9 Cons of Dropshipping
Dropshipping can be considered a simple way to start up and easy to get rich, but as with anything, there have downsides involved. Let’s find out the first one.
The dropshipping mindset
Most people think that dropshipping is an easy way to make money quickly. However, it’s still a real business and isn’t all about golden rainbows like you think.
You need to put in your real effort and much hard work to dive deep into it. Otherwise, it’s hard to be successful and become unique from others. Or it just wastes your precious time but is not effective and profitable.
Change your mindset into the right one first.
Limited control
You have almost no control over everything in your online store but the price of products and what kind of items you’re going to sell. Once you already delivered customers’ orders to your suppliers, you can’t interfere deeply with the next processes such as production, package, and delivery,...
Due to that, checking the quality of products before sending is pretty hard. You will not know or see whether it’s good or not.
You will also not have a choice choose how to design the package or how to wrap it in your style because the suppliers take care of that instead of you. It’s completely impossible to put anything from your store like some others did such as thank you cards, or discount vouchers to create the impression for customers to remember your brand.
Therefore, if your customer complains about order processing, delivery speed, quality of product, and refunds, it’s not quite easy to solve that immediately.
Problem with quality product control
You just finished your part after delivering customers’ orders to suppliers. That’s all, no need to interfere after that. Is it a good or bad thing?
It will be terrible if the quality is not good enough for customers. Because you never see or touch the product. So, if there have any issues with product quality, you will never know until your customers complain about them.
So, consider carefully when choosing the suppliers or you can order the sample from them to take a test.
Stock shortages
Because you’re not the one owning the inventory so you never know whether the stock is run out or not. Imagine that you’re selling items quite well, many customers order from your online shop but your dropshipping suppliers can’t keep up.
They are not available for your needs all the time.
It can make your customers wait and make them cancel their orders.
Just remember to keep in touch with dropshipping suppliers regularly and ask them how many products they have left.
Can’t combine products in an order
It will happen if your shop has contact with multiple different dropshipping suppliers. Just imagine that, if one customer orders many different products, and for each product, there is another different dropshipping supplier, you can’t combine these products into one package like other normal retail.
Thus, your customers will receive several separate packages at different times and might complain that their orders are not complete after the first package. But this is not enough, you also have to pay a shipping fee multiple times which costs you added money.
You can have a backup plan or another dropshipping supplier who got the same product in case your dropshipping supplier runs out of stock.
Refunds can be complicated
As we mentioned above, you can’t control everything and also never see the products. It’s hard to check. If they are not good as advertised, the chance of refunds highly increases.
And the problem with your customers can never be easy to fix immediately. You probably can lose them.
Poor customer service
Because you can’t manage the supplier chain.
Imagine that once your customer complains or asks about the product, you will not be there to help or reply to them immediately.
It might take some time to discuss with your dropshipping supplier first and then, your customer will get your reply soon.
Earn less profit
Is it real? Why does it make less profit than usual normal business? Let’s take a look here.
If you buy products in bulk, the cost will be surely cheaper than purchasing each item at a time. This leads to making less profit.
A regular wholesaler sells their goods in bulk for you while a dropshipping supplier sells you just a single unit whenever you place an order.
Due to selling a single product each time, they are taking charge of storing and ensuring products and other related expenses such as paying staff in packaging and delivering,...
Wholesalers run their business with very low-profit margins and depend mostly on a large number of purchases to make a good profit. Thus, when these additional charges are added, the price of individual items is increased because they have no option.
Then, guess what? You will pay more to your dropshipping supplier, and your profit margins will be lower.
Highly competitive
Just imagine dropshipping as a cake, everyone out there craving for the whole cake not just a piece of it.
The more people want that, the higher competition is.
So how can you make your online store unique and outstanding from others if you don’t work hard for it?
As some or many of them just open the store fast, import some products (without checking carefully the dropshipping supplier), and start marketing.
If they are all the same, how can customers remember your brand?
Be creative, be unique! And the best.