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Drop Ship Merchandise
What is it?
How do I get it for my online store?
 
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Drop Ship Merchandise

Drop Ship Merchandise is products that a wholesale supplier will deliver for you on your behalf. You order from the supplier and they will ship the goods to your end customer so you don't have to hold any inventory.

Note: Not all wholesale suppliers will dropship merchandise and not all wholesale suppliers will work with online retailers!
How it Works
The first step in becoming a retailer online that offers tangible products for sale, you must be a legal business. Always remember, it doesn't matter where you sell, it matters who you are buying from and genuine wholesale suppliers will require registered business information and a tax ID.

This may sound scary to many, but it really is simple!

For US residents, you can obtain a registered business name with your County Clerk and your Sales and Use Tax ID from your State's Department of Revenue. We provide links for our members that go directly to the pages where they can find more information and sign up for a tax ID.

For Non-US residents, you will need whatever your country requires that you have to prove you are a legal retailer.

All countries and states differ, so you need to see what your location requires by contacting a local government agency that deals in business setup.

There are services that provide assistance for a fee. We recommend MyCorporation.com

Once you are legal and ready, then you need to find wholesale suppliers that offer products that will work with you. Again, as mentioned above, not all wholesale suppliers will drop ship!

You need to be careful if you decide to find suppliers on your own. There are many scams and middlemen suppliers pretending to be legitimate dropshippers, but in fact they will either take your money and run, or will charge you ridiculous "wholesale" prices for the products so they can make money in the middle for passing along orders for you to the real supplier.

You can find more information about what to watch out for by visiting our Scam Watch page.

Once you locate a genuine wholesale supplier that will work with online retailers and dropship for you, then you setup an account with the supplier by either contacting them directly via phone or email or using an online account setup form that you can find on the suppliers website.

Note: It is VERY important that you read all the policies and procedures that the supplier will outline on their site. You will understand return policies, shipping policies and more that you need to adhere to when selling this suppliers products!

Once you are approved for an account, the supplier will provide you with wholesale prices, images and descriptions so you can start listing the products for sale on your website or auctions.

Once a customer orders from you, you then pass the order information to the supplier and they will ship the product to you. You can consider your wholesale supplier your fulfillment center at this point. Many wholesale suppliers will "blind dropship" meaning that the customer doesn't exactly know where the product came from or the supplier may use shipping labels provided by you, so the customer will know where the product came from. But the majority will blind ship and use a PO Box address.

Finding Wholesale Products to sell Online
The ONLY way to get true wholesale prices is to get the product directly from a Certified Product Wholesaler. That is why we have spent years visiting tradeshows, visiting wholesalers and finding genuine wholesale suppliers who will work with new online sellers. It's not easy, but after over a decade we have collected the internet's largest, most comprehensive Directory of Certified Wholesalers you can find anywhere...and we add new WBI Certified® Wholesalers daily!


You may also be interested in:

The Best Wholesale Products Come from WBI Certified® Wholesalers: Take a quick look at how we locate genuine certified wholesalers for online sellers who work from home.

Wholesale Tips Videos: These Free videos, hosted by our CEO Chris Malta, covers the top wholesale questions asked by new online sellers interested in working with wholesale distributors. Simply click the link if you would like to watch them now on our site.

Dropshipping Blog: We post a lot of great information on our blog about selling online, dropshipping, about drop shippers and more. Click the link to visit and don't forget to comment on the posts you like!