But you also need to get your products to their end destination — and fast!

Customers don’t like to wait to receive their orders and slow shipping could be the reason why one-time customers don’t purchase from your store again. So what can you do to speed up the shipping process as a small business?

You may think you should handle all of your order fulfillment yourself — but what if your business grows? How would you keep up with increased demand while keeping shipping times quick?

A popular and successful way to manage order fulfillment is to outsource it to a third-party logistics provider (in other words, 3PL).

What is 3PL?

The primary purpose of 3PL providers is to free up your time to grow your business and focus on the bigger picture — without breaking a sweat picking, packing, and dispatching parcels.

However, 3PL costs can appear daunting for newbies, especially if there are minimum order levels and costly warehousing prices to consider, too.

The Benefits of 3PL

3PL companies fulfill all or some of these tasks on your behalf:

• Warehousing your products (either in one location or in warehouses around the country or globe. These warehouses are sometimes called fulfillment centers)
• Managing your inventory
• Preparing, packing, and dispatching orders
• Transporting orders from the warehouse to its final destination

Think of a 3PL as the middle-person between your online store and the customer.

Top 10 3PLs for Small Businesses

Now let’s dive in and take a look at which 3PLs have made it onto our top ten list.

We specifically focused on 3PLs with small or no minimum order limits, are small business-friendly, and are well-reviewed by other small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Saltbox

Saltbox’s order fulfillment service is well-designed for small businesses and start-ups.

To hit the ground running with Saltbox, just connect your online store to your Saltbox account, ship your inventory to them, and then they’ll take care of the rest!

Saltbox is attractive to SMEs because it offers discounted shipping rates via UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL, plus they also offer flat-rate prices for pick-and-pack services.

But best of all, there aren’t any monthly order minimums or onboarding fees!

What we also like is that Saltbox not only offers order fulfillment, but it provides workspace and warehousing services, too. It also integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, and many other popular ecommerce platforms.

Shopify Fulfillment Network

The Shopify Fulfillment Network is a relatively new ecommerce fulfillment option for Shopify users.

Shopify launched the Shopify Fulfillment Network to help start-ups and smaller businesses using its platform. You can ship as few as ten orders a day, right up to thousands, making it an excellent in-house solution for smaller operations while still giving you the room to grow as an enterprise.

Just use the Shopify Fulfillment Network app to choose which products you want the service to ship on your behalf and send them your products. Then, Shopify does the rest.

Based on your customer’s locations, the service suggests where your inventory should be stored to achieve the fastest shipping times. It’s important to clarify that storage is provided via Shopify’s 3PL network rather than its own warehouses. These facilities are vetted by Shopify and consist of a network of fulfillment services around the US and Canada.

Pricing structures are customized based on what you need, and your contract is flexible, so you can opt out any time you want.

At the time of writing, the provider’s accuracy rate for picking, packing, and dispatching was 99.5%.

ShipMonk

ShipMonk is an order fulfillment provider that works with any type of ecommerce business.

They offer negotiated discounts with all the leading shipping providers, plus ShipMonk’s fees are based on the number of orders you sell per month, starting at 0. Many 3PLs have minimum order requirements, so it’s refreshing that ShipMonk doesn’t.

Also, the more you sell, the lower the picking fees are. If you anticipate that your monthly orders will stay below 500, for example, your pick fee will be $2.50. However, if you complete more than 5,000 monthly orders, this fee goes down to $1.50.

Storage fees are fixed regardless of your monthly orders. This cost depends on the size of the bins or pallets you’ll need. Each comes with a monthly fee ranging from $1 for a small bin to $20 for a pallet.

Unlike some of its competitors, ShipMonk also fulfills orders for entrepreneurs using less-traditional online marketplaces like Etsy and Groupon. However, ShipMonk can also be used to fulfill Amazon Seller-Fulfilled Prime.

So no matter how you sell, there’s a good chance that ShipMonk provides order fulfillment services that will meet your needs.

Red Stag Fulfillment

Red Stag Fulfillment offers B2C and B2B order fulfillment at scale.

The company focuses on fulfilling large, cumbersome products that require special fulfillment services. Their average parcel weight comes in at 20 pounds, but they can ship heavier items, too.

Red Stag sets an average monthly shipment minimum of 200, although they can work with you if you send less. In contrast, some companies stick to a specified order-to-SKU ratio (the number of orders you have vs. how much you stock on their shelves). Encouragingly, Red Stag Fulfillment doesn’t do this.

The benefit of this is that you can stock a greater variety of items because you don’t have to meet specific requirements to introduce different SKUs onto their shelves.

Red Stag Fulfillment offers international shipping, Amazon Prime, or Seller-Fulfilled Prime, and, importantly, they’re small business-friendly. They have fulfillment centers dotted across the US, which lowers shipping costs and speeds up delivery times. They also offer a 30-day risk-free trial sign-up and integrate with tons of familiar names, including Shopify and WooCommerce.

The most recently available statistics tell us that in 2019, 100% of Red Stag Fulfillment’s orders were shipped on time, and 99.997% were shipped accurately. Not bad! Plus, if they make an error, you get $50!

Examples of businesses using Red Stag Fulfillment include arcade basketball company Pop-A-Shot. Their results? 100% on-time delivery, 200% growth, 40x revenue growth, and a 20,000% increase in unit volume!

ShipBob

ShipBob is another start-up-friendly option used by over 5,000 ecommerce businesses.

A wide range of SMEs use ShipBob, including lifestyle and gaming company 100 Thieves. They began using ShipBob as a start-up and now use ShipBob to manage tens of thousands of orders.

Impressively, ShipBob has a 99.95% accuracy rate, with 99.96% of orders delivered on time.

Prices are transparent and straightforward. There’s no minimum order requirement if you’re on its small business “Growth Plan” which is a program designed to help pre-launch start-ups and businesses shipping fewer than 400 monthly orders. It’s a self-service plan with no onboarding fees; you just pay as and when you require their services.

For ShipBob to receive your goods, this will cost $25 per inbound shipment, and there’s a monthly storage cost. However, this expense depends on the bin or pallet size you use.

ShipBob is also experienced in handling Kickstarter and Indiegogo fulfillment, flash sales, and more.

ShipBob also integrates with well-known ecommerce solutions, including Amazon, Squarespace, BigCommerce, and Shopify. The company ships anywhere globally that its carriers (DHL, UPS, FedEx, and USPS) deliver to.

eFulfillment Service

eFulfillment Service has no order minimum requirements, start-up costs, or long-term contracts. Their prices also seem competitive for fulfillment and storage: You just pay as you go! For exact prices, however, you will need to contact the company for a quote.

Also, if you’re interested in a cross-docking service, eFulfillment Service can do this for you. Cross-docking is when orders arrive at their warehouse and are immediately shipped out, eliminating the need for storage and extra costs.

So, if you’re a crowdfunded start-up sending out new products to backers, eFulfillment Service could be the best option for you to choose.

Whitebox

If you’re thinking about selling goods on Amazon and, in particular, via Amazon Prime, Whitebox is a turnkey 3PL often favored in this area.

It differs from other 3PLs because it offers SMEs both an order fulfillment operation and a separate marketing agency, which are often used together by its customers.

Whitebox can:

• List your products on Amazon (as well as other platforms)
• Manage your stock
• Use Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service on your behalf

We mention this because their pricing structure differs from most 3PLs. They charge an “all-in-one” monthly platform fee covering everything related to 3PL aside from software and storage fees. This includes receiving, pick-and-pack, shipping, account management, and more.

But, it’s important to remember that when you use Whitebox, you’ll still have to pay marketplace and FBA fees. As such, you may have to charge hefty markups on your products to make decent profits.

Whitebox is geared towards larger sellers because of its 1,000 per month minimum order requirement. So unless you’re confident you’ll reach this threshold, Whitebox may not be for you. It’s also worth noting that it isn’t set up for B2B transactions; it’s strictly B2C only.

That said, its client success stories include:

• Herbal cough drop brand Ricola
• Cajun spice brand, Slap Ya Mama
• Premium coffee brand Kitu Super Coffee

All of these brands started out as small businesses that grew with the help of Amazon and Whitebox.

FedEx Fulfillment

Small businesses looking for an all-in-one, 3PL fulfillment set-up may be interested in FedEx Fulfillment for its well-established and reputable brand.

If you’re a small business or startup, you don’t necessarily have to opt for a small 3PL or be put off by a 3PL that’s part of a bigger conglomerate. For example, FedEx Fulfillment is so popular partly due to its all-in-one solution offering customers storage, order fulfillment, packaging, and shipping.

It’s free to onboard, and thanks to the 3PL’s links to its parent company, customers receive shipping discounts with FedEx. There is also a monthly order minimum of 400, so if you’re confident you can reach that, FedEx Fulfillment could be the one-stop-shop order fulfillment solution you’re looking for.

Shipwire

Aimed at retailers wanting to simplify their order fulfillment process, Shipwire is a cloud-based platform that integrates with over 100 ecommerce partners; including Amazon, Shopify, and BigCommerce.

It has more than 145 fulfillment centers across 45+ countries and offers same-day order processing.

But, unfortunately, there’s a sliding scale pricing structure and a set charge for the first item picked and then a lesser amount for additional picks — so it isn’t easy to pinpoint actual costs here. Still, we found that the first item pick is charged at $2.85. Then, $0.95 for each additional pick for the first 50 orders, then $2.20 for the next 50 orders, then, after that, $0.75 for each extra pick.

We couldn’t find any reference to minimum order ceilings. Still, we did discover that Shipwire doesn’t ask its first-time customers to enter into lengthy contracts. However, there’s a minimum $500 monthly bill, so if your orders don’t amount to this, Shipwire reserves the right to charge you the difference. On the downside, some reviewers say Shipwire’s prices are high for small, lower volume sales outlets, so it’s worth getting an accurate quote before leaping in.

ShipHero

In common with many 3PL providers, ShipHero doesn’t charge set-up fees. Instead, its business model offers two different extra but helpful ecommerce solutions.

First off, there’s the fulfillment side, with no set-up fees and prices starting at $5.29 per order. Picking, packing, and postage are included, although storage costs are extra. Storage costs start at $0.65 per cubic foot and are charged daily per SKU.

Next up, the warehouse software. The prices here run at $1,850 per month.

If it’s only fulfillment you’re interested in, ShipHero provides a fully automated service across hundreds of ShipHero-owned warehouses around the US.

Over 5,000 brands use ShipHero, including oral care company Burst who reduced their costs by 35% when they began using ShipHero. Similarly, clothing brand American Tall grew its fulfillment operation by 400% with ShipHero’s help.

Our Final Thoughts

So there you have it, our guide to fulfillment warehouses with low or no order minimums.

It’s hard to decide which 3PL to go for, but there are lots of great options out there. List what you need and how you plan to grow, then use those requirements to guide your choice.

All of our picks support start-ups and small businesses, don’t ask for upfront fees, and most don’t ask you to enter into long-term contracts.

The post 10 Fulfillment Warehouses with Low or No Minimums for Small Businesses appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

Yet, few people actually understand how it works.

To someone who is new to the online business world and looking to break into the ecommerce scene, the dropshipping process can seem a little intimidating as it can be difficult to find a reliable source that tells you everything you need to know.

So here it is: The definitive guide to dropshipping. It covers everything from what the term essentially means, how this particular business model works and, if it’s for you, how to find the right product and supplier to actually run a successful, booming ecommerce dropshipping business. So let’s dive right into it!

Understanding Dropshipping

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a type of business model that enables a company to operate without maintaining inventory, owning a warehouse to store their products, or even having to ship their products to their customers themselves. How it works is that the retailer partners up with a dropship supplier that manufactures and/or warehouses products, packages the products, and ships them directly to the retailer’s customer, on the retailer’s behalf.

In simpler terms, this is how dropshipping works:

• The customer places an order for a product on the retailer’s online store.
• The retailer automatically or manually forwards the order and customer details to the dropship supplier.
• The dropship supplier packages and ships the order directly to the customer in the retailer’s name.

This kind of business model is extremely attractive as it eliminates the need for the store owner to have a physical business location such as an office space or warehouse — instead, all they need is a laptop and an internet connection.

Video Overview of Drop Shipping

Pros of Dropshipping

As a business model, dropshipping has several different aspects that prove to be beneficial, such as:

• It’s Easy to Set Up: It doesn’t take an entire village to set up since it essentially involves just 3 steps — find the supplier, set up your website, and start selling the goods! To someone who is new to the ecommerce industry, this business model is relatively easy to understand and implement.
• The Cost of Setting Up Your Dropship Business is Next to Nothing: In traditional business models, the majority of the costs are related to setting up and running the retail operations, such as purchasing inventory. Since dropshipping eliminates that step, and thus the cost of it, all you have to pay for is the associated costs of running your website (hosting, theme, apps, etc.).
• You Don’t Have to Worry About Exorbitant Overhead Costs: As previously mentioned, the business owner is not required to purchase inventory thus the costs of renting or buying warehouse/office space and the other smaller yet substantial costs pertaining to it (electricity/phone bills, stationery, etc.) aren’t an issue. The fixed costs of managing the website is all that a business owner has to worry about.
• The Risk of Dropshipping as a Business Model is Significantly Lower: If the business doesn’t sell products it still doesn’t lose anything, so there is little to no pressure about having to sell your inventory.
• The Business Can be Run from Anywhere &  is Location Independent: No office, no warehouse, no employees, and no hassles. Little to no commitment to a physical space means that you could be sitting at a beach, sipping on mojitos while still turning profits. All you need is your laptop and the internet.
• There is Lots of Variety When it Comes to the Products You Want to Sell: There is a drop ship supplier for almost anything that you would like to sell! You can rely on one great product, sell several products at once or mix it up; it’s all up to you. Find your niche and there is bound to be a supplier that caters to it.
• More Time & Resources to Scale Your Business: In traditional retail business models, if you want more profits you have to do more work and invest that much more of your resource pool. With dropshipping all you have to do is send more orders to your dropship supplier and then let them handle everything else while you earn the profit and are left with more time to develop your business plans and scale!
• Reduced Losses on Damaged Goods: Since the shipment goes directly from the supplier to the customer, there are fewer shipment steps involved which drastically reduces the risk of damaged items while moving from one physical space to another.

Cons of Dropshipping

Just like everything in life, there are some disadvantages that come along with the many advantages of dropshipping. Here are a few cons to the dropship business model:

• Slightly Lower Profit Margins Comparison to Wholesaling or Manufacturing: Depending on your niche, location, or requirements, suppliers and vendors will charge you higher prices for dropshipping products, which does eat into your profit margins.
• Complete Liability When Something Goes Wrong: Since the customer is purchasing the product from the retailer’s website, if the supplier messes something up, it’s still the retailer’s fault as the brand is the face of the retail process. This is one of the reasons why it is incredibly important to choose the right supplier.
• The Brand has a Significantly Lower Level of Control: Customer satisfaction is often linked to the details — personalized packaging and branding of the shipped products, freebies, and notes accompanying the order — it’s almost always the smaller things that count. Unfortunately, the dropshipping model seldom affords retailers the opportunity to control how their brand is presented during the delivery and fulfillment process as the supplier is the one who ships the products. However, there are some suppliers who may be willing to go that extra mile — be advised, it may cost you though.
• Certain Issues May Arise Due to Complexities with Shipping: selling multiple products may seem like a good way to drive up sales and make a substantial profit, but this could actually be counter-intuitive if the retailer has multiple suppliers for these products. Different suppliers will charge different shipping costs depending on factors like location, type of products, etc. If a customer orders multiple products which ship from different suppliers, the retailer will have to work out and pay the shipping costs separately. Transferring these varying shipping costs to the customer may negatively affect conversion rates, thus, in turn, impact the profit margins.
• Level of Competition is Relatively High: The attractiveness and popularity of the dropshipping business model means more and more retailers in every segment and niche. Unless a retailer is catering to an extremely specific segment or niche, the competition could possibly be detrimental.
• Managing the Inventory Can be Tricky: keeping track of the stock of the supplier is nearly impossible. Miscommunications can cause issues such as cancellations and having to place orders on backorder. This aspect can, of course, be managed with software these days but those too come at a price and may increase your overhead and fixed costs

How Viable & Profitable is Dropshipping?

Typically, the profit margins for dropshipping can range from 15%-45%. However, the profit margins for consumer durables and luxury items (for example, electronics, jewelry, etc.) can yield a profit margin of up to 100%. It’s about finding the right niche and supplier while entering a market that isn’t already overly saturated. A good way to ensure higher margins can be to source directly from a manufacturer instead of a vendor/supplier, thus effectively cutting out the middleman.

Once the business is off the ground and gains a little traction, it can quickly turn into a money-making machine that only requires minimum input. Successful dropshipping businesses such as that of Irwin Dominguez, an accountant turned ecommerce entrepreneur, have made USD $1 million in sales in just 8 months of launching the online business! This won’t be the case for every dropshipping business, but the potential exists.

Aren’t Drop Ship Manufacturers, Wholesalers & Aggregators the Same?

No.

Even though these terms are often used interchangeably in the ecommerce world, they aren’t the same. Let’s clear up the confusion:

• A manufacturer is someone who actually produces the products themselves. They may or may not have a dropshipping program, but the retailer is lucky if they do as it removes the hassle and inflated costs of the middle man, giving the retailer the best possible prices. These reduced costs translate to larger profit margins.
• A dropshipping wholesaler/supplier is someone who purchases one type of product from the manufacturer in bulk and helps to package and ship it to buyers online through the retailer’s ecommerce businesses.
• A dropshipping aggregator, on the other hand, is someone who buys different products from multiple manufacturers to provide the retailer with a variety of products to sell. Several disadvantages of drop shipping can be solved when an aggregator is used — no multiple wholesaler shipping costs, less time sending out multiple orders to multiple vendors (therefore preventing a mix-up and delay in the orders and shipment) — however, do bear in mind that aggregators take a higher cut which could adversely affect your profit margins.

Who is Dropshipping For?

Dropshipping is a pretty great business model for a first-timer who is just dipping their toes into the online business world. It’s attractive to a novice as it’s a low-risk and low-investment way of starting your own business, thus, doesn’t feel like so much of a gamble.

Since the amount of capital that needs to be invested into this business model is minimum, it is also ideal for someone who is already a store owner with an inventory but is looking to try out particular products in the market to see how well it does before stocking up on it. If you’re interested in learning more about this, check out our How to Test Product Ideas with Dropshipping When You Don’t Dropship post.

For someone who is expecting amazing margins right off the bat, this business model may be disappointing. If profit is your primary interest then you’d be better off going straight to the source — such as the manufacturers — but manufacturers don’t always facilitate dropshipping. Since dropshipping profit margins are also considerably lower in comparison to other business models such as manufacturing and wholesaling, dropshipping would perhaps not bode well with a brand that is a new startup, as the business doesn’t have the ultimate control when it comes to customer satisfaction through branding and brand experience.

There are a few types of entrepreneurs that the drop-shipping model will work well for. Let’s take a look at some of them:

• Validating Entrepreneur: Dropshipping can be a great way to test new products, or even a new startup, before investing heavily into inventory that may not sell, making this the perfect business model for the entrepreneur that requires a high level of business and product validation before investment.
• Budget Entrepreneur: Drop shipping is definitely the least expensive method of selling online because you don’t have to purchase any inventory upfront. Because of this, the drop shipping method works well for entrepreneurs who have a limited budget or would prefer to keep startup costs as low as possible.
• First Time Entrepreneur: The drop shipping model for selling online also is a good business model for someone just starting out selling online. The fact is, selling online isn’t easy. Driving traffic and converting that traffic for the average marketer can take a long time to figure out and optimize. Because of the low costs associated with starting a drop shipping business, it allows new entrepreneurs to start to learn the ropes of setting up a store, driving traffic, and conversion optimization before investing thousands (or more) in inventory that you may get stuck with.
• Walmart Entrepreneur: Drop shipping is also for the person that wants to sell a wide variety of products and models. Depending on what the price range is of the products you intend to sell, or if you want to sell hundreds or thousands of different products, it’s nearly impossible without massive funding to acquire all that inventory. In this case, dropshipping would be the appropriate model because, again, you don’t need to purchase inventory upfront.
  

Who Isn’t Drop Shipping For?

There are also a few types of entrepreneurs that dropshipping isn’t for:

• Brand-Centric Entrepreneur: Building a long-term sustainable brand is difficult but the rewards can be incredibly worthwhile. However, building a brand while utilizing the drop shipping business model is exponentially more difficult as there are so many elements of the entire customer experience that you won’t be able to control. For example, many times you may find out that after a customer has purchased something from you it’s sold out with your drop shipper. This leaves you in the uncomfortable and frustrating position of trying to coordinate between your customer and your drop shipper and can become a really poor experience for your customer. Another point to keep in mind is because you’re not shipping the product yourself you don’t have any control over the experience of your customer receiving the package. Almost 100% of the of time it’s going to be the product in a big brown box with packing peanuts. You need to ask yourself if that’s the experience you want your customers to have. Finally, because you don’t ship the products yourself you don’t own the relationship with the shipping companies. When something does go wrong and your customer doesn’t receive the package you can’t simply call UPS and get the situation corrected. You need to coordinate this with a busy account rep which could take days to sort out, again, leaving your customer with a bitter taste in their mouth.
• Margin-Focused Entrepreneur: Probably the biggest problem with the dropshipping business model is the razor-thin margins. Generally, for traditional drop shipping products and companies your gross margins (the price you sell it for minus the cost you pay your drop shipper) are around 10-20%. At the end of the day when you pay your credit card transaction fees, shipping cart, email service, and other app fees you will be looking at only a few percent. There is a fair share of online entrepreneurs running 1 million dollar revenue per year drop shipping businesses that at the end of the day are making a 40-50k profit.
• Non-Creative Marketers: Most manufacturers (which can also be drop shippers of their own products) have sales goals in which 30% of the sales need to come from direct-to-consumer sales, usually through their own ecommerce site. This means that if you’re selling their products, you will be competing directly with your own supplier, a supplier that is able to have much higher margins than you on the very same products. Any chance of competing head-to-head against them is pointless. They will almost always win because they can afford to. If you’re going to beat your own supplier you need to be creative and find and exploit channels they aren’t using to acquire customers. If your only ideas are to use Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you’re likely out of luck.
  

Finding the Perfect Dropshipping Products to Sell

Criteria to Choose the Best Dropshipping Products

To have a successful ecommerce business, you have to find the right products to sell. But when it comes to dropshipping, finding the right product is possibly the most important aspect of your business.

There is almost no way to ascertain which products are completely “perfect” for the dropshipping business model, however, having a shortlist of product ideas that you are sure will sell (based on hard facts, figures, and research) is a good way to start determining the products that you will end up selling.

Here are a set of criteria that can help decide whether a product is suitable for dropshipping:

• The Retail Price: When it comes to dropshipping, the retail price and the wholesale price are crucial. It’s all about hitting the sweet spot with the way you price your products: Low prices may encourage a larger number of sales but you’ll make a smaller profit margin per product, while higher-priced items might sell less but you’ll be able to make more profit per item. Find the balance that works for you and your customer’s expectations. As we mentioned earlier, profit margins for dropshipping can be between 15%-45% and that’s what you as the retailer should likely aim at. This typically means that pricing items between $50 to $100 is optimal, depending on the product.
• Size & Weight: Packaging and shipping costs vary between different products based on how much packaging material is required and the effort (manual effort or machine effort) required to ship the product. In that sense, having smaller and lighter items are the cheapest to drop ship and give you the largest profit margin. Larger products can be drop-shipped with a relatively large profit margin too, but starting out smaller is the best way to go.
• Cross-Selling Products: Selling sets of related products is a great way to give more value to your customers and encourage them to purchase more every time they make an order. Consider which products you can sell together that serve a related niche. For example, if you drop ship easels it may make sense for you to drop ship canvases, paintbrushes, and other art supplies, too. If you choose to go this route, consider how you can strategically price your products to make the sale worth just as much value for you as well as your customer. You might choose to sell your main product at a lower profit margin (say, 10-15%) to encourage your customers to buy it, but then make up for lost profit by cross-selling other accessories and components for the main product at a larger markup (such as 100%).
• Durability: If the products and goods you sell are either disposable and/or renewable, there is a higher chance that your customers will place repeat orders, thus driving up your sales. Many retailers set up subscription options for their customers which ensures that there are always repeat purchases. You can make this an even more attractive offer for your customers by providing a discount for subscribers to your service.
• Turn-Over Rate: Consider the turnover rate of the products that you are selling (the rate at which the product is changed, updated, discounted, etc.). As a retailer with an online store, a lot of your business will come from the product photography and the copy/content that you publish about the products. These are time-consuming and will potentially cost you too. Therefore if you sell products that keep changing in short spans of time, you will have to keep switching up the content which would be a constant re-investment of time and money — with the added stress of actually updating everything physically. Learn more about how to take great product photos, create a beautiful product page, and how to write great product descriptions.

Dropshipping Mistakes to Avoid

Common mistakes that should be avoided when picking a product for dropshipping:

• Do Not Base Your Choice of Product on What Your Likes & Dislikes Are: Always base your product decision on facts, research, due diligence, and evaluating and validating the market’s demand.
• Do Not Sell Knock-Offs or “True Copies”: Not only is this a cheap gimmick that won’t necessarily get you anywhere with customers, but it is also illegal in most countries! Stay away from these types of products so you can avoid the hassle or ensure that you dropship products from reliable and official merchandisers only.
• Don’t Just Hop Onto the Bandwagon: “If everyone is selling it, I should too,” isn’t always the right reason to pick a product. The market for trending products is typically very saturated so there will be high levels of competition. If trending products are something you want to pursue then make sure to conduct thorough research into the rise and fall of the trend so you know what to expect from consumer interests. Check out a tool like Google Trends to help evaluate trends.

Know Your Target Market & Niche

Ensuring that you do your market research well will set a solid foundation for your business. Here are some tips to help you know your target market and niche better:

• Step One: The first and foremost step is to measure the current demand for your product. Use the KWFinder tool to find out how your product’s keyword is ranking on a monthly basis — this will give you an idea of how many people are searching for your product in search engines like Google every month, and it will give you a general idea of what the demand is like for your product. Ideally, you want to find keywords with monthly searches in the thousands if you plan on building a business around it, but if your product serves an emerging market then there may not be any people searching for it yet. To learn more about keyword research and how it can help you build your business successfully, check our Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research and if you want to learn more about the KWFinder tool, check out our KWFinder Review.
• Step Two: The second step is to understand how seasonality may impact your customer’s purchasing patterns. Certain products are only seasonal commodities while others will do well year-round, but how do you figure out the difference between the two? Guesswork may be futile and unnecessary when you can just use Google Trends. This tool gives the user a graphical analysis of the peak search seasons for any given product (or keyword) over a vast amount of time. Forecasting trends can help you prepare for dips or spikes in sales throughout the year and ensure that you aren’t caught off guard.
• Step Three: The third step is to scope out your competition and observe how they engage with the market. Search out your competitor’s websites, social media platforms, or their presence on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay and pay close attention to the number of ratings, reviews, comments, and overall engagement that they receive and what their customers are saying. See if you can find any opportunities where your competitors aren’t meeting the market’s expectations so you can go ahead and close that gap.

Facts to Consider About Your Target Market

Factors that you should look at when analyzing your target market, include:

• Demographics: The demographics such as the physical/geographic location, income bracket, etc. of your audience is important to understand in order to know how big your audience is, where the majority of them are and how you can cater your dropshipping products to them.
• Gender: Statistically, men and women shop differently and have different spending and purchasing patterns when it comes to dropshipped goods or just products in general. While the gender of your potential target market may not be the most important aspect to know, it still may be worth looking into. The kind of device they use to shop, the kind of content that works for them (testimonials, product descriptions, etc.), the kind of language that would prompt customer conversion — all these are factors that may be influenced by gender, too.
• Age Range: Being able to understand the spending patterns and purchasing patterns of different age groups can be incredibly useful. Millennials (individuals born between 1980-2000) are proven to fall in a lower income bracket and statistically spend less, thus drop shipping expensive products that specifically target the age range of young adults may not be completely advisable. The same goes for the 60+ bracket as they typically aren’t comfortable with purchasing products, dropshipped or not, over the internet.
• Type of Institution: Are you selling your products directly to customers, other businesses, or government organizations? Whether you’re selling your drop shipped goods Business-to-Consumers (B2C), Business-to-Business (B2B), or Business-to-Government (B2G) will impact many aspects of your business such as who exactly your customers are, what quantity of products they purchase from you, their main goal for purchasing your products, how you market your products to them and more. Typically when you’re dropshipping the most common market you’ll be selling to is direct-to-consumer (DTC), so consider how that will impact your business overall.

Knowing Your Competition

In order to beat the competition, you need to know the competition. If the product you want to sell has established sellers already, it’s actually a good sign. However, if there are too many sellers in that space, it could pose a problem for your business to stand out amongst all the other businesses.

In order to scope out the competition, you could use these tactics:

• Use Online Tools to Scope Out Your Competition’s Website: Online site explorers such as SEMrush allow you to check the ranking and domain authority of any website of your choice using only a URL. This helps you paint a good picture of how much of their traffic is directed from keywords and other links, and where exactly it’s coming from. This, along with scoping out their website personally, should give you a well-rounded insight into the workings of their website which you can base on facts and figures. Learn more about SEMrush here in our SEMrush Review.
• Order Products from the Competition to Get an Idea of How their Process Works: The way something appears online can pretty obviously be different in real life. Ordering from the competition can give you an idea of the quirks that set them apart, negative aspects about their brand experience, and perhaps even ideas and tips for your own business. That being said, don’t necessarily copy some or the whole of their shopping and shipping process, simply observe any of their flaws so that you can work to improve them for your own customer experience.
• Analyze their Social Media Channels: Your competitor’s social media channels are an amazing way to get direct customer feedback about their business and also gives you a good base to analyze their marketing strategy from. Check the kind of engagement their brand has and the flaws that you could possibly work on for your brand. Pitting your own content against theirs can also become easier when you know what kind of content and at which scale they produce it at.

Finding the Right Products to Dropship

Once you know what product you’re interested in dropshipping, you have to find out where to actually source that product from.

Start this process by creating a list, preferably a spreadsheet (use Google Sheets or Airtable) with names and sources so that you aren’t losing track of where you found a product. This spreadsheet/list can also serve as a database for reference in the future.

Do not underestimate the power of a simple Google search. Search for your potential product in Google and watch autocomplete do its magic. Most autocomplete suggestions are popular keywords that are based on what other search engine users (such as your potential customers or suppliers) are looking for. You can even hone into these autocomplete results to give direction to your brand strategy as you can find correlating terms, etc. Furthermore, the Google search results will also yield a list of “related searches,” which are essentially similar keywords that are high-volume search phrases.

Another unique way of basing your product choice on consumer demand is to check out product forums and review sites. Look for comments that are looking for certain types of products or are raving about it — then supply them. The review sites can also act as a ranking parameter as the more popular products will rank higher which means a better chance at making more sales on that particular good. Check out these product-related Reddit threads to get a better understanding of consumer thoughts and demand, and check out popular product review blogs such as Uncrate, AcquireMag and Bless This Stuff or trend publications such as PSFK, Cool Hunting, and The Cool Hunter. Find a more complete list of these resources in our definitive guide to selling trending products online.

Here are a few products that have been extremely popular in the past and have been specifically trending this year:

• Notebook, Planner & Journals
• Customized Phone Cases
• Customized T-Shirts
• Jewelry
• Pet Products
• Swimwear
• Stickers
• Watches
• Tea/Coffee
• Phone Accessories
• Camping Gear
• Healthy/Super Foods
• Gym and Fitness Equipment
• Baby Products
• Skincare Products
• Customized Mugs

A lot of these products can be related to pop culture and trends in the media which influence buyers, so this is not a definitive list of what works and what doesn’t — just the most popular selling items over the past year. Once you can understand trends in the media, it may benefit you as a business owner to forecast product trends, too.

Finding the Right Dropshipping Supplier

The entire drop shipping model is based on the supplier doing their job well and fulfilling orders punctually and efficiently. Therefore it goes without saying that choosing the right supplier is one of, if not the most important step towards setting up a successful brand. If your supplier/vendor messes up an order, you and your business are responsible, so the key is to find someone who sticks to the plan and is open to communicating any issues.

Here are a few factors to keep in mind when choosing a dropship supplier:

• Find an Experienced Dropshipper with Helpful Sales Representatives: Nothing beats experience. A drop shipper who knows the pitfalls of drop shipping and how to handle them efficiently, coupled with a sales rep who can answer any queries to put your mind at ease, will make a good team and definitely reflect positively on your business.
• Find a Dropshipper who Provides Top-Notch, High-Quality Products: High-quality products yield a higher level of customer satisfaction which means a lower rate of returned items and dissatisfied customers. Product reviews and testimonials can go a long way to boost business, therefore having a good quality product is imperative.
• Find a Dropshipper who has Technological Abilities: When choosing your drop shipper, make sure that they have the technological capabilities to keep up with the times. If you need to scale your business, it would be a shame if you had to break a great business partnership with your drop shipper just because they wouldn’t be able to keep up with your growth.
• Find a Dropshipper who is Punctual & Efficient with the Shipping Process: Drop shippers who ship products within a 24-48 hour period are a great way to ensure happy customers. Due to the competitiveness of the market, long shipping times can be unattractive to your customers. It would be advisable to place test orders with your supplier to see how the process works and get a better idea before you make an informed decision.

As simple as it may sound, Google is your best bet when looking for dropship suppliers. Several startup incubators and websites dedicated to ecommerce, that pop up as search results, will have complete directories of drop shippers and their contact information. Once you’ve obtained contact details for dropshipping suppliers who provide the products you’re interested in selling, send them a short but polite email asking some relevant questions. This way you’ll be able to gauge how quickly they respond and how helpful their sales reps are.

It’s not always possible to know whether you and your suppliers will be a great fit right off the bat, however, it is possible to ask specific questions that will make the vetting process more efficient.

A few of the questions you ask in your first email could include some, but not all, of the following (try to stick to 3 questions in the first email so it’s not too overwhelming for the supplier):

• Do you manufacture customized items if required?
• What are your pricing terms and are they negotiable?
• Are there any other additional costs besides the direct costs? (Always make sure there are no other hidden costs)
• Do you have a return policy?
• Are you also a retailer/direct seller?
• What kind of profit margin can I expect?
• Will the prices ever fluctuate?
• Do the products come with a warranty or guarantee?
• Do you have a dedicated rep that will answer any of my questions that may arise?
• Do you have and use a data feed?

The point is to make sure that the supplier doesn’t take advantage of you because these questions prove that you have done your homework. The last thing you want is to not be taken seriously because you are considered a newbie. The retailer-supplier relation is a long-term one, thus needs a certain amount of commitment to it.

That being said, there are many dropshipping scams out there, too. In order to safeguard yourself and your business from them, you need to keep an eye out for any red flags. For instance, if a dropshipper does not accept checks or credit and asks for only bank transfers, it may be a warning sign.

Scammers will also avoid using an address on their business correspondence, website, etc. Any supplier that is working legally is required to display an address. Furthermore, many scams also involve the age-old “membership fees” and while this may not always be a scam, it’s advisable to conduct thorough research and do your own due diligence!

You can obviously take some measures to avoid being the victim of such scams and frauds:

• Use online tools to check the age of a domain: This will help you cross-check the facts with what the supplier claims. A newer domain could indicate a scam, especially if it doesn’t match their answers. Besides, as discussed before, checking the domain age can also help establish how experienced the supplier is online.
• Check reviews about the particular supplier online: Chances are if someone has been scammed by the supplier before the victim might have put out a warning message/negative review.
• The supplier’s business should be registered and the address of their warehouse/office should ideally be listed as a place of business or commercial space. Getting “residential” space results online may be a bad indicator.
• If you are still unsure, you could always contact the manufacturer directly to cross-check any facts. Just be wary about the fact that if it’s a big scam, the supposed “manufacturer” might be in on it too.

Asking the right questions, taking the required precautions, and doing your research should help you find the right supplier that fits your business! Once such major aspects are dealt with, you can focus on setting up a system for running your day-to-day operations as smoothly as possible.

Running Your Drop Shipping Business

So you’ve done your research, you’ve managed to settle on the perfect products to dropship and have roped in the best supplier possible. You’re all set to start dropshipping goods and making that mullah! However, setting up the business is usually one thing, but running it on a day-to-day basis is a completely different ball game. There are various different aspects of running a business, even if it’s a dropshipping business, that you as the retailer have to consider: Marketing, refunds, returns, replacements, inventory, fulfillment, customer support, and more. So dive into these various aspects of running a dropshipping business.

Marketing Your Drop Shipping Business

How will you sell your products if no one knows about them or your brand? Why should anyone online trust you — a stranger? That’s the magic of marketing; it can make even strangers trust you enough to hand over their hard-earned money to you, willingly.

Marketing is a subjective field and there are a billion tactics that can be used to effectively position your brand while driving your brand’s awareness and sales up. If your strategy is well planned, it can help you weed out the rest of the competition too.

Social Media for Your Drop Shipping Business

One of the most effective ways to promote, advertise, acquire customers and distribute content is through social media, so it comes as no surprise when social platforms are also used for digital marketing. Facebook, for example, has over 1.7 billion active users from different walks of life and it is this variety that makes it so attractive to digital marketers.

One thing to remember is that content is key. No matter how big a platform is or how amazing the product that you are selling is, it means nothing without great content backing it up.

Customer Ratings and Reviews of Your Dropshipping Business

In the dropshipping business model, a few bad customer reviews can literally ruin a business. Think about it: When you shop online from websites such as Amazon and eBay, one of the deciding purchasing factors can be the product rating and what other customers have to say about it — it’s the same case with drop shipping too. A few great reviews can also give you that edge over the competition and that’s what’s going to help you successfully convert visitors to your website.

A surefire way to get great customer reviews is by following through on amazing customer experience: Short shipping times, high-quality products, excellent customer service, and asking for feedback to improve in the future. You can also use customer feedback as testimonials for your website and social media, which can also help you successfully convert more customers.

Email Marketing for Your Dropshipping Business

This is one of the most underrated tools in a digital marketer’s kit. Email marketing can be used to keep your customers in the loop about any major changes in the company: Price changes, sales, discounts, product-related content, and industry-specific content are just some ways that email marketing can be used.

These days, software such as Klaviyo and CM Commerce take the hassle out of sending out emails to your audience by automating some of the processes, creating and saving templates, and producing reports and analytics.

PPC Advertising (Pay Per Click Ads) for Your Dropshipping Business

As mentioned earlier, several social media channels allow pay-per-click advertising, for example, Facebook Ads. This is a typical digital marketing move that trades money for traffic to the ad buyer’s website. Google Ads is another very popular platform for digital advertising and is attractive due to the Google Analytics tool that can help marketers create reports with facts and figures with ease.

Growth Hacking for Your Dropshipping Business

Growth hacking is an inexpensive, yet highly effective way of getting creative marketing campaigns online. A few examples of growth hacking include retargeting old campaigns and appearing as a guest blogger for a popular website in your particular niche. Essentially most of this involves content marketing.

Refunds, Returns & Replacements for Dropshipped Products

As an online business owner, dealing with refunds, returns and replacements is inevitable. Initially, this may seem discouraging however it’s just part and parcel of running an online store. 100% customer satisfaction is a myth no matter how hard you try.

The process for refunding dropshipped products is as follows:

• The customer will place an order for the refund with your business, either through email or over the phone.
• You are then required to ask the supplier for a return merchandise authorization number.
• Once the customer mails the product back to the supplier the supplier will refund the wholesale amount to your account, after which you can initiate the refund of the retail price for the product to the customer.

Even though this process may seem tedious, if the customer is returning a product within the time period stated in the supplier’s return policy, there should not be a problem. The only minor inconvenience that you may face is if the supplier charges a restocking fee, which you as the retailer will have to bear the cost of. In actuality, this should not be a major loss but rather just a minor inconvenience that comes as a side effect of owning an online business.

Defective Dropshipping Products

Defective items can be slightly trickier: Even if the customer is returning a defective product, someone will still have to incur the cost of returning the product. However, if the cost does land upon you, it would be unwise to transfer the cost onto the customer at the risk of losing or alienating them. It’s not your customer’s fault if you sold them a defective product, so it seems unfair to expect them to incur the cost of returning the product.

What Do You Do When it’s the Supplier’s Fault?

If the supplier messes up the order, they are usually willing to either reimburse the customer or replace the product for free. Most of the time it comes down to communicating what you expect from the supplier if they do mess up an order. In most cases, it is best to communicate over email as it also serves as a written record of conversations.

In cases where a mix-up has caused your company a large loss and the supplier refuses to pay you back taking legal action is always a viable option — this should only be kept as the last resort in extreme cases.

Handling Dropshipping Inventory

With the dropshipping business model, even though you don’t personally maintain any inventory, as a retailer you may still be required to manage inventory orders if your orders are not forwarded automatically to your dropshipping supplier. This process can be time-consuming and tedious, but there is now inventory management software available online and many drop shippers will have an app you can connect directly to your Shopify store so you can automatically forward your orders.

What to Do When Dropshipping Products are Out of Stock

If a customer has placed an order and the product is out of stock simply put the product on backorder in the supplier’s inventory and communicate to the customer that you will not be able to fulfill the order right away. Give them the option of waiting until the product is in stock again or for a full refund. The key is to communicate with your customers clearly on whether the product will be available anytime soon. If you aren’t absolutely sure, take a calculated guess and let them know the same. Honesty and communication with your customer is the best policy in this situation.

Drop Shipping & Fulfillment

The dropship fulfillment process is heavily dependent on your level of involvement: Do you want to automate it or not? Certain aspects will be automated such as the receipt of purchase, shipping information, etc.

If you have multiple suppliers, the fulfillment process will include sending all your orders to the appropriate supplier via email. The best supplier for each product and customer will rely on the location, cost of shipping, and availability. These processes can be automated at varying degrees.

Dropshipping Problems to Avoid

Even though we discussed scams on the dropshipping supplier’s end, fraudulent activities are not just limited to them. While running an online store, it may be common to come across fraudulent dropship orders from fraudulent customers.

One way of telling these fraudulent orders apart from the genuine ones is when the shipping address and billing address are different. Sometimes even the name on either address will differ. These could be clear indicators of credit card fraud.

Customer Support for Your Dropshipping Business

Providing good customer support can determine how well your dropshipping business does. Due to how competitive the drop shipping industry is, if a brand has a good customer support system it can do wonders for the company.

Here are the most widely used and popular types of customer support in the ecommerce industry:

• Phone Support: Having a phone customer support system is one of the quickest and most efficient ways of connecting directly with the customer. Not only is it easier to defuse tricky situations, but it is also the fastest way to get feedback from the customer. Google offers tools like Google Voice which lets you set up a free number that routes calls to any number specified by you. A similar alternative is OpenPhone, which is specifically made for ecommerce businesses.
• Email Support: While the telephone is a popular method of customer support, email is more likely to be your primary method of providing support. It is advisable to set up domain emails for your website (example: hello@yourdomain.com). Not only is this professional but this also establishes your brand as a legitimate entity in the mind of your customers. Help Scout is an excellent email support software as is Gorgias if you’re using the Shopify ecommerce platform.
• Social Media Support: Customers turn to social media pages of brands sometimes even before contacting the brand itself. This is because social media is a public forum and more often than not customers will already find the answers to their questions there. A good customer support representative on social media will be sure to engage with the audience even if the feedback is negative. This can help establish good faith between a customer and the brand.
• Live Chat Support: Several brands are incorporating live chats on their websites as part of their customer service and support systems. This method is gaining popularity because it is as quick as a phone call, yet less intimidating than posting queries on a public forum. If you don’t want to invest in this yet, you can just use social media such as Facebook Messenger, or the direct message services on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. Live chat customer support may not be the best way to go if your business is still limited to one person and can be worth exploring when your business scales. Check out Gorgias as well to launch live chat on your Shopify store.

Growing Your Dropshipping Business

Once you have running a business down to a science it’s only a matter of time until your company really starts to take off. Scaling your online store can be exciting, but there are a few things that you should keep in mind. The key point to remember is that scaling does not mean double the hours of work for more profits, but on the contrary, it implies being able to drive the sales number up even more with lesser time invested — through efficiency and allocating resources smartly.

While scaling the business does not necessarily mean bringing on more employees or contractors, it does seem like the most natural progression. It can be a challenging experience to trust others with your brand but once you do find the right people who match your own wavelength, it can be a rewarding step too.

Firstly, draw up a list of tasks that you can probably outsource and another that needs a more specific approach to them. This list will help you identify the tasks that are monotonous and do not necessarily require your direct input. You can redirect your resources to working out better business strategies, creating and strengthen your relationship with your suppliers and work towards making better marketing decisions.

Hire an Assistant

There are two ways you could go about this, depending on how location-dependent you want or need to be. You could either hire someone you know and work together with every day at a small office/coworking space or maybe even from home. The alternative to that is to hire a VA, commonly known as a Virtual Assistant.

The most attractive quality of hiring a VA is that the person does not even need to be on the same continent to be able to successfully do the job — as long as they have access to a laptop, phone, and the internet, while speaking at least one of the languages that you conduct business in, you are good to go.

This means if you find that assistants/VAs in your vicinity are charging extortionist rates, you could outsource the work to someone else who is location independent, perhaps somewhere in Asia or Eastern Europe, who will do the same job at a much more reasonable price. A few responsibilities that can be given to the assistant, are:

• Social Media Marketing and Management
• Customer Support and Services
• Graphic Design and Content Writing/Copywriting
• SEO/SEM
• Maintaining the Website
• Managing the Inventory Orders

Create a process flow and outline of each job to ensure that anyone you hire can understand how your particular system works for your dropshipping business.

You can list potential openings for VAs on several different remote job sites and on groups for digital nomads. There is almost always someone who knows someone who might be perfect for the job. Most remote working/digital nomad communities are very helpful and often collaborate with each other. Just make sure that the job description is well written so that the person applying can have a comprehensive understanding of what the job entails — use the process flow you created for this part.

Check out these resources to hire virtual assistants:

• Upwork
• Fiverr
• iWriter

There are several templates for job descriptions online but here is one that can be altered per your requirements:

“Hey there,

We’re looking for a proactive virtual assistant to help run and manage [insert what you need help with here] at [insert your dropshipping business name here].

Your weekly tasks will include:

– [Task one]
– [Task two]
– [Task three]

You should have in-depth knowledge of [enter skills here], be comfortable using software/s such as [insert tools here] and be fluent in English (verbal and written) [+ any other languages if required].

In the first line of your application, please tell us what your favorite hobby is. If you don’t respond to this request, we’ll assume that you haven’t read the job description and won’t consider you.

Looking forward to hearing from you!”

Such templates can be used for job listing websites, forums, social media, and even for print.

In order to pick the right person as your VA, conduct a thorough interview over Skype and in person, if possible. Make sure that you have gone through their application and ensure that they have all the attributes required. Based on how much time you would have to train them, you can tell how well they would fit with your business. Shortlist at least 2-5 people so that you have some reliable backups if your original candidate doesn’t cut it.

Training your chosen VA can be a two-way knowledge highway. Not only are you teaching them, but can also stand to learn from their previous experiences, inside and outside the industry.

Supply tools to them (such as this guide) and other video material that is easily available, and then discuss how they can implement what they’ve learned. This material can also double as a refresher course in case they forget certain aspects of the job. Give constructive feedback on their work and praise them when they do a good job! It’s about creating lasting work relationships.

Scaling Through Multi-Channels

As your business grows, it would make sense that you would want to sell through multiple channels, namely Amazon, eBay, Shopify, etc. so that you can access a larger market. The problem with this is that you may list the same product from the same supplier on two different sites and get two different customer orders. It’s well and fine if the product is in stock, however, it may be problematic if that isn’t the case. Once backorders start piling up and shipments start getting delayed, customers often become unhappy.

This is in no way supposed to discourage anyone who wants to scale their online business through multiple channels, but rather serve as a reminder that it is important to strategically plan these things beforehand. A good way to handle this issue could be to get a virtual assistant as mentioned before and have inventory management software at hand.

Building Your Own Online Dropshipping Store

While using other online marketplaces can only get you so far, the key to truly growing and scaling your business is to have your own online store. Having your own store ensures but you have the most control over your customer experience and brand positioning. This also means that you will incur lower fees but gain higher profits.

There are several online store builders, such as Shopify, that can help create your web store — it comes with various different templates to choose from and all you have to do is add your products. To learn more about Shopify and the features and services they offer ecommerce entrepreneurs, check out our Shopify Review.

Utilizing Your Email List to the Maximum

Building a good email list is all about having recipients who are highly targeted and constantly engaged. When you do have a strong email list it can end up being one of the single most important marketing assets that you own. Strong email lists are closely related to owning your own store (Shopify) instead of using a marketplace (Amazon, eBay, or Etsy). With an email list, you have direct access to your customers — you don’t have to hope that they’re online and scrolling down their newsfeeds to see your posts, you don’t have to pay to get your emails into their inboxes, and you don’t have to compete with other sellers in your emails. Emails are one of the most direct ways to engage with your audience.

Building an email list isn’t too complicated. All you have to do is get your site visitors to give their email to you (try tools like Sumo or Privy that offer many different email capture strategies) and then send out email newsletters through a service such as Klaviyo or CM Commerce.

Marketing and Advertising

Merely increasing your marketing spend is not the best way to scale your dropshipping business. It’s not how much money you spend but how you spend your money that matters.

Allocating resources to pay-per-click advertising is a smarter move for the dropshipping business model. You can buy PPC ads on almost every social media platform possible from Facebook to Instagram to Twitter and Pinterest.

While PPC ads might seem straightforward, it can be tricky to know where to invest your money. You don’t want to be investing in the wrong kind of ads only to realize that they aren’t bringing in the traffic that you need or want. Like with everything else: Do your research, especially when it comes to marketing and advertising online.

Example of a Successful Drop Shipping Business

As mentioned earlier in this guide, Irwin Dominguez, an accountant turned ecommerce entrepreneur, has been one of the greatest success stories for dropshipping in recent times. Within just 8 months of establishing his drop shipping business, Irwin was already earning over 1 million US dollars in sales. Reaching a sales record of up to $30,000, he says, was his goal, and he wasn’t aiming to live luxuriously, just to be able to provide for his family.

Here is an excerpt from his interview with Oberlo:

When asked about how he got started and what his top recommendations are for anybody who is interested in drop shipping, he said:

“I literally just opened a Shopify account, created my store, added a few drop shipped products with Oberlo, and that’s it. I didn’t do a lot of reading or researching because I always try to learn by doing. Dropshipping ecommerce success requires very little capital and allows you to experiment a lot. This is what I love about it the most.

I do have to admit, though, that I Google a lot of questions that come up as I’m learning by doing….
…If I started ecommerce all over again, I would start sooner. I waited a full month-and-a-half after my good friend told me about his ecommerce success. It costs no money to launch a store and it’s so “simple” to get started with all the technology available right now — just get started, you literally have nothing to lose.

Opportunity, yes — I wish I started this sooner because if I were doing this even just one year earlier, there would’ve been a lot less competition; I would’ve made a lot more money; and I could have established myself in other niches. But overall, there are still plenty of opportunities — you just have to be a little more creative with marketing.”

Additional Drop Shipping Resources

How To Start A Drop Ship Business Video

Conclusion

So this concludes our definitive guide to dropshipping. If you have made it here, you now know how to set up and kick start your own dropshipping business. Just like with any other endeavor in life, setting up your own business also requires a certain degree of commitment, effort, and passion to make it work. It’s not just about creating the business but also following through and learning how to run it on a day-to-day basis.

The best part about dropshipping is that you can learn through testing your products and ideas, in real-time and if something doesn’t work all you have to do is remove it from your store. This business model is also a great way of testing out product ideas for traditional business models. Dropshipping provides a safe space to experiment and see what works without incurring any major losses which can definitely give business owners the confidence to say that they have a working knowledge of how the industry functions. No upfront cost and very little risk make the dropshipping business model an exciting business model to venture into.

So experiment with dropshipping your way and let us know how it works out! Share this guide with someone who would find it useful. Do you have any tips and tricks or general advice that could help the ecommerce community? Let us know in the comments down below!

The post What is Dropshipping? Drop Shipping 101 for Beginners (in 2021) appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

Depending on what kind of clothing line you want to create, there are likely going to be many different steps involved in the process. The more involved you want to be in the sourcing and production of your line, the more time, effort, and money you’ll have to invest. If you’re just interested in starting something quick and easy, there are options for that too. In this post, we’re going to show you step-by-step how you can start your own clothing line whether you have a budget of $100, or if you have more than $10,000 to invest.

If you’ve ever been thinking about starting a clothing brand, look no further. This post has been in the works for nearly a year and along the way, we’ve included the knowledge and experience of dozens of entrepreneurs and companies from the clothing industry.

This industry knowledge ranges from:

• A small brand that managed to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised $300,000 which they put towards manufacturing their high-end merino wool clothing line
• A private label wholesaler of blank apparel who targets the B2B market
• A pattern maker and tech pack designer who works with aspiring clothing line creators to help bring their visions to life
• And finally, we’ve gone right to the source to get insight from a factory that dyes yarn and weaves textiles

There’s a lot involved when it comes to starting your own clothing line, so let’s jump into it.

Deciding on Clothing Products You Want to Sell

You have a lot of choices when it comes to creating apparel and fashion products.

If you’ve always wanted to start a clothing line, you likely already have a good idea of the particular products you want to create and sell. For others, creating a clothing brand may represent a unique and interesting opportunity to design a product that represents your personal style—but you may be unsure of which products to sell.

Regardless of which category you fall into, it’s important to carefully consider all clothing and apparel options before deciding to move forward on one of them.

Some clothing and apparel products you may want to consider for your brand are:

• Short-Sleeve Shirts
• Long Sleeve Shirts
• Hoodies
• Pants/Leggings
• Dresses
• Lingerie/Underwear/Socks

Each of these clothing products presents their own opportunities and challenges when it comes to building a clothing brand around them, so it’s important to consider them carefully. Keep this in mind as you continue through this article.

Below, we will look into some of the most common clothing line business models to get a better sense of the work, time, and monetary investment required for each.

Choosing a Clothing Line Business Model

If you’re ready to start your clothing brand, you’ll have some important choices to make at this point.

There are several directions you can take to create your own brand which are all pretty different from one another. And most importantly, the difficultly, costs, and time input vary dramatically between each option.

Let’s take a look at the most common options:

• Print-on-Demand
• Private Label Clothing Line
• Custom Cut & Sew Clothing Line

Let’s dig into the advantages and disadvantages of each one below.

Option #1: Print-on-Demand Clothing Line

The first and easiest option for starting your own clothing line involves printing your designs or logo on standard blank apparel.

This is an attractive option for people with a low budget (less than $1,000) and those wanting to benefit from being able to set up a nearly fully-automated business. The biggest drawback of this type of business model is the lower profit margins and the lack of ability to differentiate your product on things like material, stitching, and fit since you’re using standard wholesale clothing.

The print-on-demand or direct-to-garment printing process uses a special digital ink-jet printer to print ink directly onto clothing and apparel. These digital printers are able to produce full-color images on clothing items with extreme accuracy.

Print-on-demand printing produces high-quality printed apparel quickly and efficiently. Because of this, there are no setup costs, unlike screen printing. This means that it’s easy and cost-effective to print small orders (including just 1 unit).

Pros

• No set-up costs
• High-quality prints
• Unlimited color options
• Perfect for low order quantities or one-offs
• Many clothing options (shirts, leggings, socks, dresses, etc.)

Cons

• Not cost-effective for large production runs
• Generally no volume discounts
• Limited print product selection
• Limited finishing options (tags, labels, etc)

Option #2: Wholesale/Private Label Clothing Line

When sourcing clothing products through wholesale or private label suppliers, you are essentially purchasing clothing products from other brands and then selling them to customers from your own store. When you source clothing products this way, you’ll purchase pieces in bulk from a supplier at a discounted price, and then sell the items to your customers at a markup.

With this option, you won’t be manufacturing your own clothing items from scratch, but you’ll be curating a selection of pieces that suit your customers’ tastes. You won’t be able to customize each clothing piece like you would if you were manufacturing clothing items, but you also don’t have to go through the lengthy and expensive process of having your own clothing items manufactured. The main disadvantage with this option, however, is that you have to purchase many stock-keeping units (SKUs) of clothing items in bulk and upfront, which means you’ll need cash flow.

Pros

• Don’t need to manufacture your own items
• Can keep up with changing trends more easily
• Get to curate your own range of products
• Volume discounts
• Potential for good profit margins
• You can brand items with your own hangtags, packaging, etc.
• When working with a private label supplier, you will be able to customize the clothing tags with your own brand name

Cons

• When working with a wholesaler, you won’t be able to customize the clothing tags with your brand name
• Usually, minimum order quantities start at (at least) 10 units per color/size, if not 100 or 1,000 units
• You’ll have to manage inventory and shipping yourself
• You’ll need cash flow to purchase many products upfront

Option #3: Custom Cut & Sew Clothing Line

Custom cut and sew clothing means you’re doing everything. We’re talking about designing sketches, turning them into patterns, sourcing fabrics and manufacturers, and paying for a full production run (which could be thousands of units).

Making your own clothing isn’t for the faint of heart. It can be an intensive process that can take months (at minimum) to get up and running. You’ll need to find a manufacturer, you’ll need to work with a pattern maker, you’ll have to create tach packs, you’ll have to source and test fabric, and you’ll also likely have to create and test many samples before you even come close to a finished product.

Depending on the exact clothing items you’re looking to produce, just to get a few samples as finished products can cost thousands.

Once you have a finished product, you’ll also need to produce a full run with your manufacturer, you’ll need to stock your inventory, and even develop a shipping strategy to get your clothes to your customers.

Pros

• You’ll get a 100% custom product
• Potential for increased perceived value from customers
• Potential for increased margins
• You’ll be 100% in control of branding

Cons

• Very high startup costs
• It’s a complex process involving several moving parts
• It can take months or more to launch

The Elements of a Successful Clothing Brand

Great clothing brands are great for a reason. Usually, they do one thing very well, and sometimes they do multiple things really well. Before starting your own clothing line, there are four important factors to a successful clothing line that you’ll want to consider:

• Niche
• Design
• Quality
• Brand

Let’s dive into each one of these elements a little more below:

Selecting a Clothing Brand Niche

Selecting a specific niche is important—and many times, vital—for success in the clothing and apparel industry. Blindly trying to target large groups of people will leave you with a brand that speaks to no one.

Focusing on a specific group of people has several major benefits:

• It’s easier to market (since you can hone in on your target market more specifically)
• It can be more affordable (since you aren’t targeting the wrong audiences)
• There’s potential for less competition (the more you niche down, the smaller your competitive pool gets)
• You can attract greater customer loyalty (because your audience knows that you’re focused on them)

For example: “Clothing with funny slogans” or “hoodies for men” are both too broad to attack since the markets are very developed. Niching down will help you better target your market, allow you to reach them more easily, and be able to create more value for them. So instead of “clothing with funny slogans” you might cater to a specific and passionate market like “clothing with slogans for nurses or firefighters.” Or, instead of “hoodies for men” you could focus on manufacturing ultra-thick/warm hoodies for people in cold climates.

Clothing Designs

Your designs—whether they’re printed, embroidered, or the design of the actual garment itself—are critical. Not only do your clothing pieces need to look great, but they also need to look great specifically in the eyes of your target market.

Ultimately, you’ll be the one who loses if your clothing designs aren’t aesthetically pleasing and appealing to your buyers. Your designs don’t necessarily need to be complex—in fact, many of the best-selling clothing designs are very simple—however, they do need to connect with your specific audience/niche.

Clothing Quality

You can fool someone once, but you can’t fool them twice. A pattern that fades and cracks over time or a piece that comes apart at the seams after one wash won’t create raving fans that’ll come back and repurchase.

Not all clothing is the same, there can be huge variances in the quality of clothing items. The quality and composition of the materials you choose will affect how the clothing wears, how it washes, how it fades, shrinks, and ultimately how long it lasts. As we mentioned above, quality is paramount to your brand and its success, so it’s important to educate yourself and choose your materials carefully.

It will always be tempting to sacrifice quality for higher profit margins but you need to consider how the quality will affect customer’s decisions to share your brand with others and repurchase in the long run.

Clothing Brand

Many clothing companies are built on a strong brand. Beyond the clothes themselves, a strong brand encourages and reinforces your target market to purchase, represent, share, and repurchase your clothing pieces. Your brand extends way beyond the product itself and encompasses what the brand stands for and the lifestyle associated with it.

Differentiating Your Clothing Line

The clothing design and apparel industries are some of the most saturated industries to be in. In order to effectively compete, you’ll need to have a point of differentiation that sets you apart in the market from all the rest.

Working out of a factory has also given me an upfront view of how many people get into this industry with absolutely no clue what it’s going to take to build a brand that is even remotely successful. Blaming ignorance isn’t entirely fair… We had absolutely no clue how hard it would be either. However, we started Stock with a clear reason of what differentiated us, why people would be interested in buying our stuff, and how we would go about selling. This is a step that I see a lot of aspiring makers skip. –Jim Snediker | Stock Mfg. Co.

The good news is that there are multiple ways to set yourself apart from the crowd…

Design

If you plan to have graphics or images on your clothing pieces, the designs (the style of designs and quality of designs) can help set you apart from others.

Example: Blackmilk Clothing made their name known and became one of Shopify’s largest merchants by creating uniquely designed leggings, while also partnering with major brands, in the case below, Dr. Who:

Fit/Style

If you plan to create your own clothing from the ground up, the actual fit and style of the clothes can be an important point of differentiation.

Example: Sharp Casualwear provides upscale clothing to men 5’8” and under who are seeking stylish staples that fit well. Perhaps the original online brand that became famous and known for a better fit is Bonobos. Bonobos decided that they wanted to create a better-fitting men’s pant. Their better fit helped establish them early on and turned their brand into a 100 million dollar company.

Brand

With all else being the same, people are more likely to buy from a brand whose story they can relate to most. Furthermore, a strong brand alone that connects with consumers can allow you to demand a higher price point, even if the quality is relatively the same as other common or less expensive brands.

Example: Billionaire Boys Club throughout the early 2000s sold t-shirts for nearly $100 that simply said “Billionaire Boys Club.” Although arguably, their t-shirts were the same quality as hundreds of others on the market, consumers bought into the young, urban brand and its story.

Niche

The niche you choose to operate in and your target market (if defined well enough and if it’s under-served) can be in itself a point of differentiation.

Example: Unbound Merino targets digital nomads that work remotely and travel the world. Even with thousands of clothing brands on the market, there are very few, if any, targeting this particular group of people.

80s Tees sells exclusive designs from 80s movies and TV shows. Not only are the designs appealing and nostalgic, but many of the designs are licensed making them exclusive and nearly impossible to find elsewhere.

Finally, Canada Threads focuses on clothing and accessories that uniquely resonate with Canadians, including designs related to the beloved Canadian House Hippo.

Performance/Material/Quality

The type of material plays a part in differentiating your clothing pieces from the rest out there. How they perform for the wearer (are they comfortable, itchy, restricting, warm, light, airy, do they wrinkly easily, etc.) and their overall quality (including any seams, buttons, the weight of the fabric, etc.) will all play a role in your customer’s satisfaction.

Example: Unbound Merino ran a successful crowdfunding campaign raising $300,000 and are building their brand based on the performance of their clothing: Casual wear made from 100% super-soft merino wool which has superior breathability and odor-blocking abilities, allowing this line of travel clothes to be worn many times without washing.

Developing a Business Plan for Your Clothing Line

With some of the basics out of the way, the next step is for you to develop a basic (but critical) business plan to map out your decisions and the direction for your clothing company.

Some of the major elements you’ll want to consider when putting together your ecommerce business plan are:

• Your Business Model
• Customer Personas
• Competitor Strengths & Weaknesses
• Costs & Margins

Crafting a Brand for Your Clothing Line

The next step is to develop a brand for your new clothing company.

Crafting a brand for your new clothing company is paramount. With so many clothing companies and brands out there, you’ll need to differentiate yourself. Your brand will be a big part of that.

Ultimately, every business has a brand and every new business will have a brand. Crafting your brand upfront gives you the chance to better define and communicate your message and story.

If you’re planning on creating a custom cut and sew clothing line, you may want to consider hiring a dedicated branding agency to help you craft your brand. If you’re planning on a print-on-demand or a private label brand where your investment and budget are much smaller, developing your own brand can be a worthwhile and low-cost option.

At this stage you need to identify:

• Who your market is
• What brand would speak best to this market

Below, we will quickly introduce you to several key elements of developing your clothing company brand, however, for a complete breakdown of all brand elements, as well as the guide and worksheets to define all your brand elements, check out our branding guide, A Better Brand.

Defining Your Market

Defining your market is important for any brand, but especially for brands in the clothing and apparel market because it’s extremely saturated. By broadly targeting large groups of people, you’re setting yourself up for failure right from the beginning. What you want to do is niche down and create segments.

Some critical questions to ask yourself at this stage is:

• What type of clothing and apparel products do I want to make?
• Who is going to purchase my products?
• What specific value will my product or brand bring these people?
• What will be unique about my product?
• Who is my competition?

Creating Your Brand Pillars

Brand pillars are a few key words or attributes (usually 3-4) that embody what your brand is about, and they serve as a starting point for developing your brand persona. Later, these words are used as a checkpoint against most activities of the brand. For example, when creating your website, an advertisement, or even a conversation with your customer, you should check it against your brand pillars. Ask yourself: Does my design/website/ad/conversation represent the essence behind my brand pillar words?

Your brand pillars act as a simple tool for keeping your brand consistent throughout all of your activities and they serve as the foundation for your brand.

Develop Your Brand Visuals

Your brand visuals are the common brand elements that many people immediately think about when they think about a particular brand. This includes your company’s logo, brand colors, and fonts, as well as your overall design and photography aesthetics.

• Create a Moodboard: A mood board is a perfect way to start pulling together the visual style you’re going for. Essentially a mood board is a collection of images, photos, designs, colors, and any other snippets of multimedia you find from around the web that serves as an inspiration for your brand. While there are many tools available online to help you collect these elements, the easiest way tends to be using Pinterest or Instagram.
• Select a Color Palette: Your next step in the branding process is to narrow down a color palette to use. Selecting a color palette up front will help keep your brand looking consistent through all channels. You’ll want to start by paying particular attention to the dominant colors used in your mood board since these are likely colors that immediately caught your eye. From there we also suggest you use a tool like Adobe Color to review other community-inspired and voted color palettes to get some additional ideas. Finally, Adobe also offers a tool for helping choose and refine your color palette, check it out here.
• Craft a Logo: When it comes to crafting a logo for your business, you’ll want a logo that not only represents your brand well but one that speaks to your target demographic, too. While we always recommend working with a respected logo designer to craft the perfect logo for your brand, those with a smaller budget can get started for almost nothing with a tool like Looka.

The Product Development Process for Your Clothing Line

For anyone who is completely new to the fashion business, it’s important to know that this is a hugely important step in the process of starting and running a cut-and-sew clothing line. At this point, we strongly suggest that you consider partnering with a professional who knows what they’re doing and how to do it properly.

Professionals such as pattern makers, tech pack creators, design partners, materials partners, and production partners are highly experienced in their respective fields and it’s their job to make your clothing line a reality in the most efficient way possible. Without the help of professionals, things like pattern making and tech packs can be a nightmare for not only you but for the future manufacturer you plan to work with.

This is where researching your manufacturer in advance pays off for you, though. Some manufacturers offer professional product development services, some will only manufacture for you if they have done your product development themselves, and others don’t provide these services but they have partners who they prefer working with. All of this information will be outlined on the manufacturer’s website or by contacting them directly.

When it comes to the product development of your clothing line, there is generally going to be a common path to follow with some common terminology no matter what types of clothing products you’re developing. First, we will look at what the general process of clothing product development looks like, then we will discuss the process in more detail.

• Designs: This generally refers to the initial design concept and is usually represented as sketches either on paper or digitally. While your patterns might start out as concept sketches, eventually you’ll likely turn them into digital sketches using a program like Illustrator.
• Tech Pack: A tech pack is essentially a blueprint for your apparel product, providing a manufacturer with all the details and technical specifications for production. This includes the designs, measurements, materials, and any accessories (zipper, buttons, etc.).
• Pattern Making & Grading: Pattern making is the process of turning your technical drawings into patterns that can be used for production. Grading is the process of taking a single pattern and grading the pattern up or down to create the additional patterns for all the other sizes in your apparel line.
• Sourcing: Sourcing involves finding, communicating, vetting, and working with multiple manufacturers to determine which one is best suited for the full production of your particular products.
• Samples: This involves manufacturers producing a one-off or small batch of samples to provide you with a proof of concept, as well as for you to identify potential issues or improvements prior to a full production run.
• Production: A full product run is the mass production of your apparel products. Depending on the products and the manufacturer, this can be hundreds of units, thousands of units, or even hundreds of thousands of units.

Below, we will go into greater detail about each of these steps in the process and provide you with more content and resources to get you started. However, it’s important to note that there are other resources available that will guide you through the full process, helping you at each step of the way.

Some of the most popular ones are:

• Maker’s Row
• Sqetch
• Sewport
• CALA

Step 1: Design Your Clothing Line Concepts

Your clothing line will begin as sketches—most likely simple sketches in a notebook. This is usually the best route to get the ideas out of your head. As you begin sketching your clothing pieces, also think about adding any specific notes or unique ideas you have, as well as any special features or functionality. These notes will likely be part of tech packs later.

The initial goal is just to start developing your ideas and bring them to life.

Furthermore, the benefit of sketching out your ideas is that they can be shared. This is important because unless you’re a professional clothing designer, you’re going to likely need to enlist the help of a fashion designer or illustrator to help you pull together and refine your sketches into something more realistic and thought out.

Step 2: Create Patterns & Develop Tech Packs

You will need to enlist the help of a qualified pattern maker to take your idea and turn it into an actual pattern that can then be turned into an actual piece of clothing. A pattern can then be used to help create a tech pack.

A tech pack is essentially a blueprint for each garment. Your tech pack tells your manufacturer all the information required to transform your design into a final product. A proper and complete tech pack will reduce errors in production, save you money, prevent miscommunication, and ultimately, bring your product to life exactly how you envisioned it.

Your tech pack should include all possible details about your product, including (but not limited to) the:

• Design
• Fabrics
• Measurements
• Trim
• Stitching
• Artwork
• Label & Tag Information
• Packaging Instructions

Here’s an example of a tech pack for a better understanding:

(Source: Michael Smith Design)

Here are some pattern makers and technical designers who have been vetted and provided by Maker’s Row, to get you started:

• Nicole Melendez
• Clothier Design Source

Additional places to hire freelancers to help produce your tech packs:

• People Per Hour – Tech Packs
• Upwork – Tech Pack Freelancers

Step 3: Research Clothing Manufacturers

The next step in this process is to research potential clothing manufacturers.

Find out things like their location, capabilities, heritage, reputation, and what other brands they’ve worked with to get an idea of what they can offer you. It’s important at this stage to really be thorough as small things such as location can have a massive impact on communication, turnaround time, and shipping when it actually comes to working with a manufacturer.

Not every manufacturer provides the same services so it’s important to know the pros and cons of as many manufacturers as possible so you can find the services you’re looking for without compromising on your brand values.

• Maker’s Row: Maker’s Row has nearly 10,000 factories to explore, including over 3,000 in apparel, all based in the USA.
• Sourcify: Sourcify has relationships with hundreds of Chinese manufacturers and will work with you to find and vet the right one for you.
• Sqetch: Sqetch is similar to Maker’s Row but focuses on connecting you with European manufacturers.

Step 4: Determine Your Budget

Budgeting out product development and production costs is something you need to determine prior to selecting a factory to work with. You need to understand your budget availability and limits so you can map out all aspects of production, such as what fabric you’ll be able to use and whether producing overseas or in your home country is your best option.

Costs to consider in your budget include:

• The price of professional product development services such as pattern making, tech packs, design development, etc.
• The cost of making samples (bearing in mind that more than one sample is usually made)
• The cost of materials such as fabric, buttons, zippers, hardware, and any other pieces used in the construction of your garments
• The cost of transportation between you and the factory for meetings/visiting the factory
• The cost of labor (determine the difference in labor cost between your home country and overseas labor cost requirements)
• The cost of shipping between you and the factory and the cost of shipping the necessary materials to the factory
• The cost of production and actually creating the clothing items themselves

After considering these factors, you’ll be able to communicate your budget to your future manufacturer and find one that fits your requirements.

Pricing out all of these costs is also helpful in determining whether or not producing in an overseas factory is more realistic for your business—bearing in mind that while the cost of labor may be cheaper, the cost of shipping between you and the factory will increase; as will turn around time. Nonetheless, understanding the cost of product development and production helps you and your future manufacturer make the best choices for your business.

Step 5: Select Clothing Manufacturers

Once you’ve researched a bunch of different manufacturers and have an idea of what’s out there, make a shortlist of manufacturers who seem like they’ll be a good fit for your clothing brand.

Maybe there are some manufacturers who specialize in the kinds of clothing products you want to produce, maybe some operate out of your local area, maybe some have raving reviews from past or current clients, or maybe some fit into your budget range better than others. Whatever is important to you in a manufacturer, narrow down your shortlist to ones who seem like they check off some of your most important boxes.

Step 6: Contact Clothing Manufacturers

By now you should have been able to narrow down a long list of potential clothing manufacturers into a shorter list of manufacturers who meet your needs when it comes down to what you require in terms of professional services, which manufacturers are actually able to create your future garments, manufactures in an accessible location, or ones who meet your budget requirements.

Now is the time to contact your potential manufacturers, but that may be easier said than done. Response rates for manufacturers differ, but producing a well-thought-out initial email can increase your chances of actually receiving a response back from potential manufactures.

Here are some general DOs and DON’Ts when it comes to contacting a manufacturer:

• DON’T come across as a “tire-kicker.” If your interest in manufacturing doesn’t seem to be serious or genuine you may not get a response. Manufacturers don’t want to waste their own time working with people who aren’t serious when they could be working with people who actually want to build and grow their business.
• DO be polite. You and your manufacturer will be working together in this process—they don’t solely work for you—so treat them with respect and be mindful of their requirements, services, and processes.
• DO be clear. In the best interest of yourself and your future manufacturer, it’s best practice to be clear about what you’re looking for, the services you require, your timeline, etc. Be upfront about what you need and don’t leave any room for ambiguities in the event that it will create more confusion down the road.
• DO follow up. It’s okay to follow up after your initial email to ensure the factory received and read the message, so be prepared to send up to three follow-up emails spaced apart by a week or so to prompt a response from a factory. This will make you seem eager and serious to the factory which, if you’re new to this process, is what you want.
• DON’T give them too much information. Introduce your company, the products that you’re looking to create with them, what services you’re looking for, and ask what further information they need from you. Give them enough information to know your intentions and that you’re serious about the inquiry, but don’t overload them with your brand goals, material choices, and timelines yet.

Click here to learn more about how to construct the perfect initial contact email.

Step 7: Screen Potential Factories

If you’re lucky, by this step you’ll have received responses from some of the factories you’ve contacted and now it’s time to narrow down your search.

Even if you only received a response from one factory, it is still important to make sure it’s the right fit for you. At this step, you should communicate further with the factories and learn more about how they conduct business and the quality of their products. You should be looking to evaluate whether or not you will get along with them personally and professionally in order to gauge your potential for success as colleagues.

These are things to look out for:

• How they prefer to communicate with their clients (by email, phone, or personal visits)
• Ask for references from other clients (to get a first-hand evaluation of what they are like to work with)
• Ask for samples of products they’ve made (to judge if the quality of their products is at the level you’re looking for)
• Understand how they charge for samples, services, and what constitutes extra charges
• Get a feel for their timeline and availability

Now is the time to learn more about the factory, see their workspace in action, and communicate further with the manufacturer. This stage will give you an initial glimpse of what it will be like to work with this factory in the long run so it’s important to identify your respective strengths and weaknesses now so you can reduce the possibility of headaches and potential miscommunications in the future.

This is also now the right time to let the manufacturer in on your brand goals, where you see your brand starting off, what you see your brand scaling to, and let them know how you want them involved in that process. All the time you spent defining your brand in the first step should be communicated to the manufacturer to see if they understand where your brand is going and if they can get excited for your brand, too.

Step 8: Get Samples Made

Now that you can see yourself manufacturing your clothing line with a factory or two, it’s time to get some samples made so you can truly experience what your potential product will be like.

No matter how well-designed your patterns and tech packs have been, there are always opportunities for adjustments and corrections so it’s strongly encouraged that the sampling step is never skipped. It can be easy to want to jump straight into production—especially when time and money are on the line—but in the end, a whole line of garments that don’t fit properly will cost you more than just having a few samples done right from the start.

At this stage, it is appropriate to have more than one factory make samples of your garments. Feel free to shop around so you’re absolutely sure the factory you pick will be producing the garments you want at the quality level you want!

Step 9: Start Full-Scale Production

The final step of the manufacturing process is really just the first step of building your own clothing brand.

This is the time to work with your manufacturer and get your garments produced! At this stage, it’s important to stay five steps ahead of everything:

• Make sure deadlines are adhered to
• Be available to answer any questions your manufacturer may have for you
• Be diligent with quality control

Once production for one season of garments starts, the planning for the next season begins—this is only just the beginning! But now that you have the right manufacturer for your business, let their skills and services help you build your clothing brand to where you want it to be.

Step 10: Brand Your Clothing & Packaging

The branding of your clothing line has everything to do with how you’ll be perceived by your customers. Branding tells the story of your company and your packaging is one of the few parts of your brand—besides your clothing items themselves—that your customers will actually be able to touch, feel, and see. It engages your customers, it can make them feel valued, and it can even increase the perceived level of quality your customers associate with your brand and your clothing items.

This is why it’s important to seriously consider how you package and present your clothing items, no matter what items you’re selling.

There are plenty of different ways to enhance your brand’s packaging and presentation and to make it unique and true to your brand.

Let’s learn more…

Step 11: Branded Packaging Options

There are two different types of options when it comes to branding your packaging: The actual elements that you use for the packaging itself, and the additional extras you can include with the package to elevate the unboxing experience.

The package elements are the more functional items that are required to actually ship your clothing pieces, whereas the added extras enhance the experience and help to make your customers feel valued.

Elements of a Branded Package

These are the functional parts of a shipping package that you’ll need in order to ship your items from you to your customers. You won’t need every single one of these items, but they’re all options that you can use depending on what you want your packaging to achieve.

Shipping Boxes

Depending on the clothing items you sell, you may have to ship them to your customers in a shipping box. Shipping boxes are sturdy and are a good option for shipping heavy or bulky items (such as coats) or delicate items that need to be protected throughout the shipping process (such as beaded clothing pieces, or items with 3D appliqué).

Shipping boxes, however, can add weight and size to your package making it more expensive to ship, but if it will protect your clothing items while they’re on their way to your customers, it’s a small price to pay upfront that should decrease the potential of damaged items and returned products in the future.

Keep in mind that your shipping boxes don’t have to be boring cardboard boxes. There are plenty of services available to entrepreneurs and small businesses that can create custom boxes for your products at competitive prices, whether you’re looking for something sleek, simple, and plain or something colorful, bold, patterned, and vibrant.

You can also use these services to get your brand name printed onto the box itself for a more professional unboxing experience.

Where to Source Shipping Boxes:

• Refine Packaging
• Pakible
• Packwire
• Lumi
• Wolfpack Packaging Inc.
• Arka
• Box Geek
• Custom Boxes & Packaging
• Custom Boxes Now
• eSupplyStore
• Fast Pack: Boxes
• Instabox (Canada)
• PakFactory
• Papermart
• ValueMailers

Poly Mailers

Another great alternative for shipping clothing items is shipping bags—otherwise referred to in the industry as poly mailers.

These are an ideal option because unlike shipping boxes, they don’t add much weight or bulk to your package, so you won’t be adding extra shipping costs to your package. They are less sturdy than a box though, so they’re a good option if you’re shipping clothing pieces that aren’t easily damaged and can be bent and folded throughout the shipping process. They do come in plenty of sizes too, so whether you’re shipping one item or a few at a time, you should be able to source a selection of different sized poly mailers to meet your customer’s needs. Plenty of brands ship clothing items to their customers in poly mailers, so it is an appropriate method for the industry.

There are plenty of places online where you can get custom poly mailers made for your business so you’re able to add your logo, brand colors, or fun patterns to make it more exciting for your customers.

Where to Source Poly Mailers:

• Sticker Mule
• Pakible
• Lumi
• Uline: Poly Mailers
• eSupplyStore: Poly Mailers

Bubble Mailers

If your clothing items need a bit more protection but you don’t want to completely upgrade from a poly mailer to a full-on shipping box, you have another option: Bubble mailers. As the name would suggest, they’re like poly mailers but they have a layer of bubble wrap included on the inside of the mailer which helps protect whatever’s inside.

They don’t offer the same sturdiness that shipping boxes do, but they help to cushion the contents of the mailer throughout the process and are less bulky than shipping boxes.

Where to Source Bubble Mailers:

• Pakible
• Uline: Bubble Mailers
• eSupplyStore: Bubble Mailers
• Fast Pack: Bubble Mailers

Tissue Paper

If using packing peanuts and crinkle paper isn’t your style, or if your products don’t need additional protection, or even if you’re using a poly mailer, tissue paper may be an ideal option to enhance the unboxing experience for your customers.

Tissue paper makes the unboxing experience feel more like a gift, which can make your package seem thoughtful and your customers feel valued.

Tissue paper is also an easy way to add to your packaging without adding any extra bulk or weight, and you can have it printed with your logo or choose colored or patterned paper to add some extra flair to the package. Use an everchanging assortment of patterns, colors, and styles to keep repeat customers interested.

Where to Source Tissue Paper:

• Uline: Retail Cushioning
• Uline: Industrial Tissue Paper
• JAM Paper: Tissue Paper
• eSupplyStore: Tissue Paper
• Fast Pack: Tissue Paper
• Papermart: Tissue Paper

Packing Tape

Depending on your brand’s style, using packing tape that’s colorful, patterned, or printed with your logo may be an interesting way to decorate your shipping box or package. Not only is it decorative, but packing tape is functional and adds another layer of security to keep box openings sealed throughout the shipping process.

Where to Source Packing Tape:

• Tape Jungle
• Uline: Tape
• JAM Paper: Packaging Tape
• eSupplyStore: Packing Tape

Stickers

If you don’t need something as heavy-duty as packing tape to seal your boxes or mailers shut, stickers can be an alternative option that can also add to the branded packaging experience. Get your logo printed on them, your brand’s tagline, mission statement, fun facts about your brand, or any other piece of info you want to share with your customers for an added layer of personalization. Alternatively, use stickers to brand plain shipping boxes or mailers, or include them inside your package for customers to use or share as they please.

Stickers are super versatile, so think about how you can use stickers to enhance your unboxing experience!

Where to Source Stickers:

• Sticker Giant
• Sticker Mule
• Sticker You
• Moo

Include Extra Branded Material

These aren’t necessary to include, but if you’re interested in elevating your unboxing experience, making it memorable for your customers, and making them feel valued, then including one or two of the following options can help you to start out in a positive way.

Promotions, Discounts & Deals

Including packing inserts that notify your customer of an upcoming promotion, or share a discount code or deal they can use for themselves or share with a friend is a pleasant surprise your customers will likely appreciate when opening their package. It shows thought and care from your end, and it’s also likely to encourage them to purchase from you again, which is advantageous for you.

Business Cards

If you want your customers to remember you, refer you to a friend, or send you feedback about their experience with your business or your products, consider including your business card so they can hold onto it or pass it on to others. It’s a small token, but it shows that you value their input and experience.

Custom Notes/Personalized Messages

This is the ultimate way to make your customers feel valued and shows an immense amount of consideration and thoughtfulness.

Custom, handwritten notes with personalized messages are a great way to connect with your customers and make them feel appreciated. While it likely won’t be possible to include a handwritten note for all of your customers, consider including them for your very first customers, your most frequent purchasers, for customers who leave glowing reviews on your website, or ones who have taken the time to send you valuable feedback. Your customers will likely feel very touched by your effort and will likely also share their experience with their peers or on their social platforms, which is positive exposure for your brand.

Gifts or Samples

Who doesn’t love to receive a gift?! Using gifts as a way to thank your customers for their purchase is a surefire way to capture their attention and make them feel valued. It doesn’t have to be anything big (some companies include candy bars to treat their customers) as you just want it to be an addition to the package, but something small can be just as appreciated by your customers.

If you don’t want to gift an item from another company, consider including a sample of one of your own products. Again, it doesn’t have to be anything big, but something that complements their purchase could be appreciated.

Step 12: Brand Your Clothing Items

Beyond the packaging of your clothing items, you can also add additional touches of branding to your clothing items themselves to ensure they’re as seemingly high-quality as possible and are presented in the most thought out way possible. The best way to do this is by adding custom labels and tags.

Clothing Labels & Tags

Clothing labels are a piece of fabric that’s attached to the inside of clothing items that typically include the brand’s logo. While it’s required in most countries for clothing items to have care and size labels, brand labels aren’t necessary but they add a thoughtful touch to the clothing piece. They also often help customers to remember where the clothing item is from once they’ve integrated it into their wardrobe, and they can add to the overall feel of the clothing piece.

Some labels can be scratchy and uncomfortable for the wearer, which can make the garment seem cheap, while others can be well sewn into the garment and made of a cloth material that’s much more high quality. Think about how you want your brand to be perceived and choose a type of label that fits accordingly.

Clothing Label Material Options:

• Damask Woven Labels
• Satin Woven Labels
• Taffeta Woven Labels
• Woven Patches
• Cotten Twill Labels
• Canvas Printed Labels
• Nylon Printed Labels
• Satin Printed Labels
• Silicon Clothing Labels
• Leather Labels
• And much more

It’s also important to consider which label types exist and where they can be located on the garment.

If you want to increase your brand’s awareness, you may want to consider placing brand labels on the outside of your clothing items such as on hems or cuffs, but if you want to maintain relatively inconspicuous brand placement, you may just want to include the labels on the inside of your garments.

The types of clothing labels you can include on your garments include:

• Manhattan Fold Labels: These are quite similar to Center Fold Labels in their appearance, except that the top of the label is folded over to give a more finished and high-quality look. This type of label is typically sewn into the collar of a garment.
• The End Fold Labels: These have more of a finished and high-quality look to them because the edges are tucked in at the sides. These types of labels are typically printed with brand logos and they’re quite small.
• Straight Cut Labels: These have no folds at all, which means they’re typically sewn on flat—straight onto the garment. They’re commonly also placed on the outside of a garment as a decorative patch, usually with a brand logo printed on them.
• Center Fold Labels: These are the most common type of apparel labels. They’re usually made of woven materials and commonly attached to the inside of garment collars.
• The Mitre Fold Label: These are similar to the End Fold Label as they’re quite small, shaped like a thin rectangle, and are typically printed just with a brand logo. This type of label, however, hangs down a bit farther than the End Fold Label instead of going straight across.
• Loop Fold Labels: These labels are commonly sewn on the inside of garments, typically close to the hemline in shirts or the waistband in some trousers. This type of label is usually reserved for care and size information, not brand logos.

Clothing Tags

Where to Source Clothing Labels and Tags:

• Custom Labels 4 U
• Uline: Hanging Tags

Step 13: Create Your Online Clothing Store

If you’re serious about building a brand or learning more about digital marketing, search engine optimization, and conversion rate strategies, you need to build your clothing store on a customizable ecommerce platform. We can’t recommend Shopify enough. Not only is Shopify one of the easiest platforms to get started with, but its app store is the most robust and has a host of print-on-demand clothing printers and dropshippers if you choose to go that route (read our Shopify Review to learn more about why we recommend it so highly).

Shopify enables you to build your own online clothing store wherever you are, with the ability to sell to customers all over the world. Setting up your store with Shopify is easy, and you don’t have to worry about your website’s security so you can be sure that you and your customers’ sensitive information is protected when shopping on your site.

Overall, Shopify is the most recommended ecommerce platform out there, and it’s your best option when it comes to starting your own clothing store online.

When setting up your clothing store on Shopify you’ll want to take your brand into consideration and make use of all your brand visuals. Implement your color palette, use your logo, take effective product and lifestyle photos of your garments, and create a glowing “About Page” so your customers can learn more about who your brand is and what you stand for.

These are the types of things that will make your clothing store stand out to your customers, so they’ll be more trusting when it comes time for them to make a purchase. You want your website to install confidence in your customers, so take that into consideration when setting up your online clothing store.

Your Store’s Theme

Another aspect of your online clothing/apparel store to take into serious consideration is your store’s theme. Themes are the general outward look and feel of your website, and depending on the products you sell, some themes may display your products better than others.

Since you’ll be starting a clothing/apparel store, you’ll want a theme that shows off your garments to their full potential so choose a theme that enables you to post lots of images.

Shopify offers plenty of free and premium themes to choose from (see them all in action on the Shopify Theme Store) but if you’re looking for more theme options, Out Of The Sandbox creates premium Shopify themes and they are one of the best, if not the best, place to get them.

Step 14: Create a Shipping Strategy for Your Clothing Company

Figuring out how to ship your products to your customers can be a confusing and daunting process if you’ve never done it before as there’s a lot to take into consideration.

What should you charge for shipping? How much does shipping cost? What about returns? What shipping carrier should you use? Should you start off with a shipping and fulfillment warehouse? Will your customers get charged duty and customs fees? What about shipping labels? What about tracking and insuring your packages?

All these questions, and more, are valid questions to be asking yourself—and we’ll dive into them now:

How to Charge Your Customer for Shipping

These are your options:

• Charge Your Customers the Exact Shipping Fee: This means that your customers will be made aware of the shipping costs while they’re checking out and they’ll have to pay the exact amount it costs to get their order shipped to them.
• Charge Your Customers a Flat Shipping Fee: This means that you can instate a flat shipping fee such as $6 for domestic orders and $12 for international orders, no matter how many items each customer orders and no matter where they’re located domestically or internationally. Some orders will cost you more to ship and some will cost you less, but if you budget it correctly it should even out.
• Offer Your Customers Free Shipping Over a Certain Threshold: For example, you could offer all customers free shipping if they spend over $100. This encourages customers to purchase enough products to meet that amount so they don’t have to pay for shipping. By making sure they spend a certain monetary amount, it makes it more worthwhile for you to ship their package for “free” because the cost of shipping is absorbed into your profit margin on the order. Check out our article on How to Offer Free Shipping & Calculating Your Free Shipping Threshold for more information.
• Offer Your Customers Free Shipping Based on their Location: In this case, you could offer free shipping for all domestic destinations and any international locations will have to pay a calculated rate or a flat fee. This encourages your local customers to purchase from you without having to pay any shipping fees and depending on your domestic shipping rates you should be able to absorb the cost in your profit margin, assuming you price your items accordingly. For international customers, however, you’ll be able to fund the shipping cost fully or in part by their calculated or flat rate fee.
• Offer Your Customers Free Shipping on Any Order: Some businesses choose to offer free shipping to all customers because it’s easier for them to calculate, more attractive to customers, and results in fewer cart abandonments. The cost of shipping will be absorbed by your profit margin, so take that into consideration when pricing your items.

Shipping is never free. No matter what it says on any website, “free shipping” is not free for the business—the cost is just being absorbed in some other way. It’s also no secret that shipping costs are one of the most likely reasons for shopping cart abandonments, so in order to combat that, many ecommerce stores offer free shipping to decrease shipping cart abandonments.

Take both of these things into consideration when pricing your products so you can gauge whether you’ll need to charge higher prices for your items so you can afford to offer free shipping, or at least a subsidized shipping rate.

Calculating Shipping Costs

The cost of shipping depends on your carrier, where you’re shipping to, and where you’re shipping from. There are also other variables involved like the weight and size of the package as well, so your best bet is to use a shipping calculator to determine how much it would cost you to ship your packages. Many carriers have shipping calculators available on their websites so you can price out the cost of your packages on there.

• USPS Postage Price Calculator
• UPS Shipping Calculator
• DHL Shipping Calculator
• FedEx Shipping Calculator
• Canada Post Shipping Calculator
• UK Royal Mail Shipping Calculator
• Australia Post Shipping Calculator

How to Handle Returns

You basically have two options when it comes to handling returns for your customers: You can provide your customers with pre-paid postage in case they need to return an item, or you don’t provide your customers with pre-paid postage and they will have to assume the responsibility to pay for postage in the event that they need to return an item to you.

Providing pre-paid postage for customers offers them a seamless shopping experience with your company, however not offering free returns can actually affect customer’s decision to purchase from you at all.

Check out this blogpost from Shopify that discusses shipping returns in more detail to learn more about it and how it affects your business.

Which Shipping Carrier to Use

Most popular shipping carriers offer a business account program so businesses can get perks such as better order management, discounts on shipping, and/or free shipping supplies. Basically, it makes it a little bit easier and less expensive for you than just shipping packages without a business account.

Check out these popular shipping carrier’s business accounts:

• USPS Customer Gateway
• UPS Business Solutions
• DHL Business Account
• FedEx Business Center
• Canada Post Business Account
• UK Royal Mail Online Business Account
• Australia Post Business Credit Account

Using a Shipping & Fulfillment Warehouse

Shipping and fulfillment warehouses can be a tricky service to use for clothing stores as there are usually many different SKUs (stock-keeping units) such as different sizes and colors for each item of clothing. Although shipping and fulfillment warehouses may be convenient services to use since they handle the entire picking, packing, and shipping service for you, there can be some drawbacks, including:

• Inability to Use Your Own Branded Packaging: Some warehouses require that you use their own shipping packaging, so you won’t be able to use any boxes, poly mailers, tissue paper, stickers, etc. that have your own branding on them. It can also be difficult to add other extras such as promotional inserts, custom notes, samples, etc.
• Cost: Shipping and fulfillment warehouses can take the shipping process off your hands but at what cost? It costs you to store your SKUs on your warehouse’s shelf space so depending on how quickly your product ships out to customers and how much product you’re selling, it may or may not be a worthwhile cost for you.
• Handling Returns: Since your business is just one of many at a shipping and fulfillment warehouse, returned items may be handled in an inefficient manner, depending on the warehouse. Make sure you look into each warehouse’s return policy before you work with them.

However, there are also advantages to using shipping and fulfillment warehouses:

• Shipping Costs: Shipping and fulfillment warehouses generally have to pay less to ship packages, so you’ll likely pay less too.
• Simplified Process: No need to wait in line at the post office or deal with couriers to get your packages shipped.
• Saves You Time: All the time that it takes you to pick, package, and send packages can be put to other uses such as managing customer inquires, advertising, or just growing your business in general.

Generally speaking, if you’re just starting your online clothing store: Handle the shipping and fulfillment process yourself, initially.

This gives you the chance to learn the best practices for shipping your own products, you can put your own personal touch on each package and you can use your own branded packaging materials. If you’re just sending out a few parcels a day, it won’t take up too much of your time to send them through post offices or couriers.

If you anticipate having a large customer base to start off with and predict that you may not be able to keep up with packing and shipping orders yourself, have a look into shipping and fulfillment warehouses to see what your options are.

Shipping & Fulfillment Warehouses:

These are some shipping and fulfillment options to consider, however, we encourage you to do your own research and due diligence:

• Printful Warehousing & Fulfillment
• Shopify Fulfillment Network
• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)
• Fulfillrite
• Fulfillment.com
• Red Stag Fulfillment
• ThinkLogistics
• ShipFusion
• WSI Supply Chain Solutions

To learn more about why third-party logistics providers are advantageous for your business, check out our Ultimate Guide to Utilizing a 3PL Provider for Ecommerce Fulfillment article.

Duty & Customs Fees

It’s important to be aware that you as a business are not in control of the duties and customs fees your international customers may be charged on their orders. Customs and duties fees are managed and imposed on your customers by their country itself, you don’t have the power to prevent them or influence their cost.

You do, however, have the ability to warn your customers about potential customs and duties fees they may face so that they’re not unpleasantly surprised when their order arrives.

On your shipping information page, include a section about customs and duties fees and let your customers know that they may be charged these fees by their county and that your business has no control over that.

For more information about customs and duties declaration, required forms, and policies, check out these pages:

• USPS Postal Exporter
• UPS Import/Export Regulations
• DHL Customs and Duties
• FedEx Guide to Customs Forms
• Canada Post Customs Requirements
• UK Royal Mail Customs and Duties
• Australia Post Customs Forms & Regulations

Shipping Tracking & Insurance

Many customers now expect to have their packages tracked and expect to receive email updates on the whereabouts of the packages. If you’re interested in giving your customers a streamlined and professional shopping experience, look into what tracking options your shipping carrier has available. It almost always costs extra or will mean that you’ll have to upgrade to a more expensive service, but it could be very worthwhile for both you and your customers.

Most shipping carriers offer some kind of insurance, but it may not cover the entire cost of your orders—depending on the price of your items. If you sell high-priced items or just want the peace of mind that you’re insured for any lost parcels, it may be worth looking into a third-party shipping insurance provider such as Shipsurance or InsureShip.

It’s important to be aware that the shipping process can be complex, and it can take a while to set up and get used to all the different steps, systems, and processes. It’ll probably be a learning curve at the start, especially if you’ve never shipped a large number of orders before or if you’re launching to an eager audience, so give yourself time to set up your shipping systems properly so it doesn’t affect your business too much. Once you get a system going though you’ll likely get the hang of it and be able to make small improvements or scale your processes as needed.

Conclusion

We hope this post has provided you with very clear insight into the steps, systems, and processes it takes to start a clothing line. It may seem overwhelming at first if this is all new to you, however, just focus on one step at a time and grow from there. No matter what kind of clothing line you want to create—whether it’s just your own line of t-shirts or an entire collection of cut and sew garments—the information, tools, resources, and experiences provided in this guide should help you get where you want to go.

Before you launch your clothing brand, don’t forget to run through our Launch Checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything important, and once you’ve launched, use our 52 Week Marketing Plan to drive traffic to your store.

The post How to Start a Clothing Line: Your Complete Guide to Design, Sampling, Production & Packaging appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

But why start a t-shirt business?

Like a lemonade stand, they’re pretty easy for any novice entrepreneur to start. They can be started quickly with a limited amount of infrastructure and basically no money—so they’re a great first step in any entrepreneur’s business portfolio.

For those reasons, starting a t-shirt business tends to get a bad rap—anyone can do it, it doesn’t take any rocket science! But, that’s why we think t-shirt businesses are an important part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. They’re like a rite of passage. Ask any modern-day ecommerce entrepreneur if they had a t-shirt business at one point in their career and they’ll likely say yes.

And they’ll also tell you everything that starting a t-shirt business taught them.

Starting a t-shirt business is a great place to learn how to be an entrepreneur—by actually being an entrepreneur! You can read as many books and blogs about entrepreneurship as you want, listen to all the podcasts, and follow all the motivational accounts on social media, but if you aren’t putting anything into practice then you’re still not an entrepreneur.

By starting a t-shirt business, you can put everything you know about building, launching, and growing a business into practice, plus you can figure out everything you don’t know (which will probably be more than you expected) on the way.

When you start a t-shirt business, it may not bring you riches, fame, and glory, but it will teach you important lessons about launching and running a business that you can’t get from books and blogs—which you can apply to any future businesses. For many entrepreneurs, starting a t-shirt business laid a foundation of skills, lessons, and experience that served as a base for every other business they launched in the future.

So, let’s get into everything you need to know about how to start an online t-shirt business.

Starting an Online T-Shirt Store from Scratch

The founder of this site, Richard, started off his ecommerce career with a t-shirt store. It was originally just an experiment to see if he could build and launch an online store in 24-hours, but it quickly blew up to be much more than that.

Sure enough, he created and launched his store in 24-hours, but he also documented the process in a blog post to show others how they could do it, too. And people loved it! The post was shared thousands of times and hundreds of thousands of people read it. Some people wanted to buy his t-shirts and others wanted to start their own t-shirt store, too.

But, that was several years ago, and so much has changed for ecommerce businesses since then.

Now, it’s even easier to start a t-shirt business! And there are so many more creative t-shirt designs and concepts that entrepreneurs are selling. Plus, it’s easier to sell other products too like sweatshirts, ball caps, mugs, phone cases, and so much more. New entrepreneurs aren’t limited to just starting t-shirt businesses as their first store anymore, there are so many other options.

So, let’s rewind a few years and start from the very beginning. What was starting a t-shirt business like back in the day? And how have things changed?

This is Richard’s story…

The Background Story

As an entrepreneur, I find it hard to do nothing. I always want to be building something. I need to be building something. That’s why, during the process of documenting #TheGreatBuild project, I became frustrated so many times.

One evening while I was waiting and I really couldn’t move forward on the project, I made a decision to build another ecommerce business.

For those that are maybe just reading my blog for the first time and don’t know, my new ecommerce business which I have been documenting through a blog series called #TheGreatBuild is called Finch Goods Co. Many people have asked me where the name “Finch” came from and why I chose Finch Goods for the name of my new business. Truth be told, it was the name of the street I grew up on. It was the place I lived, the place I played, and it was the place of my first dozen entrepreneurial endeavors, mostly in the form of lemonade stands, vegetable stands, a makeshift hockey card pawnshop, and garage sales. The name Finch Goods Co. is a tribute to my early entrepreneur days.

Finch is also the name of the closest subway/bus station, and up until I had a car, it was my access point to the rest of the world. If I wanted to go anywhere, I passed through Finch Station.

Because of my sentimental attachment to Finch, I designed a t-shirt based on the typography, colors, and tile pattern of that station in late February.

Fast Forward

Fast forward a few weeks to a night in April. I was working on #TheGreatBuild project (Finch Goods Co.) and was getting close to launching. However, I was stuck. Everything was ready to go except I was waiting on some inventory I intended to launch with. I had nothing to do.

As an entrepreneur, having nothing to do is a terrible feeling. It feels exactly the opposite of progress—probably because it is. Growing anxious to launch Finch Goods Co. and not being able to, I stared blankly at my computer for a few minutes, until my screen darkened and went to sleep. In the reflection of my screen, I saw my shirt… Finch.

Remembering the few compliments I got on the shirt, I wondered if people actually were interested in hyper-local t-shirts that represented their community—right down to their local subway station.

Validation

The idea of hyper-local t-shirts was one I was sure people were interested in. Our city definitely has a lot of pride and after some cursory Google searches, I found nothing similar. The closest was a series of vinyl wall decals with the various stations’ typographies. Searching for that company’s name on Google, I found several online news articles about them. They had been running their business for 5+ years, so in theory, they were doing well.

The thought of getting wrapped up in a new business while still trying to launch Finch Goods Co. was a little intimidating. My time was very limited at this point… Because of this, I came to a decision; if I were to build a new business, there would have to be some rules:

• • I had 24 hours to build it—no more, no less
  • It had to be fully automated once it was live

Under these rules, building the entire business would essentially act in itself as the validation.

It’s Go Time… 23:59

With these rules in mind, there were a couple of things to figure out:

• • #1: Which ecommerce platform was I going to use?
  • #2: How would I print the t-shirts and ship them in an automated way?

For me, #1 was easy. Unless #2 forced my hand in another direction, I would use Shopify (Shopify Review). It’s the platform I know and love, it’s the easiest to use (in my opinion), and it offered the most amount of app integrations, which I knew was likely where I would find a dropshipping company to print and ship custom shirts for me.

I immediately headed to the Shopify App Store and searched for “t-shirts.” The search returned approximately six t-shirt printers/dropshippers. After scanning through all of them, their integrations, their t-shirt options, and pricing, I decided on Printful. Printful, it seemed, had the most seamless integration, the best selection of shirts, and reasonable pricing. They also had the ability to print other products like canvas prints and bags, should I ever decide to expand my product offering.

With my ecommerce platform and t-shirt printer/dropshipper decided upon, it was time to work on the designs. Now, Toronto has over 60 stations and I completely underestimated how grueling and exhausting it would be to design all 60. Luckily, many of the designs had a similar style. Over the next 6 hours, I cranked out almost all 60 t-shirt designs for the stations.

With all 60 designs complete, I thought I was done. However, I quickly realized that very few people would buy a design without knowing how it looked on a t-shirt. With that in mind, I headed over to my favorite graphic design marketplace, Creative Market. I searched for “t-shirt template” and quickly found a really slick template for $8.

Now that I had the t-shirt template and all my t-shirt designs, it was once again a manual process of applying all 60 of my designs to the t-shirt template and saving each file.

With all my t-shirt designs completed, it was time to build the website. I signed up for Shopify’s 14-day trial and got to work. I already had a Shopify theme I had purchased for Finch Goods Co. so I figured I might as well use it for this project as well. When it comes to naming a business, I know it can sometimes take weeks, but I didn’t have that long. I decided to allocate 3 minutes to naming this business. As confusing as this was (mostly for my friends and family) I decided to call this business, Finch’s. Again, this was named after the street I grew up on, the subway station closest to my childhood home and, it just so happens that Finch Station is the first station on the subway line.

I designed the website to be as simple as possible, even keeping the same color scheme from Finch Goods Co. The most time-consuming part was creating each of the 60 products and uploading the right photos for each. Organization was key.

Finally, after 5 coffees and close to 14 hours straight, Finch’s was born:

The last step before I launched and marketed my new online store was to integrate my store with Printful (Printful Review). This was an easy enough process. I installed the Printful Shopify App, and from there it automatically pulled in all my products. All I had to do at that point was upload the design file to each product and select the type/style of shirt I was going to use.

Marketing

At this point, I was pretty tired and really had no idea what I was going to do for my marketing. However, I did remember that just in the previous week, the subway celebrated its 60th anniversary. Could I use this to my advantage? I did some searches on Google to see who covered this event. One stuck out immediately: It was a pretty popular local online blog and they just wrote an article about the subway system’s 60th anniversary. I figured the author of that post might want to hear about my newly released shirts.

I found the author on Twitter and asked for his email address. Later that evening, I emailed him the following:

Within the hour he replied asking a few more questions. It was late and I was exhausted. I decided to leave my response until the morning. Besides, I still had a few things left to set up in my Shopify account before launch.

The next day, I woke up to the dinging sound of emails coming through to my phone, *ding*… *ding*… *ding*. After ignoring the first few, I finally rolled over and checked my phone. To my surprise, it was a bunch of emails from customers asking about my shirts, shipping, and pricing… Customers? I haven’t even officially launched yet!

I quickly opened my laptop and discovered a big spike in traffic to my site. Although I had not “officially” launched, my site was live. However, I still had not turned on checkout, so no one could actually buy a t-shirt.

My first priority was to turn the checkout on and complete a test order to make sure everything was working properly. After I did that, I checked to see where the traffic was coming from. Turns out, the writer went ahead without my email responses and published a post about my store anyways!

Here was his post:

I also received a handful of other emails from people interested in collaborations and promotions with my line of tees.

Furthermore, that day I also received some favorable social media mentions from BlogTO as well as a local Hip Hop radio station and a handful of other locals.

Costs & Sales

I’ve broken down my total costs below for this 24-hour business. My fixed costs amounted to a staggering $24. My variable costs were $13 per shirt to print each one. My revenues for the first 24 hours of business were $347.71 for a total profit (in the first 24 hours) of $210.71

Total Costs:
$16 font for typography (Fixed Cost)
$8 t-shirt mockup template (Fixed Cost)
$104 for printing 8 t-shirts at $13 per t-shirt (Variable Costs)
____________________________
$137 Total Costs

Total Revenue In The First 24 Hours:
$347.71

Admittedly, after the spike in sales from the initial media coverage, sales dropped. In fact, since that first 24-hour sales period, I’ve only made a few hundred more dollars, however, I have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and everything is 100% automated. I have not, and I have no need to login to anything for sales and orders to be taken care of.

Going Forward

Since my initial email that sparked my initial sales, I haven’t done anything else for marketing. That one blog post continues to deliver a small trickle of sales each week.

Most of my time now is spent on my new project, Finch Goods Co. so I have almost no time left for this project. However, when I do get some time, I’m going to focus on SEO around some keywords I uncovered that I believe have the potential to deliver a steady stream of high-quality traffic for people looking for localized Toronto t-shirts. Again, I want to keep this project as automated as possible so SEO is going to be the biggest opportunity to achieve that.

So as you can see, starting a t-shirt business is a valuable way to learn the ropes around building, launching, and growing an online business. It worked for Richard, and it can work for you, too.

Why You Should Start an Online T-Shirt Business Right Now

The biggest problem we find among online entrepreneurs is:

• They don’t know what to sell online so they spend months and months looking for product ideas, before giving up
• If they do find a great product idea and start their first business, they have no idea how to properly market their product and business to drive traffic and convert that traffic to sales—thus a great product or idea is squandered

Starting a t-shirt business helps with both of these factors.

First, if you’re struggling to find a product to sell, you will automatically have a product—t-shirts. It makes choosing a product idea simple.

Second, an online t-shirt business gives you a way to start understanding and experimenting with online marketing before you sink some real time and money into a more serious business.

Remember, and never forget, you’ll learn 100x more from actually starting a business than you ever will from just consuming articles, blogs, books, and podcasts. There is no substitution for the real-world experience of building traffic and learning to convert it, and starting with a t-shirt business can be one of the best places to begin.

Who Can Start a T-Shirt Business

One of the best things about starting an online t-shirt business?

Pretty much anyone can start one!

There’s a much lower barrier-to-entry because you don’t have to purchase a bunch of t-shirts from a wholesaler, learn how to screen print designs on them, and then figure out how to ship the t-shirts to your customers. Oh no—selling t-shirts online is a much more streamlined process now, to the point that you don’t even have to see your t-shirts in-person at all. They can be made and sent directly to your customers without you having to lift a finger.

This is great news for new entrepreneurs because it means that they can start t-shirt businesses and get their foot in the door more easily.

You can start a t-shirt business if:

• You want a small side project
• You want to start your first business
• You’re a student
• You’re a stay-at-home parent
• You work another job
• You have some free time
• You want to experiment with marketing
• You have a cool t-shirt design idea
• You want to start a business and then sell it
• You want to start a business and then grow it
• You want to make your own merch
• You don’t have much money to spend on starting a business
• You have virtually no money to spend on starting a business
• You want to start and run a business that takes minimal effort to upkeep
• You don’t have the ability to commit full-time to starting and running an online business

Whatever your reason, pretty much anyone can start a t-shirt business! Read on to the next sections to find out how you can start a completely automated t-shirt business for very little upfront investment, and without purchasing any inventory upfront.

Remember, Richard started his t-shirt business for less than $150, so it’s possible!

How to Start an Online T-Shirt Business Right Now

Alright, let’s get into the details.

This is how you can start an online t-shirt business right now:

• You need a niche
• You need a t-shirt supplier
• You need a website
• You need t-shirt designs

That’s it! Just three main steps.

Let’s dive in further.

Pick a Niche

Before starting your online t-shirt business, there is one important thing to consider—your niche.

Choosing a niche is absolutely vital for success in the over-saturated t-shirt industry. If you don’t focus on your niche, your t-shirt designs and marketing may not appeal to your core audience and you also might not stand out in the market.

What is a Niche?

A niche is a group of people joined together by a common interest that is typically a subset of a larger market.

Think of it like this: Every person in the world has interests and those interests categorize them—consciously or not—into niches. Niches are specific enough to account for a substantial amount of people, while not being too large or too broad.

For example, picking “women” as a niche is too broad. Women are interested in many different things, they are a broad range of ages, activity levels, geological locations, and have varying skills and values. “Women” are a market, but not a niche market. “Women who rock climb” is more specific, without being too broad. There’s a substantial portion of the world’s population who fit the description of this niche market without it being too limiting.

Why Pick a Niche?

The purpose of picking your niche is to define a target group of people that your t-shirts will appeal to.

If you have no niche market, then you’ll have too broad a range of people to try to sell to which can become overwhelming and fruitless. Targeting ad campaigns becomes difficult, your branding can become directionless and there will be no identifiable passion fueling your business.

Niche markets are passionate about their interests because, well, they’re interested in them! If you feed into their interests then their community is likely to extend their passion to your business.

Find a T-Shirt Supplier

Once you have an idea of what your target niche is, you need to source your products! A business is nothing without products to sell.

So, in this case, you need to find t-shirts.

Luckily, there are lots (and we mean lots!) of t-shirt suppliers out there. You can find suppliers in all kinds of countries selling all kinds of t-shirts in all kinds of materials at all kinds of price points.

But what you need to narrow down your search to is a supplier that meets your specific criteria.

Do you want your t-shirts to be a certain style (cropped or long?), a certain color (neutrals or brights?), a certain fabric (cotton or a poly-blend?), or to meet certain specifications (eco-friendly or sweat-wicking?). If so, you’ll have to find a supplier that can meet the standards you’re setting.

If price is a big factor for you, you might want to focus on finding a t-shirt supplier that’s located in an area where manufacturing costs are low, so the cost to produce your products will be low, too. If fast-shipping is a priority for you, you might want to work with a supplier that has fulfillment warehouses in locations where most of your customers live so they’ll get their products faster.

Above all else, for new entrepreneurs, we recommend working with a t-shirt supplier that offers dropshipping.

What’s dropshipping?

It’s when the t-shirt supplier handles the entire process of making, printing, packing, and shipping your t-shirt products for you. They handle all the backend stuff, so you get to focus on creating your t-shirt designs, marketing your t-shirts, and helping your customers. It makes the process of starting and running your business super easy, and it’s how you can start a t-shirt business with no money upfront.

When you work with a t-shirt dropshipper, you just purchase a t-shirt from them when a customer purchases one from you! And most t-shirt dropshippers integrate with the most popular ecommerce platforms (like Shopify) so the entire process can be completely automated, meaning that you don’t have to forward customer orders to your dropshipper. The orders will go straight through from your site to your dropshipper!

Dropshipping is one of those things that sounds too good to be true—but it’s a tried-and-true process. Richard used Printful to dropship his t-shirts when he started his t-shirt business several years ago, and it’s only gotten better since then! Now, Printful is one of the top dropshipping services in the world, they have warehouses all over the globe in countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Spain, Japan, and Latvia so customers get their orders fast. They also ship worldwide, they offer tons of different products so you can dropship more than just t-shirts, and they have a team you can work with to create your designs if you want help bringing your product ideas to life.

They’re a full-service dropshipping service and they’re adding new products all the time, so they’re our top recommendation when it comes to starting your t-shirt business. If you want to learn more about them, check out our Printful Review.

But, if you’re looking to explore all your options, check out the following t-shirt dropshippers:

• Printful (Printful Review)
• Spocket
• Gooten
• Kite.ly
• Inkthreadable
• Amplifier
• Print Aura
• Printify
• Shirt Monkey
• Tee Talkies
• T-Shirt & Sons
• Teespring

Or check out our Dropshipping Suppliers Directory for even more suppliers.

Once you’ve picked a t-shirt supplier, you can move on to the next step.

Create Your T-Shirt Business Website

There are plenty of available platforms that you can sell your t-shirts on.

Marketplaces like Teespring have become popular lately, however, options like this aren’t ideal if you’re trying to learn more about digital marketing and branding. Choosing a marketplace platform like Teespring means that your products live on the Teespring platform so you don’t have the option to brand your own website, get deep into your site’s analytics, or implement sophisticated conversion optimization tactics.

There’s a time and a place for ecommerce marketplaces like Teespring—there definitely are some advantages to them like being able to draw in traffic and sales quickly—but if you’re looking to really learn the ropes of ecommerce, we’d recommend the next option…

Which is to choose a hosted ecommerce platform. If you’re serious about building a brand or learning more about digital marketing, website optimization, and sales strategies, then you need to go with a more customizable option like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Squarespace.

There are plenty of hosted ecommerce platforms out there, but our top pick is Shopify. They’re the best choice for pretty much any online business, and since they’re the biggest player in the game, it’s highly likely that whichever t-shirt dropshipper you work with will integrate directly with Shopify so you can automate your sales process.

It’s also super easy to get your site set up on Shopify. You don’t need to know how to code or even know much about how to set up a website—Shopify walks you through the entire process. They’re built to help people who know nothing about online businesses get their online business set up quickly and easily, but they’re also powerful enough to scale along with businesses as they grow. Any size of online store can be set up on Shopify, whether it’s a local mom-and-pop shop, to a Fortune 500 company—they’re a good fit for pretty much any business.

So, for your t-shirt store, we recommend setting it up on Shopify. You can make use of their 14-day free trial to get started before committing. But, if you want to explore all your options, check out our roundup of all the best ecommerce platforms here before making your choice.

Create Your T-Shirt Designs

Once you have a t-shirt supplier and you have an idea of where you’re going to set up shop, it’s time to figure out what you want your t-shirts to look like.

Your t-shirt designs are a super important part of your business—they’re essentially what’s going to set you apart from all the other t-shirt stores or retailers out there so it’s worth putting effort into your t-shirt designs.

These are your options:

• Create your own t-shirt designs
• Purchase designs from artists/creatives
• Commission an artist/creative to create designs for you

Depending on your budget and design ideas, one of these options might be a better fit for you than the others, so consider them carefully.

Creating Your Own T-Shirt Designs

If you’re an artist or creative, you might want to create your own designs or already have designs that you can print on your t-shirts. If that’s the case, then create your own t-shirt designs!

If you want to create your own t-shirt designs but aren’t sure how, check out classes on Skillshare to learn how to make your own designs. You could create designs on paper and then scan them onto your computer to make a digital file, or you could create digital designs right from the get-go.

Purchasing T-Shirt Designs

If you don’t want to create your own designs but don’t want to hire a designer to create them, you can purchase designs from creators on sites like Creative Market, GraphicRiver, or Designious. There are so many different options to choose from, and in most cases, you can even make small edits to the designs to tailor them to your needs. But keep in mind that you’ll need to purchase the commercial license option in order to include the designs on t-shirts that you’re selling, and you’ll have to abide by the licenses’ rules.

Also keep in mind that these marketplaces are open to anyone, so it’s possible that other people will be using the same designs and selling their own products with the designs on them—so they won’t be unique to you or your business.

Hiring a T-Shirt Designer

The final option is to hire a designer that can create t-shirt designs for you. This is likely to be the most costly option out of all three, however, it will likely give you great results and will ensure that your designs are more bespoke than if you were to purchase them from a public marketplace.

If you want to hire a designer, try these services:

• Dribbble
• Behance
• Fiverr
• Upwork
• Freelancer
• Elance

A graphic designer will be able to take your design ideas and bring them to life so you can sell the exact kind of t-shirts you want to sell. There are all kinds of designers out there so whether you want abstract t-shirt designs, t-shirts will cool fonts, illustrations to print on your t-shirts, patterns to print on your t-shirts, or whatever else you can think of—you’ll likely be able to find the perfect designer to create what you’re looking for.

To keep your t-shirt designs consistent from one to the next, work with the same designer for each design. It will help give your t-shirts a certain look which can help you establish a recognizable brand. On the other hand, if you want more varied options to keep things fresh and interesting, work with different designers for each design to give your customers more options! It’s your t-shirt business, so you can do what you want.

Finding T-Shirt Mockups

Another part of setting up your t-shirt store is creating product images to sell your t-shirts to your customers. You can always order samples from your t-shirt supplier so you can see your t-shirts in person and shoot them on a model (Printful lets you print off samples at a discounted price so you can do this!) but if you’re under time or budget constraints, there is another option.

Use a t-shirt mockup to bring your t-shirt designs to life—without actually having to purchase or photograph your t-shirts yourself!

This is a great option if, like Richard, you’re launching soon and you don’t have time to order your t-shirts and wait for them to arrive, or if you want to keep your startup budget low and not order samples of your t-shirts.

A t-shirt mockup enables you to bring your t-shirt designs to life without seeing them in person.

If you’re looking for a free t-shirt mockup option, Printful’s Mockup Generator is your best option. It can create t-shirt mockup flat lays, t-shirt mockups on models, and even lifestyle t-shirt mockups. It’s a super quick, budget-friendly option and it’s the option Richard chose when he was getting his product photos ready for his t-shirt store.

You can also purchase t-shirt mockups for a nominal fee (usually less than $10) from sites like Creative Market, Fiverr t-shirt mockups, GraphicRiver T-Shirt Mockups, and Design Bolts—50 T-Shirt Mockups if you can’t seem to find what you’re looking for on Printful’s Mockup Generator.

There are literally hundreds of t-shirt mock-up templates available online, both free and paid, so you should be able to find something that works for your business and your budget!

Should I Copyright My T-Shirt Designs? Should I Trademark My T-Shirt Designs?

First of all, what are copyrights and trademarks?

• Trademarks apply to identifying elements of a brand such as a logo
• Copyrights apply to literary and artistic works such as designs, books, and video

Should I Copyright or Trademark My T-Shirt Designs?

The super common questions of whether to copyright your t-shirt designs or trademark your t-shirt designs can be answered simply: In our opinion, no.

If you’re wondering whether you should copyright your t-shirt designs or trademark your t-shirt designs, we suggest not doing so. Why? The short answer is that you automatically own any copyrights to designs you’ve created without having to officially register that copyright, and trademarks are expensive, time-consuming, and don’t give you benefits in all jurisdictions.

Plus, when you register a trademark you have the obligation to defend that trademark, so you have the responsibility to hold people/businesses accountable if they infringe on your trademark which can lead to taking legal action (aka, more time and money) in future.

Copyrights and trademarks may be a good fit for you if you have something really important to protect, in which case seek advice from local counsel, however, for the average person we don’t suggest pursuing official copyrights or trademarks.

Can I Use Copyrighted or Trademarked Designs on My T-Shirts?

Again, the answer is likely no.

If you want to use copyrighted or trademarked designs on your t-shirts, you need to have express written permission from the owner of the copyright or trademark. Printing copyrighted or trademarked material on your t-shirt without the owner’s permission could possibly lead to legal action, which can be costly and time-consuming.

If you’re not sure whether a design you want to use is copyrighted or trademarked, reach out to the owner to see if it’s in the public domain or if you can use the design on your own products. If you can’t find the owner or when in doubt, don’t use the design. It’s not worth any legal ramifications for infringing on a copyright or trademark.

It’s worth remembering that copyrights and trademarks can extend not only to images and works of art, but to fonts, icons, illustrations, memes, quotes, and sayings, as well as brands. Just because you don’t know the source of a quote, image, meme, illustration, or something like an icon or font character seems too simple to be copyrighted or trademarked, it doesn’t mean that it’s free game to use.

The general rule of thumb here is if you haven’t created it, then don’t use it on your products.

This extends to your product photos and marketing materials, too. If you haven’t paid for a t-shirt mockup, or used a t-shirt mockup that you know is free to use, or worked with a model to create your product photos, then don’t put your t-shirt design on an image and use it on your site.

People own the copyright to their own images, even if they’re on Instagram or Pinterest and even if you don’t know who the original source is, so don’t overlay your t-shirt design on someone else’s image and then upload it to your site because that’s also likely an infringement on someone’s copyright.

This might seem confusing or like a lot of information but again remember:

• Don’t use a design, image, illustration, font, or icon on your t-shirt if you haven’t created it
• Don’t use a design, image, illustration, font, or icon on your t-shirt if you didn’t purchase the commercial rights to use it
• Don’t use a design, image, illustration, font, or icon on your t-shirt if you didn’t commission a designer, artist, or creator to create them for you for commercial purposes
• Don’t put your designs on images that you don’t own or haven’t created (even if the images come from Instagram or Pinterest or Google and/or you don’t know who the creator of the image is)
• Don’t use quotes that you haven’t created (yes, quotes are copyrighted work, even sometimes if they come from unknown sources)
• Memes can be copyrighted works, too
• Don’t use copyrighted or trademarked brand slogans, images, logos, or assets of any kind
• When in doubt, err on the side of caution and don’t use a work that isn’t yours
• If unsure, try to contact the owner/creator of whatever asset you want to use in your design

It’s better to be safe than sorry in the matters of copyright and trademark infringement, so conduct your own due diligence and contact qualified professionals if need be.

Check out these online legal resources for qualified legal advice, if need be:

• Lawtrades (USA)
• Clarity (Worldwide)
• Ownr (Canada)
• Rocket Lawyer (USA, UK, Spain, France, The Netherlands)

The Cost of Starting a T-Shirt Business

If you’re new to ecommerce or just starting a t-shirt business for the first time, you might be wondering how much it costs to start a t-shirt business.

Let’s get into it.

How Much Does it Cost to Start a T-Shirt Business?

T-shirt businesses can be started on a very small budget, especially if you’re working with a t-shirt dropshipper to supply your products.

These are the main costs:

• The cost of setting up your website (an ecommerce platform like Shopify costs $29/month but remember that they offer a 14-day free trial)
• The cost of making your t-shirt designs (this can be free if you make them yourself)
• The cost of t-shirt product photo mockups (this can be free if you use the Printful Mockup Generator)
• The cost of marketing (this can be free if you use social media)
• The cost of your t-shirts (if you use a dropshipper, you only have to purchase t-shirts once a customer has actually placed an order, meaning you don’t have to purchase any inventory upfront

How Can I Start My Own T-Shirt Business with No Money?

To start a t-shirt business with no money or very little money, you’ll need to create your own t-shirt designs, use a dropshipper like Printful so you don’t have to purchase any inventory upfront, and you’ll have to make your own product photos.

You can make your own product photos for free by using Printful’s Mockup Generator. All you have to do is upload your t-shirt designs to one of their t-shirt mockups and you’ll have a product photo-ready in seconds!

You’ll also have to have some sort of website to sell your t-shirt on, which will be hard to find for free. Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, but after that, you’ll have to commit to a paid plan (which costs $29/month).

Alternatively, you could use WordPress.org if you can figure out how to set up your own self-hosted website, but you’ll have to pay for hosting (we recommend Kinsta. Read our full Kinsta Review here to find out why). You could also use a site like Carrd (Carrd Review), which may not give you all the ecommerce functionalities that a Shopify site would, but it costs $19.99/year instead.

Is a T-Shirt Business Profitable?

Yes, t-shirt businesses can be profitable! Like any business, you control the expenses that cost your business money and the prices you charge your customers, so all it takes is some basic bookkeeping and smart business financial strategies to make your t-shirt business profitable.

If you want your t-shirt business to be profitable, minimize your expenses and make sure your t-shirt prices cover all your expenses. Don’t forget to leave room for profit to be leftover!

If you use a t-shirt dropshipping supplier like Printful, they will tell you the recommended retail price (RRP) for each product, so you’ll have an idea of how much to charge for each item and how much profit you’ll make from it. This is a great guideline to go off of, but still keep your own expenses in mind! You’re in control of your expenses and product prices—so make sure you have a good handle on those so you can keep your profits in good standing.

For business pricing strategies, check out this post.

How Much Can You Make Selling T-Shirts?

There’s no limit to how much you can earn selling t-shirts! How much you earn will be directly impacted by how many t-shirts you sell and what your product prices are, so keep those factors in mind.

If you want to earn a lot selling t-shirts online, set some goals! Market your products and your store so you can get more traffic to your site because the more people you have landing on your site, the more products you’re likely to sell. And by keeping your prices at a point where you can cover all your business expenses and still have profit left over, the more likely you’ll be to earn even more.

These are the considerations it takes to run a business—any business, not just a t-shirt business—so this creates a great learning opportunity. If you’re a new entrepreneur, these are great questions to be asking and important things to be implementing on your site, so pay particular attention to the lessons you learn here.

How to Get Your First T-Shirt Sales: Marketing Your T-Shirt Business

Once your t-shirt business is up and running, it’s time to get some traffic!

These are some tactics you can use to drive traffic to your t-shirt store so you can get your first sales…

Build an Audience

Don’t underestimate the power of social media! Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are free to use and by simply posting great content, you can build up an audience around your t-shirt business. If you aren’t sure what to post, check out your competitors to see what they’re doing and not doing so you can fill in the gaps.

Sell to the Audience You Already Have

If you’re already on social media, then you already have an audience (no matter how small!) so share your products on your social channels. This might not grow your business, but it might get you your first sale.

Sell to Your Friends & Family

Most entrepreneurs got their first sales from their friends and family—so reach out to yours and get them to shout you out to their social media followers!

Find Your Niche Online & Hang Out There

Where do your customers like to hang out online? Do they congregate in certain Facebook groups, in specific subreddits, on Discord channels, or particular websites or social media channels?

Find out where they hang out and make your presence known!

Don’t be spammy, but rather try to make genuine connections with the people there. Eventually, they may become your customers.

Pay for Ads on Social Media

If you have the budget, throw up some ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok and see how they go! Make sure that you know your niche well so you can target them as accurately as possible.

Work with Influencers (& Micro-Influencers)

Influencers are a powerful way to get your product in front of your target audience, so make use of it!

Working with influencers requires some kind of budget, but if you don’t have a marketing budget right now, you could always send your t-shirt to an influencer no-strings-attached and see if the influencer wears your shirt in one of their posts, or recommends it to their followers. There’s no guarantee they’ll share it with their followers, but it might be worth a try! It’s worth reaching out to micro-influencers too (influencers with less than 50,000 followers) as they can often have very engaged followings, even if they are small.

Optimize Your Site for SEO

SEO is one of the best organic marketing tactics you can use on your site, so make sure you optimize it. Plus, SEO is free and once you learn the ropes, it’s easy to implement so there really is no downside.

Check out our post on SEO Optimization for Ecommerce Stores to learn what you can do to boost the chances of your t-shirt store landing on the first page of Google search results.

What to Do if Your T-Shirt Business Isn’t Getting Any Sales

If this is your first t-shirt business then it’s possible that you might have difficulties getting some sales at first—but, don’t get frustrated. Every business goes through these growing pains.

To get more sales coming in when you aren’t getting any, all it might take is some small edits or changes to get the ball rolling! It’s a learning process, so don’t get too discouraged.

Here are some ideas…

Regroup

First, try to identify the problem. It could be anything from poor product photos, expensive shipping fees, a confusing website, poor-quality t-shirt designs, overpriced t-shirts, lack of exposure, poor SEO, inauthentic content, an unconvincing brand story, or a combination of any of these factors.

Take a hard look at every aspect of your business and figure out what changes can be made. Figure out what’s not working so you can fix it!

Retarget

Next, ask yourself if you’re targeting the right market.

Re-examine your chosen niche and figure out if your t-shirt products directly add value to it, or if you’ve begun to stray away from your niche in any way. Or, perhaps you’ve been marketing to the wrong niche entirely and need to pick a new one, or narrow-in even further.

Figuring out whether you’re targeting the right niche might take some time but finding out where your brand fits in the market can be the difference between getting no sales, and getting a lot of sales. So, it’s worth your while!

Remarket

It’s easier and cheaper to sell to current customers than it is to acquire new ones. You have a t-shirt business and people typically wear more than one t-shirt in their day-to-day lives so that means you have the opportunity to sell more than one of your products to your customers.

Utilize that opportunity!

Create an incentive for your customers to purchase again from you whether that be a stellar unboxing experience, a packing insert with a discount code for their next order (Printful enables you to send branded packing inserts), or create fun new products often so your customers can get excited about them. Do what you need to do to make your audience want to purchase from you again.

Online T-Shirt Business Success Stories

IconSpeak

This is perhaps one of the most clever t-shirt designs created in recent memory.

Before you travel, pick up a t-shirt from IconSpeak to help you communicate with the locals no matter where you are. Languages may not be universal, but oftentimes we can figure out what others are trying to say based on pictures, and the t-shirts from IconSpeak come with 39 of the most essential travel icons so you can break through any language barrier and get directions to wherever you need to go.

Including universally recognizable icons for Wi-Fi, coffee, food, lodgings, and washrooms (to name a few), the IconSpeak t-shirt can be one of the best things you wear on your travels.

IconSpeak started just by selling t-shirts, but they’ve expanded to selling other products like tote bags, phone cases, hats, and more!

Gymshark

Did you know that Gymshark started off selling t-shirts? The brand’s founder, Ben Francis, started printing t-shirts himself in his mother’s garage when he was just 19 years old and since then, has grown the brand into something much more—a fitness clothing empire valued at over 1 billion British Pounds.

While Gymshark sells more than just t-shirts at this point and is a fully-fledged direct-to-consumer brand and one of Shopify’s most successful stores, selling t-shirts is how the brand started—proving that starting a t-shirt business can lead to something much bigger and better.

Point 5cc

Another brand that started by the founder printing t-shirts by hand, Aydian Dowling started Point 5cc as a t-shirt brand that shares trans-positive messages.

Dowling originally started selling t-shirts with the intention of raising money for his own gender-affirming surgery and planned to close up shop when his goal was reached. However, after a few months, he built up a community of customers so supportive and enthusiastic that he’s kept Point 5cc up and running ever since.

Due to all the support, Dowling also set up a non-profit that supports transgender people in need, showing that t-shirt brands can contribute to a mission and community far bigger than themselves.

More inspiration for t-shirt brands can be found here:

• Kickstarter T-Shirt Campaigns
• Redbubble Popular
• SnorgTees Best Sellers
• Teespring
• Zazzle Popular

T-Shirt Business FAQs

Still have questions about how to start a t-shirt business? Check out these FAQs.

How Do I Start an Online T-Shirt Business? Quick Step-by-Step Breakdown

1. Pick a niche market
2. Pick a t-shirt supplier
3. Create your t-shirt designs
4. Build a website
5. Drive traffic to your site
6. Make your first sales
7. Build an audience
8. Continue building your t-shirt brand & business

We cover these steps throughout this post, so scroll up to each section to find out more.

Do You Need a Business License to Sell T-Shirts Online?

This can vary depending on where you’re located, but in general, most businesses whether online or not, need a business license. In some areas, however, you may not need to apply for a business license until your business reaches a certain revenue threshold.

If you operate a business without the proper license you may be subject to fees or fines. Obtaining a business license should be fairly easy in most areas, so check the necessary authorities in your area to find out where to get a business license.

We’re not qualified professionals in this area and business license requirements will depend on your area or region, so conduct your own due diligence and consult the relevant authorities in your jurisdiction for more information.

• USA: US Small Business Association
• Canada: Canadian Government Website
• UK: UK Government Website
• Australia: ABLIS

What Do I Need to Start a T-Shirt Business?

To start a t-shirt business, you need these things:

• A website (like Shopify)
• T-shirt designs
• A t-shirt printer or dropshipper (like Printful)
• Product photos (t-shirt mockups)
• A marketing plan (like our 52 Week Marketing Plan)

You don’t need a lot to start a t-shirt business—basically just t-shirts and a website to sell your t-shirts on. It’s possible to start a t-shirt business with the bare minimum and working with a dropshipper like Printful makes it even easier to do that.

How to Start a T-Shirt Business at Home?

To start a t-shirt business from home, work with a t-shirt dropshipper so you don’t have to stock any inventory or ship any orders.

A t-shirt dropshipper makes starting and running a t-shirt business from home super easy, so if that’s your plan then we recommend working with a dropshipper like Printful.

How to Start a T-Shirt Business: Step-By-Step Video

Learn how to start a t-shirt business in this step-by-step video!

Resource Roundup

These are the resources we mentioned in this post so that you can find them easily and build your own online t-shirt store, fast!

• Build your t-shirt store with:
  • Shopify (use their 14-day free trial)
• Check out these other Shopify resources:
  • Shopify App Store
  • Printful Shopify App
  • Shopify Theme Store
  • Shopify Review
• Build your t-shirt store on a self-hosted website with these resources:
  • WordPress.org
  • Why Use WordPress for Ecommerce Stores
  • Kinsta (Kinsta Review)
  • Carrd (Carrd Review)
  • The Best Hosted & Self-Hosted Ecommerce Platforms
  • 12 Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms
• Choose a t-shirt printer/dropshipper:
  • Printful (Printful Review)
  • Spocket (Spocket Review)
  • Gooten
  • Kite.ly
  • Inkthreadable
  • Amplifier
  • Print Aura
  • Printify
  • Shirt Monkey
  • Tee Talkies
  • T-Shirt & Sons
  • Teespring
• Find more dropshippers and learn more about dropshipping here:
  • Finding Dropshipping Suppliers + Free Dropshipping Supplier Directory
  • Dropshipping 101: What is Dropshipping?
  • Dropshipping Suppliers Directory
• Use these t-shirt mockup and product photo generators:
  • Printful Mockup Generator
  • Fiverr T-Shirt Mockups
  • GraphicRiver T-Shirt Mockups
  • Design Bolts 50+ T-Shirt Mockups
• Create t-shirt designs with these resources:
  • Creative Market
  • GraphicRiver
  • Designious
  • 200+ Free & Premium Graphic Design Resources
• Or hire freelance artists to create t-shirt designs for you:
  • Dribbble
  • Behance
  • Fiverr
  • Upwork
  • Freelancer
  • Elance
• Take these Skillshare courses to learn more:
  • A Staple of Branding: How to Start Your Fashion Company by Jeff Staple
  • Hey, Cool Shirt: Designing Effective T-shirt Graphics by Chris Delorenzo
  • Skillshare
• Get business license information here:
  • USA: US Small Business Association
  • Canada: Canadian Government Website
  • UK: UK Government Website
  • Australia: ABLIS
• Get legal advice and resources here:
  • Lawtrades (USA)
  • Clarity (Worldwide)
  • Ownr (Canada)
  • Rocket Lawyer (USA, UK, Spain, France, The Netherlands)
• Check out these t-shirt business success stories:
  • IconSpeak
  • Gymshark
  • Point 5cc
• Get more t-shirt business inspiration here:
  • Printful’s Customer Success Stories
  • Kickstarter T-Shirt Campaigns
  • Redbubble Popular
  • SnorgTees Best Sellers
  • Teespring
  • Zazzle Popular
• These resources from us might make building your t-shirt business even easier:
  • How to Start a T-Shirt Business Webinar
  • 500 Ecommerce Niches Guide
  • Build a Better Brand: Ecommerce Branding Guide
  • Dropshipping Suppliers Directory
  • Clothing Suppliers Directory
  • Manufacturers Directory
  • Wholesale Suppliers Directory
  • How to Find and Work with Private Label Suppliers
  • Private Label Suppliers Directory
  • START: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Getting Started in Ecommerce
  • One Page Ecommerce Business Plan
  • 52 Week Marketing Plan
  • Ecommerce SEO Strategies to Get Your Online Store in the SERPs

Conclusion

There you have it. Richard built a new t-shirt business in 24-hours with only $24 and was able to generate over $300 in sales in the first day. He did it with the bare minimum on a tight time schedule, and you can do it, too!

Granted, a t-shirt business alone may never make an entrepreneur rich and famous. However, as we pointed out before, we firmly believe that a t-shirt business serves its purpose in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, even if that purpose is just to practice for something bigger and better.

Now it’s your turn. If you’ve been thinking about starting an online business but have been stuck in the “I don’t know what to sell” stage for more than a few months, then we are challenging you to build a t-shirt business, for no reason other than to start. Start building something, start marketing something, start converting something. Just start something.

Start. Go!

The post How I Built An Online T-Shirt Business In 24 Hours With $24 That Made $347 The First Day (And How You Can Too) appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

As an ecommerce business, one of your greatest opportunities is being able to sell to customers all over the world, and you need a shipping carrier that can help make that possible. However, every shipping carrier operates differently when it comes to their shipping rates, dimension requirements, locations they ship to, and even how fast they can ship parcels so it can be difficult to find one shipping carrier that does it all the way you need them to. Easyship helps ecommerce businesses find a solution to this problem, and in this Easyship review, we’re discussing in detail what they do to make shipping worldwide as easy as possible for ecommerce retailers.

What Easyship Does

Easyship removes the last barrier in the ecommerce process that all ecommerce businesses face: Shipping. They make it possible for ecommerce businesses to ship their packages as quickly and inexpensively as they can, and they do this by partnering with over 100 shipping carriers so every package can be shipped at the best and fastest shipping rate possible. Before Easyship, ecommerce merchants had to contact each shipping company individually, negotiate shipping rates, sign a contract, pay a deposit, and reconcile invoices for each courier. With Easyship, you can use more than 100 different shipping options to ship your packages from one dashboard, in one click, without having to negotiate rates, pay upfront deposits, reconcile invoices, or be bound to a contract.

They offer a one-stop shipping solution for any merchant looking to grow their business. With the service they provide, they’re able to offer up to 70% discounted shipping rates, so they’re a more cost-friendly option to ship with, and they also offer businesses full visibility on international shipping rules and regulations so there are no surprises when it comes to taxes and duties. They do all of this from one dashboard that also integrates with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify and marketplaces like Amazon, so it’s easy for merchants to manage.

In Short: Easyship gets you competitive shipping rates and shipping times with all available shipping carriers worldwide all in one dashboard that connects directly to your ecommerce store.

Who Easyship is For

Easyship is for businesses that want to sell worldwide, which, should be every business. If your business isn’t prepared to sell around the world then you’re missing out on valuable customers and sales.

Easyship is also for the business owner who doesn’t have the time or resources to learn about shipping from the inside out. With so many shipping carriers around the world that operate by different practices, and with so many shipping rules and regulations to be aware of, it can be hard to keep up. Easyship is an all-in-one shipping platform that handles the entire shipping process from sourcing the best carriers to ship with, finding the best shipping rates, generating all necessary shipping labels and documents, and calculating shipping taxes and duties. You really don’t need to know much about shipping when you use Easyship, they handle everything for you.

Why Use Easyship

Easyship is one single platform that allows you to connect with multiple shipping carriers on demand so you can be flexible with your shipping options to get the best price at any time.

Shipping prices depend on so many factors such as package weight and distance, they vary from carrier to carrier and they can change at any time, so with Easyship’s service you and your customers get automatically calculated shipping options drawn from over 100 shipping carriers so you get the best option at the time of shipping.

By using Easyship’s real-time Rates at Checkout feature you can reduce abandoned carts as you’re able to give customers the choice of picking the cheapest, fastest, and best value shipping option so they can tailor-make the shipping rates to suit their needs. With this flexibility, customers have full price visibility which gives them the lay of the land and the information they need to make a well-informed purchase. Based on an internal survey Easyship conducted with their clients, this feature also helped merchants increase revenues on international orders by up to 300%, reduced shipping costs by up to 70%, and decreased issues at customs by up to 91%.

With Easyship, you’ll also never overspend or underspend on shipping costs because all rates, taxes, and duties are calculated on-demand, so they’re never an estimate of what the actual cost is. Best of all, Easyship is free to use and there are no setup, subscription, or cancellation fees, you just pay the shipping costs.

Easyship’s Features & Services

All of Easyship’s features and services revolve around making shipping worldwide easier, cheaper, and more efficient for both you and your customers, and also customizable so you can tailor them to your specific needs and preferences.

Let’s jump into everything Easyship can do for your ecommerce business.

Rates at Checkout

The star of Easyship’s services, their Rates at Checkout feature is the solution to your worldwide shipping woes. This feature enables you to provide the best available shipping options for your customers based on their location and shows all associated costs such as taxes, duties, and handling upfront for every country in the world to prevent abandoned shopping carts.

Many ecommerce stores use static shipping rates based on their carrier’s suggestion, however, this can be detrimental to your overall shipping strategy because they don’t show the whole picture. Shipping costs fluctuate, and so static shipping prices can only be an estimate of a shipping cost at any given time. This can cause ecommerce stores to overcharge or undercharge shipping rates which can have an effect on their bottom line, or result in abandoned shopping carts.

With Easyship you don’t have to figure out how to correctly charge your customers for shipping every time they make an order, Easyship calculates it on demand and shows the exact shipping cost options to your customers so it’s never an estimate.

With the Rates at Checkout feature, your customers will be shown three rates to choose from as they check out: The cheapest shipping rate, the fastest shipping rate, and the best value rate (the least expensive rate that will arrive in the shortest amount of time). These rates are calculated automatically, at the time of order, from over 100 different shipping carriers worldwide to ensure the best option for the customer. Additionally, customers can see the courier’s performance rating, which is between 1-5 stars. This rating is taken from data that Easyship has collected over the years from actual customers who have used the service.

If, however, the Rates at Checkout feature doesn’t suit your business’ shipping process, you have the option to deactivate the feature after installing Easyship. It’s also important to note that if you’re a Shopify merchant, you’ll have to be on an annual Shopify plan or the Advanced Shopify plan or the Shopify Plus plan to utilize this feature.

Shipping Features

Easyship’s focus is shipping, so it’s no surprise that they provide an array of shipping services and features to help make your business’ shipping process easier and more streamlined.

Here’s what Easyship can do for you:

• 3 Options to Create Shipments: Fill out shipping details for individual shipments as you get them, upload an Excel file with your orders, or sync your store with Easyship and download your orders in one click.
• Instantly Compare Shipping Rates: For each shipping carrier, Easyship will show you the delivery time, tracking frequency, insurance, and the number of delivery attempts they offer.
• Generate All Your Shipping Documents: Including shipping labels, shipping documents, and commercial invoices so every package is declared properly to minimize and prevent delays at customs.
• Schedule Courier Pick-Ups: Contact shipping carriers online right from the Easyship dashboard to choose your pickup time and location.
• 100+ Shipping Solutions: Compare and choose from over 100 worldwide shipping carriers like FedEx, USPS, DHL, UPS, and more.
• Save on Shipping Costs: Easyship negotiates with shipping carriers so you get discounted rates on shipping.
• No Hidden Fees: There are no added or surprise fees, bills, or costs when it comes to using Easyship’s service. All pricing is transparent so you’re never left with a surprise expense to take care of.

Taxes & Duties

One of the most complicated aspects of shipping worldwide can be taxes and duties. As an ecommerce store, it can be difficult to keep up with the taxes and duty requirements for each country as they’re different from country to country and depend on the type of product and value of the shipment overall. Easyship automatically determines the taxes and duties for each of your international shipments so you don’t have to.

Not only that, another major feature to note is that you’re able to decide who pays the customs charges, taxes, and duties. Either your business can pay these charges, or your customers, you simply choose which option suits you best with a few clicks.

Taxes and duty charges, while not only complicated for merchants, can be a deterrent for customers, so by using Easyship, you can ensure that your customers will never have to pick up the customs charges tab, enabling them to feel more confident in their purchase and less likely to abandon their shopping cart.

Optimized for Ecommerce

Easyship is built for ecommerce merchants, so you can be sure that their service is optimized to suit your needs. Sync Easyship directly with your store whether you’re selling on ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and more, or marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and more. With this integration, your orders will automatically sync so you don’t have to manage everything manually. Learn more about all of Easyship’s ecommerce and marketplace integrations here.

With their platform integrations, Easyship also automatically updates tracking information to your dashboard. This means that you can get an overview of tracking numbers and courier names at a glance, plus send automated tracking emails to your customers so they’re always informed of their order’s whereabouts.

One Central Dashboard

With Easyship, you can use multiple couriers to ship your packages around the world without having to create multiple accounts and manage your accounts across multiple websites. You’re able to operate your entire international shipping process from one centralized shipping dashboard that integrates directly with your ecommerce store and automatically updates itself so you’re never having to manually update orders.

This makes your entire shipping process more streamlined and easily manageable. It allows for fewer errors to be made and ensures that every order is documented in one place should you need to review anything. It also means that you can get a clear overview of orders at a glance whenever you want to, so you can oversee your shipping process from a bird’s eye view. Immediately from order creation until your package is in the hands of your customer, all shipping information for your entire store is in one organized place, including full visibility on shipping costs, couriers, courier rating based on actual performance over the years, taxes, tracking numbers and delivery times.

Customizable Options

Every ecommerce store is different, and Easyship gives you the opportunity to tailor your shipping requirements to fit your process. You can do this by taking advantage of their shipping rules.

Easyship’s shipping rules allow you to customize your shipping preferences so you can select a specific shipping carrier to use based on details like shipping destination, the type of product, the weight of the item, and more. This means that if you prefer a shipping carrier over others in certain circumstances, you’re able to automate a selection so anytime the conditions are met, your customized shipping rules come into effect.

Pros & Cons of Easyship

The main advantage of using Easyship is being able to ship with various shipping couriers without creating separate account setups. Each shipping carrier has advantages and disadvantages to their service, and Easyship helps ecommerce businesses utilize more of the advantages when it’s best applicable.

Pros:

• Easyship is free to use, just pay the shipping costs
• No setup, subscription, or cancellation fees
• Save up to 70% on shipping with more than 100 shipping carriers
• Easyship determines tax and duty charges for your international orders
• Easyship prints shipping and custom labels
• Offer real-time rates at checkout for your customers
• Designed for businesses of any size
• Decide whether you or your customers will pay customs charges
• Schedule courier pickups online, right from your dashboard
• Available marketplace integrations: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Lazada, Groupon, Zalora, Jumia, Linio
• Available ecommerce platform integrations: Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopmatic, Magento & more
• Manage shipments with multiple carriers from one organized dashboard
• Create custom shipping rules to favor a certain outcome when pre-determined circumstances are met
• Download all past invoices, receipts, and transaction statements straight from your dashboard

Cons:

• In order for your customers to make use of the real-time rates at checkout feature on Shopify, you’ll need to have an annual Shopify plan or be on the Shopify Advanced or Plus plans.

Easyship’s Pricing

Easyship is free to use. There are no setup, subscription, or cancellation fees, all you’re required to pay is for shipping and any relevant customs or duties charges.

As we’ve touched on throughout the course of this article, Easyship stands by their transparent pricing and ensures that all shipping related costs and fees that you or your customers are required to pay are presented upfront so there are no surprise expenses, ever.

If you’re interested in learning more about the shipping prices Easyship makes available for you, check out their Shipping Rate Calculator. It allows you to customize your requirements so you can get accurate shipping rates calculated on demand.

Conclusion

Don’t waste precious time trying to figure out which shipping carrier has the best rates and the best shipping times, with Easyship you can use shipping carriers from all over the world, whenever it’s the most cost-effective and time-friendly option, all from Easyship’s platform. They’re a single solution that reduces the frustration of hunting down the best shipping couriers and they make shipping worldwide easier so every ecommerce store, big or small, can ship to customers worldwide.

The post Easyship Spotlight: The Easiest Way to Ship Worldwide appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

But as your company continues to grow, you’ll have a harder time keeping your fulfillment in-house. At some point, you’ll need to expand your logistical operations—either to keep up with increasing demand, because you want to expand your customer base, or both.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by outsourcing your supply chain to a third-party logistics (3PL) provider. This will help save time and money, while allowing you to free up internal resources that can be used for other important operations (like sales, marketing, and product development.)

What is 3PL?

Third-party logistics (or 3PL) is a fulfillment service that manages logistical operations for a company. Companies providing 3PL services are responsible for some or all of the supply chain management functions, such as:

• Storage
• Inventory management
• Packing
• Transportation
• Kitting and assembly

3PL is a popular solution for ecommerce companies, and its providers act as the bridge between the online company and the customer by expediting order fulfillment. Ecommerce companies using 3PL services have their inventory stored at special warehouses known as fulfillment centers. When a customer makes an online order, the product is pulled, prepped, and shipped directly from the fulfillment center to the customer’s doorstep. Fulfillment centers can also process business-to-business (B2B) orders, including high-volume merchandise delivered to big-box retailers like Target and Walmart.

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The goal of 3PL is to help ecommerce companies enhance their operations by outsourcing the logistics process, which is why businesses of all sizes—from small ecommerce shops to Fortune 500 companies—turn to 3PL to streamline their supply chain and create a seamless fulfillment strategy.

In this post, we’re going to look at some of the key benefits that come with outsourcing your ecommerce supply chain functions to a 3PL provider.

Why 3PL Providers Are Useful for Ecommerce Brands

Studies show that 3PL services have been widely successful for a variety of reasons.

According to a survey by Korn Ferry published in the 2019 Third-Party Logistics Study, nearly 90% of 3PL customers said their operations improved after working with a 3PL provider.

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The most obvious advantage of outsourcing fulfillment to 3PL providers is convenience. With someone else taking care of their logistics, ecommerce brands can devote more time and energy to other areas of their business.

But 3PL providers do more than simply lessen the workload: They can also provide ecommerce brands with an opportunity to improve other areas of their business.

Lower Expenses

Outsourcing part of your supply chain functions to a 3PL provider can significantly increase your company’s savings potential.

How? To start, you don’t have to worry about paying rent for a warehouse or shared industrial space, and you don’t have to hire and pay a fulfillment team. Outsourcing your back-end work to a 3PL provider also means you won’t be responsible for liabilities, such as damaged inventory, broken equipment, and accidents that happen in the fulfillment center or when transporting inventory. Your 3PL provider will bear these expenses, as well as other operating costs like equipment, training and certifications, and IT systems.

Leaner Workforce

Companies that are in charge of their entire supply chain have to hire and manage drivers and warehouse employees. This can divert limited resources away from other areas of the company. With every new employee added, that means more time spent managing schedules, payroll, and taxes. This can be especially overwhelming and time-consuming for small businesses that may not be equipped to build and manage a fulfillment team.

Outsourcing to a 3PL provider will prevent your workforce from being unnecessarily bloated. You don’t have to worry about hiring, training, and managing ancillary staff like delivery drivers and warehouse personnel. These workers are employed by your 3PL provider, which means you can spend more time building your front-end business team.

Improved Delivery & Distribution

Over the last couple of years, Amazon has greatly expanded its distribution network to give customers access to speedier delivery options. More than 70% of Americans now live in an area where they’re eligible for one-day shipping from Amazon.

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As a result of Amazon and other retailers expanding their fulfillment capabilities, more customers want expedited shipping options with their ecommerce orders. According to a study by UPS:

• 75% of online consumers will pay more for expedited shipping
• 61% expect orders placed by noon to qualify for same-day delivery
• 64% expect orders placed by 5pm to qualify for next-day delivery

With the exception of big-box retailers, many ecommerce brands struggle to keep up with these consumer expectations because they simply don’t have the infrastructure to provide nationwide one and two-day delivery.

The good news is that 3PL makes it easier for small and medium-sized ecommerce brands to expand their distribution networks and cut delivery times without having to build more infrastructure.

For example, say a medium-sized ecommerce brand based in California handles its own fulfillment process on the West Coast, but it struggles to provide speedy delivery to other areas of the country. Partnering with a 3PL provider on the East Coast would allow them to outsource their fulfillment in these regions so they can provide consistent, fast delivery to more customers.

Ecommerce brands can use 3PL to expand their distribution network by outsourcing to different regions, or they can outsource their entire fulfillment service. It lets small and medium-sized companies compete with Amazon and other big-box retailers without having to spend time and money expanding their logistical infrastructure. For this reason, many ecommerce brands view 3PL as part of an effective customer satisfaction strategy.

Scale with Demand

3PL gives ecommerce businesses a scalable solution that makes it easier for them to rapidly expand operations to keep up with growing demand. Valuable for businesses of all sizes, this feature is especially helpful for small and medium-sized ecommerce companies that may have difficulty upgrading logistical operations to match consumer demand.

Consider this scenario: A small ecommerce company located in the rural Midwest becomes an overnight sensation. Unable to keep up with demand, they expand their manufacturing operations and partner with 3PL providers in the Midwest and on the East and West Coasts. Now the company can focus more on generating supply, while their 3PL providers take care of supplying customers in a timely manner.

Working with a 3PL provider allows a company to be more responsive to demand surges. You can outsource logistics during the holiday season when you’re expecting a spike in sales, or you can choose a long-term solution that supports your company as it continues to grow. You can also choose to scale 3PL services back during slower periods, so you aren’t spending money on services that aren’t being used.

Working with a 3PL provider allows a company to be more responsive to demand surges. You can outsource logistics during the holiday season when you’re expecting a spike in sales, or you can choose a long-term solution that supports your company as it continues to grow.

Work with professionals

How much do you know about shipping and fulfillment? Sure, you can assemble your own team. But without industry experience and expertise, you won’t be as efficient and effective as a 3PL provider. That’s because logistics and fulfillment are their specialties. They know how to use IT solutions to minimize bottlenecks and keep the supply chain running smoothly, and how to meet deadlines so orders are fulfilled on time.

The Role of 3PL During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the supply chain for a number of businesses. Large companies that transport goods across borders have to worry about lockdown protocols and border closures, and many ecommerce companies initially struggled with outages due to increased sales and disruptions in the supply chain.

For brick-and-mortar stores, the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially disruptive. Obviously, fewer people are shopping in-store because of the virus. But with that, the coronavirus pandemic threw many brick-and-mortar stores head-first into the realm of ecommerce. Businesses have now been forced to build or expand ecommerce operations in an unusually short period of time, and no industry has had to learn quicker than the grocery industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially difficult for grocers. Nearly one-third of households in the United States ordered groceries online in March, and the demand for online groceries reached a new high the following month. On top of that, picking and packing for online orders is often done within the supermarket. And without a dedicated space for ecommerce fulfillment, grocery stores have been struggling to keep up with demand.

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Many grocers turned to 3PL providers to help them keep up with their ecommerce demand. 3PL companies offering micro-fulfillment services have helped grocers become ready for online sales. Micro-fulfillment is an outside-the-box solution that gives businesses like supermarkets and brick-and-mortar retail stores quick relief during periods of high demand.

These miniature distribution centers are usually located in the back of the store or at a nearby warehouse. Unlike traditional fulfillment, micro-fulfillment services are designed to cover a local market, which is why most micro-fulfillment centers come equipped with IT infrastructure for managing inventory and getting orders ready for delivery or collection.

Micro-fulfillment isn’t new: Many businesses have been using it to slowly build ecommerce operations, such as deliveries and click-and-collect shopping. However, in the era of COVID-19, micro-fulfillment has changed from a creative solution to a valuable asset as businesses are struggling to take their services online.

In the era of COVID-19, micro-fulfillment has changed from a creative solution to a valuable asset as businesses are struggling to take their services online.

Partnering with 3PL providers that offer micro-fulfillment services will minimize downtime and help local businesses make a smooth transition into ecommerce.

How 3PL Empowers Ecommerce Companies

We’ve touched on the benefits of 3PL and how it can help ecommerce and brick-and-mortar stores. But how effective is 3PL at empowering ecommerce companies? Let’s look at an example.

A specialty cookie manufacturer was in startup mode and needed help breaking into the packaged cookie market. While they knew they had a successful range of products, the company didn’t know how to effectively get the cookies from their bakery into the customers’ hands. That’s when they decided to reach out to WSI for help with 3PL services.

WSI took over warehousing, distribution, fulfillment, and transportation services for the cookie manufacturer and created a distribution center on each coast so they could reach customers across the United States. They also took over transportation, and came up with a system that enabled the client to save between 40-45% on LTL pricing (which is weight-based freight) by utilizing WSI’s global transportation volume.

Thanks to outsourcing their 3PL, the cookie manufacturer was able to outsource:

• Storage, packing, and distribution
• Transportation
• Employee training and development

In the end, WSI helped the cookie manufacturer get their products shipped to major national retailers and even explored methods to improve the fulfillment process, like changing the pallet configuration and maximizing the space efficiency of the product to help the client spend less money on freight services.

What to Look for When Vetting a 3PL Provider

If you’re ready to outsource your logistical operations, the next step is hiring a 3PL provider.

There are a number of companies to choose from, but not every 3PL provider offers the same services. Depending on your industry, one provider may be better suited for you than another. Below is a list of features to look for when researching 3PL providers.

Related Clients and Industry Experience

One of the easiest ways to determine whether a 3PL provider is compatible with your ecommerce business is by looking at their clients. If they have experience working with similar clients in your industry, there’s a greater likelihood they’ll be able to address your needs.

You also want to make sure your 3PL provider offers integration with your technology. If you’re running a Shopify store, your 3PL provider’s IT tools should be compatible with the Shopify platform. WSI is one example of a provider that’s compatible with ecommerce stores of all sizes. They have the IT infrastructure to integrate with a wide range of retail selling platforms, including:

• Shopify
• Amazon
• Target
• Walmart

Ideally, your 3PL provider should have experience working with ecommerce businesses the same size as you. If you’re a small company, look for a provider that has experience helping small and medium-sized brands with expansion and fulfillment. If you’re an established retail brand, your 3PL provider should be familiar with helping similar companies work with big-box retailers.

Extensive List of Services for Fulfillment

The goal of 3PL is to streamline your fulfillment services, so you provide product delivery that’s quick and consistent. Look for a 3PL service provider that offers a wide range of services for fulfillment, such as:

• Inventory management
• Order tracking
• Labeling and packaging
• Custom packaging, repacking, and assembly
• Advance Ship Notice (ASN)
• UCC 128 labeling

A 3PL provider that offers an extensive list of services can help you implement a seamless fulfillment strategy that protects your brand reputation. Services like these can help ensure your orders are picked, packed, and shipped as soon as possible, allowing you to better manage customer expectations.

Offers End-to-End Solutions

Minimize the chances of setbacks by choosing a provider that offers an end-to-end logistics solution that covers the entire supply chain. Outsourcing your transportation, warehousing, pick-and-pack, and fulfillment to an experienced 3PL provider places your logistical operations in good hands, while giving you more time to focus on other areas of your business.

Incorporates Returns

If you’re running an ecommerce business, you already know that returns are going to happen from time to time. Small business owners may have no problem personally processing returns, but once your brand begins to grow, seriously consider working with a 3PL provider that does the work for you.

Between 15-40% of online purchases are returned, and returns are especially common during the holiday season. In 2019, an estimated $41.6 billion in online sales was lost due to returns.

Processing your return orders can be especially overwhelming during the holidays. The good news is that some 3PL providers also offer returns management as part of their fulfillment center services. This stops you from being inundated with returns, while also guaranteeing your customers’ needs will be addressed in a timely manner.

A Good 3PL Provider Helps Growing Ecommerce Brands Scale

In today’s tech-driven landscape, customers have a greater expectation for speed and efficiency from ecommerce companies. Unfortunately, small and mid-sized brands lack the infrastructure to provide lightning-fast deliveries throughout the United States.

A good 3PL provider helps these companies grow and maintain a competitive edge. This is done by offering an end-to-end solution that guarantees goods are stored, transported, packed, and delivered to customers in a timely manner.

That way, you can continue to meet consumer expectations without having to worry about how to continuously plan and optimize your fulfillment strategy.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Utilizing a 3PL Provider for Ecommerce Fulfillment appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

If you’re new to dropshipping and want to learn more about it, we recommend checking out our Dropshipping 101: What is Dropshipping guide as it will give you important insight into the dropshipping business model as a whole

Without further ado, let’s learn more about these top 8 best Shopify dropshipping apps.

Spocket

Spocket is a Shopify dropshipping app that enables you to search and connect directly with dropshipping suppliers located in the US and EU to help you build an inventory of high-quality goods for your ecommerce store. With suppliers located globally, there’s plenty of products to choose from to build out a store that fits your niche and serves your customer’s interests. Simply install the Spocket app on your Shopify store, search through the catalog of products, select the products that you want to sell on your store, and quickly add them to your site. With Spocket, you can even order sample products from the suppliers so you can evaluate each product for yourself first-hand.

Since Spocket suppliers are located in the US and EU, delivery to your customers will be faster, easier, and more reliable than if you were to source from other popular dropshipping supplier locations around the world. This means your store will offer a better purchasing experience for your customers, earning you better reviews, happy customers, and returning purchasers. To learn more about Spocket and the services they offer, check out our in-depth Spocket Review.

Spocket’s Pricing

The Spocket app is available in three pricing tiers:

• Basic Plan: Free
  • Up to 25 products
  • Unlimited orders
  • Real-time inventory updates
  • Currency exchange
  • Global Pricing
  • Shipment tracking number
  • Email support only
• Standard Plan: $39.90/month—7-day free trial
  • Up to 250 products & everything on the Basic Plan, plus:
  • Email and chat support
  • Premium products
  • Branded invoicing
• Professional Plan: $99.90/month
  • Unlimited Products & everything on the Standard Plan

Advantages of Using the Spocket App

• Choose from a huge range of products
• Import the products directly to your Shopify store easily
• Vetted US/EU suppliers
  
• Shipping times as little as 2-5 business days
  
• Great customer service
  
• New suppliers being added daily

Disadvantages of Using the Spocket App

• Suppliers are only located in the US & EU, so pricing for products may not be as inexpensive as other dropshipping products sourced from other locations around the world

Printful

It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of Printful around here, as we’ve published an entire Printful Review and we’ve even featured them as a main contender in our How to Start a Clothing Line post. We love them because they consistently provide great products and great service, and we highly recommend them if you’re looking for a Shopify dropshipping app that can help you create an expansive inventory of high-quality products for your store.

With every product that Printful offers, whether it be t-shirts, sweaters, leggings, pillows, tote bags, socks, hats, custom phone cases, beach blankets, and more, you’re able to print exactly what you want on them and sell them directly to your customers. Printful provides the products, you provide the designs to print on the products, and Printful will print them and ship the orders directly to your customers automatically. There’s no need for you to manually fulfill orders or send Printful your design every time it’s ordered; everything is saved online so it’s fulfilled automatically every time.

Printful’s Pricing

It’s completely free to use the Printful app no matter how many products you sync to your store or how many orders you get per month. There’s no monthly membership or any other types of fees, you simply pay for the products you sell when your customers make an order.

Advantages of Using the Printful App

• Printful handles all the printing, fulfilling and shipping so you don’t have to
• They have a wide range of products to choose from—check out Printful’s product selection here
• They integrate directly to your Shopify store so orders are sent automatically, you can manage your customer’s orders in one dashboard and you don’t have to manually forward orders
• They offer tracked shipping for all products
• They provide an on-site mockup generator so you can see exactly how your designs will look on their products
• They provide lots of help & information in their Printful FAQ section so you can set your store up easily
• They provide branding services to help customize and personalize your dropshipped products and enhance your customer’s unboxing experience

Disadvantages of Using the Printful App

• Their product selection is tailored to the apparel, accessories and homeware goods categories only
• Although some branding options, they are limited (you can’t use your own boxes, poly-mailers, tissue paper or anything beyond what customizations they offer)
• Some products, such as the framed posters or canvases, may not ship to every country

Oberlo

Oberlo is an app that’s been specifically and exclusively designed for the Shopify platform to help entrepreneurs easily upload products directly to their Shopify store from the AliExpress website or the Oberlo marketplace.

By using the Oberlo Shopify dropshipping app you have an entire library of products to choose from at various price points—ranging from apparel, electronics, accessories, toys and more—plus you’re able to dropship them directly to your customers which means you don’t have to manage or handle inventory at any point and you don’t have to ship the products, either. Because Oberlo integrates directly with Shopify, the entire process of selecting, selling and shipping products is entirely automated and takes little work on your part.

Oberlo’s Pricing

Check out Oberlo’s pricing plans here.

• Starter Plan: Free
  • Up to 500 products
  • Up to 50 orders/month
• Basic Plan: $29.90/month
  • Up to 10,000 products
  • Up to 500 orders/month
• Pro Plan: $79.90.month
  • Up to 30,000 products
  • Unlimited orders/month

Advantages of Using the Oberlo App

• The app is simple to use and has a well-designed interface
• Users can import goods from the Oberlo marketplace & AliExpress straight to their website with just a few clicks
• Designed specifically for the Shopify platform so it integrates seamlessly
• Your customer’s orders are fulfilled automatically and shipped on your behalf, directly to your customer
• No inventory management or product stock required
• Customize products as you wish—change product photos, re-title the products, write your own product descriptions and more
• Change suppliers as you see fit—there are many suppliers on the Oberlo marketplace & AliExpress and you can easily switch between them
• Plenty of resources such as the Oberlo Blog to help new store owners learn exactly how to set up a store and Oberlo Success Stories that share how others have set up their stores
• You have the option to purchase an Oberlo store from the Shopify Exchange Marketplace if you don’t want to build one from scratch

Disadvantages of Using the Oberlo App

• Each product must be added manually to your Shopify store
• You can only source products from the Oberlo marketplace & AliExpress (NOT Alibaba)
• Oberlo is only available on the Shopify ecommerce platform

Modalyst

Modalyst is a powerful supplier of dropshipped products simply because they provide such a wide selection of ready-made products from high quality, independent brands around the globe. The products available to sell on Modalyst include men’s and women’s apparel, shoes, bags, bridal wear, children’s clothes, plus-sized fashion, homewares, beauty, and accessories, and there are thousands of products to choose from. Modalyst integrates directly with your Shopify store so you can add products with just one click and they help you manage orders, track inventory, and pricing changes are updated automatically. We have a Modalyst Review too, where we talk about their advantages and disadvantages in detail so be sure to check it out if you’re interested in learning more!

Modalyst’s Pricing

Modalyst offers a 14-day free trial and only one membership plan:

• $35/month: Includes all features
  • Real-time data feeds
  • All images, product descriptions, and pricing
  • Communication with the brands
  • Shopping cart integrations
  • Inventory level notifications
  • Product order tracking
  • No minimum orders
• This membership is a yearly contract that can either be paid in monthly installments ($35/month) or upfront ($360)

Advantages of Using the Modalyst App

• No upfront inventory costs
• No minimum orders
• Free shipping for select brands
• Order tracking for all products
• Communicate directly with their independent brands
• Easily add and remove products from your Shopify store with just one click
• Work with hundreds of brands but manage them easily through one dashboard
• Huge selection of products to choose from

Disadvantages of Using the Modalyst App

• When a customer makes an order on your site, the seller will be notified through Modalyst and they can start preparing the item to be shipped but before they ship the item, however, you will have to purchase the product on Modalyst from the seller. This means that the process is not entirely automated and may be time-consuming depending on how many orders you receive.
• You are expected to sell products at the manufacturer’s suggested retailing price (MSRP) but can negotiate with the brands on an individual basis if you would like to change your selling price.
• You are required to pay the brand 60% of each product’s MSRP, regardless of your selling price, when placing an order on Modalyst. The remaining 40% of the MSRP is your revenue.
• As each brand on Modalyst is independent, shipping times and costs will vary.
• The Modalyst app operates by a yearly contract that can be paid in monthly installments or upfront.

Gooten

Gooten is a print fulfillment dropshipping service that provides 100+ curated print-on-demand products for you to choose from, add your custom designs or photos onto, and then have them shipped directly to your customers. They handle the entire manufacturing, printing, fulfilling, and shipping process so you don’t need to handle any inventory, ever. In terms of inventory, they stock a wide variety of kitchen & bathroom products, accessories, home decor, photobooks, prints, cards, wall art, apparel, pet products, and more.

Gooten Pricing

Gooten is a simple platform to use because there’s no initial setup fee and no monthly or yearly membership fees, so: Your price – their price = your profit, every time. You only pay for their products when a customer makes a purchase from you.

Advantages of Using the Gooten App

• No minimum orders
• No hidden fees
• Free to use
• Worldwide shipping
• 100+ products to choose from—check out Gooten’s Product Catalog here
• Great customer service

Disadvantages to Using the Gooten App

• No branding services offered
• The app isn’t well optimized in terms of user experience

Pillow Profits Fulfillment

Pillow Profits Fulfillment is one of the few Shopify apps that specializes in dropshipping shoes of varying styles, plus other accessory products. In terms of shoes, they supply everything from athletic sneakers to faux fur boots, high heels to flip-flops, high tops to low tops, and more. Besides shoes, they also supply socks, handbags, totes, bedding, and pillow covers. With Pillow Profits Fulfillment you’re able to have your designs printed directly onto all their products to create unique and custom products for your store.

Pillow Profit’s Fulfillment Pricing

Pillow Profits Fulfillment offers a 7-day free trial, but beyond that their service costs $29.99/month to use. In terms of their product pricing, a full list of Pillow Profits Fulfillment products and pricing can be found here. They include the price of shipping their products into the product price itself, so there are no hidden costs there.

Advantages of Using the Pillow Profits Fulfillment App

• Create custom printed shoes, bedding & accessories
• Free worldwide shipping
• Cost of shipping included in the product price
• Easy integration into the Shopify store
• Complete control over your orders to change or edit customer addresses, sizes, or to cancel orders as needed
• Create digital mockups of your designs on their products to use for your store’s product photos and advertising
• Orders placed on your store’s website automatically forward to the Pillow Profits Fulfillment app
• Pillow Profits Fulfillment handles all manufacturing, printing, packaging, and shipping

Disadvantages of Using the Pillow Profits Fulfillment App

• Not all countries have tracked order availability
• Only integrates with Shopify stores
• No half sizes available for shoes besides size 7.5

Inventory Source

Inventory Source is a dropshipping supplier and inventory management app that connects your Shopify store with over 180 dropshipping supplier networks. It makes sourcing dropshipping products and managing inventory a much simpler process, and it even automates parts of the business operations process such as automatic product uploads, inventory syncing, routing orders, and more. They also aim to cut out the middleman by not marking up the cost of each product—instead, they charge a flat-rate monthly fee so you pay the supplier’s prices on all products you add to your store. Take the stress of inventory management off your hands and let Inventory Source handle it for you!

Inventory Source’s Pricing

Inventory Source offers three different pricing tiers:

• Free Account: Free
  • Access to their 180+ dropship supplier directory
  • View their supplier’s policies & products
  • Filter suppliers through specific niches
• Inventory Sync: $50/month
  • 180+ pre-integrated suppliers
  • Add custom/private integrations
  • Auto-upload product data
  • Optimized inventory sync
  • Bulk feed management tools
• Full Sync: $150/month
  • Includes Inventory Sync+
  • Auto order routing
  • Multi-supplier split order routing
  • Auto-sync shipping tracking
  • Order management interface

Advantages of Using Inventory Source

• 180+ dropship supplier network
• Auto-upload product data
• Keep inventory in sync
• Auto-route orders
• Sync shipment tracking
• Sell on virtually any online store, platform or marketplace
• No additional markup on products
• Connect directly with suppliers
• Integrates with eBay, Amazon, Walmart, Jet & Amazon UK

Disadvantages of Using the Inventory Source App

• Can be a little bit of a learning curve
• Monthly fee required to use the service (with a limited free plan option)
• Full features and services that Inventory Source offers are only available on the highest-paid plan

Teelaunch

Teelaunch is a print on demand fulfillment company that prints your custom designs on their products. When a customer makes an order on your website they print the product, package it, and ship it directly to your customer. With no monthly or annual membership fees required, you only pay for a product when your customer makes a purchase so you never have to meet minimum orders or hold any inventory. Their inventory includes men’s and women’s apparel, tote bags, tapestries, shower curtains, jewelry, phone cases, pet products, kitchen products, and more.

Teelaunch’s Pricing

With no fee to set up the Teelaunch app and no monthly or annual membership fees, you only pay for each product when you sell the product.

Advantages of Using the Teelaunch App

• Free to use, no membership fees
• No minimum orders
• A wide selection of products—check out Teelaunch’s product selection here
• Teelaunch handles all the printing, packaging and shipping
• No manual work—all orders are processed automatically
• No limit to the number of products you can stock or your monthly orders
• You choose your profit margin
• Ships worldwide

Disadvantages of Using the Teelaunch App

• No shoes included in the inventory they provide

Conclusion

We hope this roundup of the 8 best Shopify dropshipping apps has provided you with some valuable resources you can use to build your ecommerce business and either create or expand your product offering. These are the best Shopify dropshipping apps that we recommend any entrepreneur to use for their own ecommerce business so check out each one to find the app that works best for your business.

The post 8 Best Shopify Dropshipping Apps to Acquire Inventory for Your Business appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

In fact, I worked as the marketing director for a million-dollar-a-year retailer (sales, not profits), and they lost $100,000 of their profits in one year simply from poor inventory management. Ouch.

All they needed was a better system in place. With a little effort and some planning, you can develop such a system for your own store.

Now, this guide is written for two kinds of people:

• Those who store their own inventory (either at home or in a warehouse)
• Those who dropship from a supplier

The retailer I worked for did both—and yes, their failure to implement an inventory management system plan even hurt the dropshipping portion of their business.

So within this guide, I’m hoping to teach you the following:

• Typical big box retailer inventory management systems
• Common obstacles to inventory management
• The best systems for small- to mid-sized ecommerce stores
• A step-by-step guide to implementing these systems

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Typical Big Box Retailer Inventory Management Systems

This section will be a (very brief) introduction to the typical inventory management systems used by the big players in the world. Think Walmart or Target.

Here are a few of the major terms (you may even be familiar with some of them):

• Minimum Viable Stock Levels: The minimum inventory quantity, or stock, you should keep on hand to keep up with consumer demand. Typically, if your inventory falls below this level, you want to order more to avoid running out.
• JIT (Just-In-Time) Inventory: A method of inventory management in which you order the product just in time to keep up with demand. In doing so, you don’t tie up your money in unsold inventory and you don’t normally have unsold product; on the downside, you run the risk of being unable to keep up with a sudden increase in demand, thus being unable to fulfill all your orders and potentially losing customers.
• FIFO (First In First Out): The first products to be received (either at your store or your warehouse) are the first to be sent out. Basically, it’s a way of ensuring people get the freshest inventory possible. This is more important with perishable goods.
• FILO (First In Last Out): The first products to be brought in are the last to go out. Mostly unused nowadays though, as it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (and is illegal for many products, such as perishables).
• Forecasting Demand: The art (and it’s definitely an art) of forecasting demand simply means taking an educated guess (usually using past sales data) as to how many sales you’re going to make over a given period of time, then using that information to set your minimum viable stock levels (which I explained above).
• Inventory Auditing: Manually counting your inventory to ensure the number you have in the computer matches the actual number you have in stock. This should be done at least once every month, maybe more depending on how much you sell and how many people you have working for you (it sucks, but you never know who might try to nab something).

So those are the big terms you should be aware of. But how do you actually use this information to your benefit? Before I explain how to implement these concepts in your business, let’s talk about a few common obstacles to inventory management.

Common Obstacles to Inventory Management

So what are the biggest headaches for all of us ecommerce store owners when it comes to inventory? Well, other than the fact that inventory is a headache in and of itself, you’ve probably dealt with some of the following:

Over-Stocking and Under-Stocking

Unlike Christmas stockings, you don’t want your store to be overstocked. Overstocking means you have precious capital tied up in inventory just sitting on your shelves, which means you have less budget for marketing and running your store. You also risk having products you’ll never be able to sell—you never know when demand is going to suddenly dry up, leaving you with a bunch of useless paperweights.

On the flip-side, under-stocking is just as bad. On that end, while you free up capital, you run the risk of losing sales due to not having anything to sell. This can also hurt your reputation—if you bought something from a store, and they refunded your order without warning and told you they ran out, what would you do? I’d go somewhere else.

Incorrect Inventory Levels/Lost Stock

Have you ever done your own inventory audit to find the computer says you have five items in stock when in reality you only have three? These “lost stock” can also lead to canceled or back-ordered purchases, which again can affect your reputation and cost you money.

No Centralized System

All the obstacles above can be solved by having a centralized inventory management system. One of the first things we ask our clients at ChannelApe is simply “What’s your system?”

What are you using to keep track of the inventory coming and going as you run your business? How do you know how much inventory you have on hand at any given time?

Here are some common systems we’ve seen:

• Manual management via spreadsheets
• Manual management via pen & paper (yikes!)
• Automated management via a hosting platform (Shopify (Shopify Review) & BigCommerce)
• Automated management via brick-and-mortar software solutions
• Automated management via ecommerce software solutions

The first two systems can be centralized, but are incredibly difficult to keep track of. They also require a lot of time and energy to upkeep. Imagine penciling in every order, or updating a spreadsheet every time you made a sale or ordered more inventory.

The third system, using your hosting platform, can work if you only sell through one channel. If you only sell on Amazon, or you only sell on your online store, these systems may work just fine. However, if you want to expand into multiple sales channels, this system will hinder your business’s growth.

The fourth system, using a software platform designed for brick-and-mortar solutions, is also not ideal. The reason many ecommerce owners end up with these systems is due to Google—one simple search of “inventory management system” brings up tons of results made for traditional brick & mortar retail outlets. If you sell strictly online, these platforms simply aren’t made for you; they’re made for brick & mortar. The added features are great for physical stores but are a useless additional expense for online-only store owners.

Finally, using an automated inventory management system created specifically for ecommerce stores is the most ideal solution. Most of them will automatically upload your products onto your website, Amazon, and eBay with the push of a button. Further, they allow you to automate order fulfillment and inventory quantity updating. You just enter your inventory quantity once, then it can be automated on all your sales channels from there.

Additionally, using an ecommerce software as your centralized inventory management system allows you to easily implement dropshipping services as a supplement to your store. Or, if you’re strictly a dropshipping business, you can just sync your marketplaces with your suppliers using a data feed for automatic updating of not only stock levels but also product details like pricing, images, descriptions, etc.

Here’s a quick video I’ve found to help explain the process (of course if you’re a small business you probably don’t have a receiving department or manufacturing, but the concept is the same. Think of the shelving as your garage or basement, and the distribution as you shipping things out:

Basically, having a proper centralized system keeps you from needing to waste hours of your precious time updating inventory.

Now that you’re convinced, let’s talk about how to actually implement these strategies and stop wasting time and money on improper inventory management—step by step.

First I’ll show you some solutions for those of you who store your own inventory, then we’ll move on to a section for dropshipping.

The Best Inventory Management Systems for Small- to Mid-Sized Ecommerce Stores

The best inventory management system for you depends on your ultimate goal. Some methods are cheaper but more time consuming, and others require an investment but save you time & money in the long run.

Additionally, the best solution will depend on how you store your inventory. If you keep inventory in your home or in a warehouse, you may need a more complex solution than if you simply dropship items and merely have to keep track of your supplier’s inventory.

Managing Your Own Inventory

Let’s talk about solutions for storing your own inventory first. When storing your own inventory, either in a warehouse, your basement, or a physical store, there are a significant amount of variables you need to be aware of. You need to:

Maintain Optimal Inventory Quantity

You should have a minimum level of inventory on hand at all times. When it dips below your predetermined inventory minimum, you know it’s time to order more.

Additionally, you shouldn’t order too much inventory either. I’ll talk about forecasting demand in a section later down this page.

In Order to Do That, Forecast Your Demand

Properly forecasting demand for your products is the foundation of a good inventory management plan. However, it’s easier said than done. How are you supposed to know how many of an item you’ll sell? Of course, if you’re strictly dropshipping you don’t have to worry about this—but for those of you who hold inventory, let’s run through the process.

In order to accurately forecast your demand, you basically need some kind of past sales to go off of. If you don’t have that, it’s going to be a lot more guesswork, but it’s still possible.

First, determine a “forecast period,” for example, a period of time for which you’re forecasting your demand. It could be the next week, month, 6 months, year, etc. I would start with 1-3 months if you’re new to this. Be sure to check how your guesstimate is holding up throughout the process.

Next, check your past sales history. If you’ve been open for at least a year, you should have sales data for all 4 seasons, including major holidays. Use that data as a “base demand”, or the starting point for how much inventory you want to order. Additionally, stack that up against your marketing efforts and see how they correspond.

After you’ve checked your data (or if you don’t have any), check on current trends. You can do this by going to Google Trends and typing in your product.

Next, Determine Your Minimum Stock Levels (MSLs)

Now that you know roughly how much to expect your sales to be, it’s time to figure out your “Minimum Stock Level,” as I talked about in the “Big Box Retailer Strategies” section above.

You must have enough inventory to satisfy demand, but not so much that you’re tying up all your capital and risk losing it.

To determine your MSLs, simply go back to your forecasted demand do the math so you have at least 5 days worth of stock on hand at any given time.

You Can Also Supplement with Dropshipping

Just because you don’t have a dropshipping business, doesn’t mean you can’t use dropshippers to supplement your inventory. If you run out of stock, you can rely on your dropshipper to fill in the gap until you get more inventory.

Additionally, you could use dropshipping to test product ideas.

If you’re interested in using dropshipping as a supplement to your business, check out this list of great dropshippers.

Finally, Centralize Your Inventory Management

If you sell solely on a single ecommerce store, you might not need to centralize your inventory management. It depends on how well your sales platform is handling it for you currently.

However, if you sell on multiple marketplaces, multiple sites, and/or offline, centralizing your inventory to one dedicated system is a must (if you value your time and sanity, anyway).

There are a ton of potential inventory management systems that work with multi-channel stores. Some of the best include:

• ChannelApe
• QuickBooks
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Netsuite
• Sage

Managing Inventory You Dropship

If you strictly dropship your inventory, this section is for you.

While drop shipping is significantly easier to manage, you do still need to keep up with your supplier’s inventory levels. If they run out of inventory but you didn’t update your product listings, you might have to put that order on backorder, or worse—cancel it entirely. So how do you avoid that?

Method 1: Manually Update

The first option is to manually check your supplier’s website for their inventory levels, then update your system with the new levels for the day. That’s great if you only have a few products, but once you hit even 10 products (not to mention variants), this quickly becomes a huge time sink.

Method 2: Use a Software

This is the easier way—especially if you sell on multiple channels.

Inventory management software uses a file called a “data feed.” Basically, this file “feeds” product data (including inventory quantity) from your supplier’s website to your inventory management software, and then ultimately to your sales channels.

You can use the software I mentioned in the above section, but most of them don’t offer that data feed option, which means more manual updates.

Your best option is using an ecommerce-specific solution (like ChannelApe). Why?

• Automated inventory quantity updates
• Automated product listing updates (in case your supplier changes pricing, descriptions, titles, adds/deletes products, etc.)
• Consistency across multiple sales channels (such as your website, Amazon, eBay, etc.)
• Automated variant updates (like size, color, style, etc.)
• They will create a data feed for you if you don’t have one

Most ecommerce-specific inventory management platforms are as simple as signing up for an account, logging in with your details, and pressing a few buttons to set up. You should be able to have it all done within 30 minutes to an hour.

You now (hopefully) have a solid understanding of inventory management as well as a solid action plan to put in place. I hope these methods improve your business and give you a solid ROI for taking the time to read this content.

The post Inventory Management 101: The Short Guide for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

The draw for both new and current ecommerce sellers is the immediate reward of tapping into the ecommerce juggernaut’s massive built-in traffic stream of buyers. In addition to this, analysts estimate there are nearly 95 million Amazon Prime members as of this writing. By keeping Prime members satisfied, Amazon has built a loyal following of repeat buyers.

And with Amazon stating that nearly 50% of all products sold on their site come from Marketplace Sellers like you and me, it’s no wonder sellers continue to capitalize on this opportunity.

In this post, we’ll go over the best way to start your Amazon business, and discuss how to leverage the platform for maximum profit potential.

Choosing Your Amazon Seller Account

The first step in starting your Amazon business is to register for an Amazon Seller Account. There are two plans to consider: The Individual Seller Account and the Professional Seller Account.

The Individual Seller Account charges a per-unit fee per item sold, whereas the Professional (Pro) Seller Account charges a flat monthly subscription fee, no matter the number of units sold.

Below, you will see additional features of opening a Professional Seller Account:

Serious sellers should not hesitate to open a Pro Seller account. The business reporting features, as well as other seller perks, make this a worthwhile choice for anyone looking to grow their business.

You can go to Amazon’s Seller Central to register for a new seller account.

Necessary Steps to Setting Up Your Amazon Seller Account

Setting up your new account will take about 10 minutes to complete. You will need to have your business EIN at hand, otherwise, you can sign up with a valid Social Security Number.

Amazon will ask you to complete a short tax interview online. This is done for Amazon tax reporting purposes.

After answering additional seller information related questions and taking a short survey, you will have finished setting up your account. Congratulations! You can officially start selling on Amazon now!

Fulfillment Options: Self-Fulfilled or FBA

Next, you will need to decide whether you want to self-fulfill or have Amazon fulfill your customer orders.

Orders that are self-fulfilled can still benefit from low postage rates using Amazon approved carriers. When a customer purchases an item from you, you have the ability to print out a pre-paid postage label from your Amazon account. Otherwise, you can choose to use your own preferred carrier and postage label.

When I first started selling on Amazon 9 years ago, this was the only option available to us. This meant I had to package and ship out individual orders on my own, or with helpers as my business started to grow.

Amazon FBA, or Fulfillment by Amazon, is a service offered to sellers whereby Amazon warehouses your products, ships, and handles all customer service and returns on your behalf.

The FBA program is open to all sellers, whether you’re on the individual or professional seller account plan. If you decide to use FBA services, you will need to send stock of your item to Amazon’s warehouse.

The Benefits of Using Amazon FBA

• Your products will be available for Amazon Prime shipping (2 Day, Next Day, Same Day shipping)
• Scale faster by outsourcing employees, warehousing, packaging, and shipping, etc.
• Amazon’s award-winning 24/7 customer service for your FBA products
• Business automation so you have more free time to work on your business instead of in your business

In order to add FBA services to your seller account, you will need to register for it first. This can easily be done by signing in to your seller account and going into your “Account Settings” tab. There, you will be able to turn on the option for FBA.

The Winning Formula: Professional Seller Account with FBA

In order to take advantage of the full benefits of a seller account and give yourself an early lead, I would recommend signing up for a Pro Seller Account with FBA services. Take the guesswork out and start off on the right foot.

Product Selection

The Amazon Marketplace has evolved greatly from its original beginnings as a book wholesaler site into a later all-around distributor/re-seller model. Nowadays, Amazon is a valuable platform for independent private label brands.

Amazon continues to roll out seller features that favor independent private label brands. With that in mind, the ideal product to sell on Amazon is your very own line of private label branded items. Some sellers on Amazon sell their products via a process known as Retail Arbitrage, however, Retail Arbitrage is not a strategy that can be used to build a long-term, scalable business so selling private label branded items is still the most recommended route to take.

Many sellers have jumped on this opportunity to launch entire brands seemingly overnight. The visibility that Amazon offers to new product line sellers who know how to navigate the platform is a great benefit to selling on Amazon.

And while selling a private label product is a main component of product selection, other pertinent factors go into finding a profitable product to sell. In my free downloadable resource guide, I detail 10 important characteristics of finding a profitable and scalable private label product to sell on Amazon.

But one of the biggest rookie mistakes to avoid at all costs is selling trending products just for the sake of it. New sellers are often tempted into private labeling a product that is selling well on the Amazon Top 100 Best Sellers list. They see a product selling well and understandably think it’s feasible to get in and capture a piece of the profits for themselves.

This model worked well during the early beginnings of private label selling on Amazon. Nowadays, it’s a death trap with a race to the bottom on which vendor can offer the better price for a similar item.

Sourcing Suppliers for Private Labeling

One of the most economical ways to produce a private label product is to source it overseas in China. Alibaba is a widely used website that connects manufacturers and suppliers in China to the rest of the world. It’s a popular site of choice for many Amazon private label sellers. To learn more about how to source products from Alibaba safely, check out our Guide to Sourcing Products from Alibaba.

Sellers looking to find products outside of what is available online, will often times make a sourcing trip to China. If going this route sounds appealing to you, then two of the biggest fairs to attend is the Canton Fair and the Global Sources Trade Show in Hong Kong. If you want to source private label products from a supplier more nearby, check out our Private Label Manufacturers Directory to locate private label suppliers near you.

Add Your Product to the Amazon Catalog

Once you have your product ready, you will need to create a new product listing in Amazon’s catalog in order to list your item for sale on the site. You will need to do this since you are selling a new product under your brand name that has never been sold on Amazon before.

This can be done through your seller dashboard. From your “Inventory” tab, you’ll be able to access the feature to add a new product to the catalog.

This product listing will serve as your sales page used to convert your potential customer into a paying customer. So, we will need to optimize it for best conversion results. We will start with the product title.

Creating an Amazon Product Title

Your product title is one of the highest weighted areas when it comes to optimizing your Amazon product page.

Here are some components of a good Amazon product title:

• Keep Within the Character Limit: Keep the title under 200 characters in length. Amazon may suppress your listing if it’s longer
• Make it Informative: Keep the title informative & concise, while also enticing browsers to click to your product page
• Use Your Keywords: Include the most important product keywords in your title
• Include Your Brand Name: The title should also contain your brand name
• Add the Quantity of Product: The title should contain the quantity count within the product package, if applicable
• Adhere to Amazon’s Guidelines: The title should follow Amazon’s Style Guidelines which can be found in SellerCentral

Creating Your Amazon Product Images

For any ecommerce business, having great product images will further increase the chances of your product being sold.

Here are some components of good product images on Amazon:

• Use a White Background: Main images must be on a clear white background
• Optimize the Pixel Density: Images must be at least 1000 pixels on the longest side and at least 500 pixels on the shortest side in order for it to be zoomable on the page
• Take Real Photos: Use real pictures of your product, when possible, instead of computer-generated images
• Include Lifestyle Shots: Show your product in use, when possible
• Add Detail and Alternate Angle Shots: Take close-up pictures of your products and photos from various angles

For editing your product images, you can use services such as Fiverr or Pixc or try out your own photo editing skills with these Photoshop Tutorials for Product Photos.

Write a Compelling Amazon Product Description

There is an art to writing product descriptions that sell. Writing sales copy and knowing which words will convert potential customers is a big market these days.

Here are some components to writing a winning product description:

• Discuss the Features & Benefits: Present product features alongside their relevant consumer benefits
• Solve a Problem: Reference the problem you are solving with your product
• Make it Relatable: Frame a picture in the consumer’s mind of how this product can be relevant to them
• Add a Call-to-Action: End with a strong call-to-action. Tell the customer to buy!

If you are not naturally good at writing sales copy, then that’s not a problem. There are specific Amazon related copywriting services, such as Marketing Words, that can help write your product listings for you.

Amazon Brand Registry

Now that you have entered your product into the Amazon catalog, the next step is to register your brand with the Amazon Brand Registry. This, in essence, is expressing ownership of your products to Amazon. It will help add a layer of protection to your brand and product listings, as well as open more seller brand marketing features to you, such as Enhanced Brand Content.

You will need to apply and complete an application in order to be entered into the Brand Registry.

To complete an application, you will need to provide Amazon will the following:

• An image of your product packaging with branding visible on the packaging
• An image of a product with your branding visible on the product itself
• Link to an active website that displays your brand or products

Once you have these items in place, you can sign into your Amazon seller central account and apply directly from there. Generally, Amazon will notify you of your acceptance into the Brand Registry in a matter of a few short days.

Amazon Keyword Research

An important aspect of your product being found by a potential customer is knowing what search terms they are entering on Amazon. Search is the primary way that customers use to locate your products on Amazon. Per Amazon, customers search by entering keywords, which are matched against the information (title, description, etc.) you provide for a product.

Knowing how to do appropriate keyword research will go a long way in gaining visibility of your product on Amazon. These keywords will be used to create your title and product descriptions, as well as in the backend of your product listings.

The easiest and fastest way to do keyword research is to use Amazon-specific search tools such as Keyword.io or MerchantWords.

Getting Your First Orders

Once your product is available for sale on Amazon, the next order of business is to get your first sale! The primary objective of getting the first few orders is to give your product a boost in its product ranking to start gaining organic visibility. New products on the site are generally buried in the search results so it’s imperative to immediately get sales as soon as your product goes live on the site.

If you’ve previously sold your product elsewhere and have a customer list available to you, then you will want to use this for your Amazon product launch. Emailing your customer list with a specially discounted Amazon coupon code for your product will help to generate these first few sales. This will serve as a quick boost for your product.

If you don’t have a customer list available to you, then below are some options to use for obtaining your first orders.

Product Launch

• Use deal site services such as Snagshout to entice bargain buyers to purchase your product and provide the initial product boost
• Use social media advertising, such as Facebook Ads, to entice buyers with a low deal offer to try out your new product
• Send paid traffic to your product listing using Amazon Sponsored Ads. This is a great way to gain quick visibility of products. Sponsored Ads is only open to sellers with a Professional Seller account

Amazon Product Promotions 

Running a promotion for your product is a great way to entice buyers to purchase. In your seller central dashboard, Amazon has a variety of options that you can choose from to run a promotion.

One of the most commonly used promotions to run is the “Money Off” promotion. This is where you can create a special discount code to distribute to potential buyers, whether it is for boosting ranking during your product launch or otherwise.

Up until Oct. 2016, Amazon did allow sellers to issue deeply discounted coupon codes to consumers in exchange for an unbiased product review. It’s important to note that Amazon no longer allows this practice of incentivized reviews. Unfortunately, too many sellers used this practice to manipulate their product rankings by obtaining only positive reviews of their products.

Product Reviews

Now that sales are coming in, it’s time to reach out to customers and ask for feedback on your product. Product reviews help educate potential buyers on whether they should purchase your product. These reviews are important for gaining new customers and also for helping to further rank your product in the search results.

This process can easily be automated using software services such as Feedback Genius and Feedback Five.

Conclusion

Starting an Amazon Business is a great way to sell ecommerce goods and launch entirely new brands while letting Amazon do all the heavy lifting for you. As an Amazon seller, you’ll have the ability to plug into a highly successful ecommerce ecosystem and tap into a large buyer network. Add Amazon FBA to your seller account to further automate your business and build your business on near-autopilot. Happy Selling!

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