Many dropshippers are keen to get their brand new eCommerce store open. You’ve chosen a banging theme that promotes your brand and started to get some engagement on Facebook and Pinterest.
But what about your suppliers? You’ve read in many different articles how the best place to dropship from is China but is that the real deal and are they right? Well, today you can find the definitive answer! Make sure you don’t dropship from China until you’ve read this!
Let’s start with the mini take away first, so you can get on to building your inventory straight away.
Should I dropship from China? Using the best Chinese agents and suppliers is a great way of selling winning products. As an eCommerce store owner, Chinese dropshippers offer a huge variety of niches, with wholesale prices and the best margins. Chinese dropshipping allows you to fully customize and create a unique brand.
Let’s get straight down to whether you’ve made the right choice dropshipping from China and using Chinese dropshipping suppliers for your Shopify or another eCommerce store.
Some store owners might think it’s a terrible idea and might have had bad experiences, so let’s find out why that might be below.
Is dropshipping from China a terrible idea?
Many of us have done plenty of research before opening a new store.
We might have looked into what kind of products might sell well and also of course researched the best suppliers of dropshipping goods.
But are there any real disadvantages of Chinese dropshipping?
Let’s take a look at 4 reasons below which might make you think twice before you use a drop shopper from China.
Disadvantages
- Low quality: Many sellers receive complaints from the clients about product quality far different from described, and are very disappointed about it. Many sellers even call AliExpress products are ‘knockoffs’, just cheap items without quality guarantee.
- Slow shipping: So one of the main reasons many might think it’s a bad idea to dropship from China is the notoriously long shipping times. You should ideally be looking at no more than 30 days. With Amazon and other retailers speeding up shipping, customers are getting used to speedier delivery times and are coming to expect it as a standard.
- Vague refund and reshipping policy: Refunds are always going to be an important element when working in any kind of retail, and historically it has been known that details of how refunds work within Chinese dropshipping can be a little unclear, along with a vague Reshipping policy.
- Language and payment barrier: It’s no surprise to learn that dropshipping from China comes with its language issues and also many more common methods of payment might not be accepted.
- Bad communication: The language barrier can also make for difficult communication.
So what’s the good stuff? Let’s find out.
Advantages
- Good price for quality products: One of the more obvious reasons to choose Chinese dropshipping is the pricing. Sourcing goods directly from Chinese factories and manufacturers brings with its lower prices to enable you as the store owner to receive a better profit margin. As for product quality – you just need to make sure to find a honest supplier that does its inspection job well and thorough.
- A wide selection of all niches: The sheer volume of products available from Chinese dropshipping suppliers gives the store owner much more choice in the kind of goods offered
- Trending products available: As a knock-on effect from the above, Shopify and other eCommerce store owners will have a much better chance of finding those important new trending and winning products
- Customization service: Another crucial advantage of using Chinese dropshipping suppliers is the fact you can literally create your own packaging for your brand. This helps to set you apart from your competitors and gives your customers a more unique product.
Ok, so that’s the good news! So you might be wondering where you can find the most reliable suppliers to enjoy a great dropshipping fulfillment experience
Where to find top Chinese dropshipping suppliers
Ok, you’ve now decided the opportunities outweigh any negative issues relating to sourcing your dropshipping store products from Chinese suppliers, right?
So where can you find them?
Let’s take a look below at some of the most popular, so you can more easily make a decision as to which one is better for your brand, Shopify or another kind of eCommerce store.
Let’s start with one of the heavyweights of the drop shipping Industry AliExpress.
AliExpress
AliExpress is often touted as THE dropshipping company from China.
Benefits
AliExpress sellers fully understand the dropshipping model, with many benefits to help any would-be dropshippers to create a store. They also have a huge product selection.
Disadvantage
However one of their chief downsides and why AliExpress could have a detrimental effect on your store is that ePacket shipping is desperately slow. Many dropshippers also mention product quality as AliExpress sellers don’t do product inspection whatsoever.
There are also payment restrictions, meaning only certain methods are acceptable, and not only that, their refund and returns policy isn’t the best or user friendly.
Alibaba
Another of the dropshipping giants which are often used to dropship products from China is Alibaba. Let’s see how they fare.
Benefits
Alibaba’s main upside is they offer a much lower unit price which is perfect for a wholesaler.
Disadvantages
However, Alibaba isn’t really set up for dropshipping and we could go as far as to say, it doesn’t understand the dropshipping model at all.
They also don’t offer any kind of service in terms of an order fulfillment service, and the MOQ (minimum order quantity) for customizing packaging and products is very high.
Ok so now we’ve checked off a few important requirements of what to look for in a Chinese dropshipping supplier, let’s find more crucial things you need to know.
What makes a good Chinese dropshipping supplier
- Transparent communication
- Offer express shipping
- Automated systems
Now we’ve seen that automation is a really important element of what makes a good Chinese dropshipping supplier, you might be wondering what other ways you can make sure your business is operating at full speed and finding a simple non-labor intensive way of fulfilling orders.
Let’s find out more below…
Dropshipping Apps
When you are ready to scale up your dropshipping store, you will need to ensure you have some fundamentals in place if you are to take advantage of dropshipping from China.
Many of the tasks you may have started off doing manually in those early days of long days beavering away to grow your store, will need to be fully automated to give you a heads up over your competitors.
There are many dropshipping apps available that will act as your virtual assistant by doing much of the Labor-intensive work, such as order fulfillment.
Many apps will not only give you a helping hand with the day-to-day process of running a successful store but can also help you source new products, for example.
The winning combination of service and system will guarantee your eCommerce store has the best chance of pulling in profits for you.
And finally…
So there is the final definitive answer as to whether you should use Chinese dropshippers!
Although of course, as with any business process there will always be upsides and downsides.
Overall, we think the great selection of winning products available coupled with great prices, and the ability to customize your product to build a great brand, are great reasons to make sure you select the best Chinese dropshipping suppliers for your business.
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