Galactic Guide for Those Starting with Dropshipping

Hello, I’m Iacopo Pecchi, and I work at Sintra Digital Business, a company that creates business projects for medium/large companies with ecommerce as their primary channel.

Let’s start with the fact that we love Shopify and Shopify PLUS.

Why?

Because it’s the fastest answer to digital business.

I wanted to write this article to give some guidance to all those who, in this time of Covid-19, find themselves lost in the ocean of digital possibilities or who want to better understand the reality of the dropshipping landscape.

Let’s start with what dropshipping is

Dropshipping refers to an ecommerce business model that doesn’t require setting up a warehouse or purchasing products. Instead, it involves establishing relationships with suppliers who, once they receive an online order, take care of shipping the product directly to the end customer.

Imagine ecommerce as a journey.

This journey passes through a path that involves climbing 3 mountains:

• The mountain of marketing, where demand meets the supply of products/services.
• The mountain of technology required to build the ecommerce.
• The mountain of purchasing products and storing them in a warehouse.

Well, through dropshipping, you won’t need to climb the mountain of purchasing products and managing a warehouse, because your suppliers will handle the product and its shipping.

So, to recap: no financial investment in product purchases, and no warehouse storage.

That said, if you look online, you’ll see everything and its opposite regarding dropshipping. There are those who seem to make hundreds of thousands of euros a day, and then there are those who harshly criticize it because they believe it’s a non-functional model.

Videos of coaches in Lamborghinis or in Dubai skyscrapers are trendy on platforms like YouTube.

If you’re a new merchant who’s maybe just opened a Shopify store, well, it’s not easy to navigate and understand what the truth is about all this.

But let’s start with the basics:

First theorem of dropshipping: There is no easy business, and there is no easy money.

Second theorem of dropshipping: There is no easy or difficult business, but there is fast business and slow business (and everything in between).

Third theorem of dropshipping: Dropshipping is a means, not an end. There are both small and large businesses built using the dropshipping model, keeping in mind that the goal is to make customers happy by delivering the desired product.

Reading the “ironic theorems” above, the situation becomes clearer. When watching videos from those who talk about dropshipping and either praise or criticize it, it’s important to contextualize the concepts in terms of:

• Online business maturity (how long the merchant has been online).
• The experience of the seller (just like in school, even in the digital world, years of training are needed to acquire skills).
• The business idea behind the ecommerce.
• Personal motivations and their relationship with the environmental context (especially in the Covid-19 period, there may be “greater causes” driving people to transition to digital).

So when giving criticisms or praise to a tool like dropshipping, it’s necessary not to generalize and first look at the customer, which in this case is the merchant (the ecommerce owner).

Here are some questions you should ask yourself before starting an online dropshipping business:

• What is my business idea? (opportunity, target market, brand positioning, marketing plan).
• What is my digital expertise in terms of ecommerce?
• What is my logistics expertise?
• What is the budget I want to invest over the next 12/24 months?

These are just a few of the questions a merchant needs to answer. The answers will then determine whether dropshipping is the ideal means for the business they want to create.

Finally, I want to say things as they are: I’ve been working in the ecommerce sector for 10 years, and the experience I’ve gained has led me to work on some of the most ambitious and large ecommerce projects in the Italian market. But for every topic studied and skill acquired, I’ve always started from scratch, just like all of you.

Shopify is a world where both large brands and many small merchants operate, and let’s be honest, there are also many people who want to change their life by starting from digital but don’t have “a well-defined plan.”

My advice to everyone is to “have a plan, a structure, a digital business that includes differentiation, etc.,” but it’s also true that not everyone is a digital prodigy and not all businesses can be unique.

So, while on one hand, when we start a project, we sit next to entrepreneurs to test, validate, and make the digital business idea unique, on the other hand, we’re aware that if the idea isn’t there, or if the skills still need to be acquired… come on… it’s better not to waste money unnecessarily.

So, for all those who want to start from scratch with digital commerce, who want to acquire skills in the field, and who maybe want to do a test before being convinced to invest money in a new business… well, the brightest answer to this question is just one, and it’s called Oberlo.