How to Right Choose Between Dropshipping and 3PL Services

Third-party fulfillment services including warehousing, picking&packing and shipping goods to customers, are provided by third-party logistics providers, called 3PL. The sellers buy goods in bulk, then they contract with 3PL to store their goods and other aspects of order fulfillment. The sellers don’t have a warehouse but they want to keep their own inventory. Once a buyer places an order in your online store, the seller contacts his 3PL company to process the order, pick and pack the products, and ship them to the buyer. 

Dropshipping is a supply chain management method which the sellers don’t need to keep the goods in stock, because the drop-shipper(normally the manufacturer or the wholesaler) will send the goods to the buyers directly. The sellers don’t spend any money on holding inventory for their ecommerce business  for inventory. But the dropshipper will charge the sellers a higher wholesale price for each item.

What’s the differences between third-party fulfillment service and dropshipping?

Third-party fulfillment service is suitable for online sellers who have enough money to buy and keep inventory, and their turn over rate of inventory is relatively high, while dropshipping is a good choice for sellers who don’t have enough money to buy inventory for their online business and don’t want to maintain inventory.

Drop Ship vs Third-party Fulfillment Service

In comparison, third-party fulfillment providers do more. They do kitting/assembly, value-added services, and give you more shipping method to choose.

One of the advantages of dropshipping is you don’t need to handle the packages, which reduces a lot of hassle. But this also makes the packing customization impossible. Third-party fulfillment providers can do a lot of work for the store owners before the packages are shipped, such as kitting, assembly, adding marketing inserts, because they receive products from multiple suppliers and process them together.

About carrier selection. The drop shippers send the products directly to the buyers, but most of them only cooperate with a few express carriers, and normally will not bother to find cheaper or faster shipping method for the store owners. This may not be a problem at ordinary days, but during holiday season, such as from November to January, when most of the store owners received tons of orders, that’s the time when problems emerged. Consumers will not be happy if they receive their Christmas gift in January. Third-party fulfillment providers can make more flexible shipping solutions for the store owners, because global shipping is what they do , they have more experiences than the suppliers.

Third-party fulfillment is more controllable

Inventory management has been a headache for the store owners who drop ship products from multiple suppliers, and it will be even harder when the owner gets a lot orders in a short time. The solution is to let all of the suppliers send the products to one place and deal with them centrally. Once you let third-party fulfillment providers handle your inventory, every shipped-in and shipped-out will be recorded, there is no need to contact different suppliers just to update the inventory. Another meaning of the word controllable is that the store owner can monitor the shipping status in real time. Professional inventory management software will return a tracking number for each shipped package, you can deal with the problem on time if something went wrong.

Third-party fulfillment service brings better customer satisfaction

The consumer can get different products in one package if the store owner uses third-party fulfillment service. This is particular important for the owner who sells quite different kinds of products in one store or owns multiple stores. Besides the products the consumers buy on their own initiative, the store owner can also send them gift kits on holidays with the help of the kitting service third-party fulfillment company provides. This is an effective marketing strategy which will deepen the brand awareness and increase customer satisfaction.

ChinaDivision is a full service third-party fulfillment provider, which not only provides quality fulfillment services as mentioned above, but also as controllable as your in-house fulfillment team. With multiple years of experiences in b2c business, ChinaDivision can provide much more professional and customizable services than dropshippers.

20 comments

  1. Hello,

    I am interested in knowing more about your services. I am starting a dropshipping business with a special focus on the US and Mexico. I wanted to know if you have flexible rates and what would be the costs and factors to take into account in order to consider China Division as a possible logistics provider. I would like to have direct contact with you in order to clear my doubts. I await your response. Thank you!

  2. hi I am Sabahan from Borneo Malaysia.i am very interested and want to know more about your service. I hope your given the opportunity to talk with your manager for more details. I await you respond. Thank you

  3. Hi,

    We would like to know how much it would cost to ship products from china to new zealand, item is a LED crystal ball weighs less than 2kgs roughly 1.3kgs and is very small dimensions of: 12x10x10cm. Thanks

  4. I am interested in learning more about your services. I am developing a direct sales business, with special attention to the United States. I want to know if you have flexible rates and what costs and factors need to be considered when considering the China branch as a possible logistics provider. I want to contact you directly to clear up my doubts. I am waiting for your reply. Thanks!

    1. Thank you for your interest. We have flexible rates and affordable shipping costs, 30-day free warehousing. We can ship orders within 24 hours. Pls feel free to contact us: +86 15067917309 or [email protected]

  5. Hi i would like to know the costs of shipping a roller blind measuring 2m x 2m and weighing approximately 4kg from Chengdu to Kuantan, Malaysia. The item will be handled n packed by the seller. So just the shipping costs. I’d appreciate if you could provide me this info soonest possible via my email or whatsapp. Thank you

    My hp no. (60) 13980 8920

  6. Hello and thanks for your efforts
    i am interested in knowing more about your services.
    I am starting a dropshipping business with a special focus on Spain, and i want to know more about ChinaDivision

  7. Thanks for your blog post. A few things i would like to contribute is that laptop or computer memory should be purchased if the computer can’t cope with that which you do by using it. One can install two good old ram boards of 1GB each, for instance, but not one of 1GB and one having 2GB. One should make sure the manufacturer’s documentation for own PC to be certain what type of memory is required.

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