One of the most common problems people come up against when starting a website is immediately trying to stack themselves side by side with a retail giant like Wal Mart. Why bother trying to sell my item? Someone can just go buy it at a big store for half my cost anyway.
And you know what, they’re right. If you’re trying to offer something to your customers online that they can buy at a big chain store that’s ten minutes away, why are they going to wait a few days for it to ship? You’re not going to compete if you’re trying to go toe to toe with a bruiser like that. They don’t have decades of experience and billions of dollars in their corner doing nothing.
Instead, we want to consider what strengths we have as a dropship site that a large-scale store would not. Our primary advantage lies in that we are not carrying any inventory ourselves. An inventory choice made by a brick and mortar store is weighed carefully. They have to purchase in high enough volume that they can reasonably meet the demand for the item. If the item isn’t guaranteed to do at least moderately well, they can stand to lose a pretty penny if it doesn’t move.
Brick and mortar stores have to choose the safer path. They’re choosing what will appeal most broadly. They cannot afford to take a chance on a strange product line that would only appeal to true experts. As a dropship site we can.
We are not buying our items in massive quantities all at once. If a product line we have to offer tanks and doesn’t sell, its a hop, skip and a delete button away from being gone. We’re not going to have to liquidate the item to get precious floor space. When we want it gone, it’s gone.
We are much more free to experiment; we can try items that might not be universally popular, but will gather a dedicated following. We can offer a wide variety of similar items without having to worry they’re too similar. We’re giving a depth of options that many stores just cannot compare to.
So when someone asks why you want to sell linens when someone can just grab a quick set from Wal Mart, remind them confidently that while basic cloth and Superman patterns are great, there’s a wide world out there that the discerning buyer is going to look for, and they’re more often than not going to find their mega stores wanting.
