seller can’t inspect the products.
If an online store owner has trouble to find a drop-ship supplier he/she can trust enough, he/she can outsource the product inspection to a third-party. ChinaDivision will receive, count and check with the orders before putting the products on shelves, and inspect the products again before shipping them out.
Long shipping time. Long shipping time is the problem that the online store owners complain the most, some of them even say that drop-shipping means “takes 30 days to deliver or costs £30 for quick delivery”. This situation has been improved since a lot of drop-ship suppliers on Alibaba start to support ePacket shipping. But what if your supplier only supports the slow shipping methods or you want an even faster one?
ChinaDivision can provide more flexible shipping methods than the drop-ship suppliers, let the supplier send the products to ChinaDivision warehouse in Shenzhen, China, and ChinaDivision will recommend the most suitable shipping method according to the online store owners’ needs.