Comments on: Internet retail: stock or drop ship?

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:33:55 +0000

At therightbuy.com we are always up to date with product availability and do our best to assure quality shopping for all.

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 02:22:14 +0000

I agree with all your points above. But people need to be very careful with some of the big dropshippers that are out there. They show thousands of SKU’s and then are always out of the product that your customer wants. I would refer them to a site such as www.knickknacks4less.com which offers customized products for dropshipping. Talk about having the best of all worlds! You can literally increase your SKU’s by hundred fold simply by adding more images to your reperatoire. And they are never out of stock…EVER. Free drop shipping with no charges shipped worldwide.

Come check it out….it’s worth your time.

By: idris

idris — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:24:42 +0000

No matter if an online retailer choose to drop ship the product or carry a stock of it, what really matters is ROI and good customer relationship, if an online retailer choose to drop ship he should be smart enough to choose a drop ship supplier and can have an indirect control over the fulfillment by entering into an agreement to ship the right product on right time. But again, there are several other disadvantages of drop shipping, customer support time can increase, sometimes a drop shipper might send a different product (as you said), a drop ship supplier might scam and violate the agreement, etc…

Inventory model is the true retail method, retailers can ship the product immediately and can provide excellent customer support, but to do all this, an efficient fulfillment system is required.

You have made a good point that retailers have to combine these two strategies to find what works best for them. These two strategies should be the part of their marketing plan.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:58:48 +0000

Pete,

You bring up a good point - if a company has a strategic advantage such as customer service, for example, their pricing may not be as important as delivering what their customers have come to expect.

I have only met a small number of retailers who choose to only sell products that they carry a physical stock of - it will be interesting watching the trends in fulfilment going forward.

By: Pete Abilla

Pete Abilla — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:53:58 +0000

This is really a strategic question — it’s about control on the supply chain, costs, and service level. A mix is good if and only if the requirements of Traceability & Visibility are met and also the requirement of Service Level or Click-to-Ship. And, both must be met under the constraints of costs.

For some firms, it’s important to note that, regardless of costs, there is an emphasis on control — controlling the customer experience, instead of abdicating that control to someone else.

This is a big question that many large internet retailers still wrestle with.