Drop shipping v/s Online Store – Future of Shopify in India

Introduction:

Did you notice that now-a-days every business is moving online? As the consumer’s are preferring more online than offline, Online business is a boom in our country. But, for a traditional country like India, moving all the old business to online is not an easy job. Not everyone can do that. Also, most of them are not even educated, they don’t even think of moving it.

Now, Let’s think that owner had finally set-up an online store, do he has to think about the business or the online store? Because, to run an online store he has to take care of many things like making a website, purchasing a domain, Leasing a server, updating the products, taking care of orders, delivery partners, and what not, there’s more than what we think. After all this, Can he compete with best E-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart? 

So these are the problems of setting up an Online Store. I will let you know how to solve this problem. Let’s dive in

Online Store Builder:

If you want to have your own online store or you don’t want to merge your offline business with Amazon or Flipkart but you don’t have knowledge or time to maintain it, then this model is the best way of approach for you. 

Online store builder is a platform where it will build a store for you like the way you want, it manages it, also it runs all the analytics for you, it would also have a payment option integrated, it can also connect with delivery partners. All you have to do is just select the models which are required for you and just pay for it. Remaining is taken care by them. Even they would market for your products too. 

Shopify:

It is the best subscription based platform for Online store builder. Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company for online stores and retail POS systems. It offers a suite of services like payments, shipping, marketing and customer engagement tools to make the process of running an e-commerce business for SMEs and enterprise merchants.You can build any type of store using Shopify. You can choose any theme for it. You can also add a payment option too. Also, there is an additional option called POS(Point of Sale) where you can also sell your products offline even if you don’t have a physical store at that location.

Think Shopify as a facilitator who is providing the ease of doing business online. It is similar to WordPress for Bloggers. All you have to do is to choose a plan, select all the requirement necessary for your store and go live. There are also a lot of API’s and tools integrated with Shopify which you can use and buy if they are paid one’s.

Advantages of Shopify:

• Hosted Online Store
• POS
• Payment Processing
• Shipping and Delivery partner integration
• Mobile App
• Analytics and Reports
• Customer support
• Marketing Platforms,

And many more…

But you should remember that Shopify won’t guaranty your success. It’s you who need to work out. It doesn’t mean that you have hosted your store on Shopify and it will be an overnight success. You need to do the math and check where the problem is and how to overcome it. 

There may be many other Online Store builders but Shopify is the most popular and wide spread across the globe. You can do the business even for abroad. If you know any platforms better than Shopify, please comment down below. Also check this link for pricing models. It has 3 to 4 pricing models and you can choose whichever suits your business better.

Drop shipping:

Did you ever think about the marketing model of E-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart? Did you ever shop in Instagram? How a company like Myntra, Ajio which doesn’t even own a single wardrobe is the largest fashion service in our country? All these models are called as Drop shipping.

For suppose, you want to start a Clothing business, you need heavy investments to buy Fabric and then employee some men to sew clothes according to you. Then you need to store them at a warehouse or a store. Then you need to market and then sell. But for a beginner, this is impossible. She/He don’t have such huge investments and wait till the products gets sold. 

For this problem, here comes the Drop shipping model, where you don’t need to do all these things. Drop shipping is a type of retail fulfilment that lets you sell products without managing, storing or shipping inventory. Instead, you connect with dropshipping suppliers and source products to sell online. Customers check out on your site, then you forward the order info to the supplier, and the supplier fulfils the order. 

Unlike traditional online retail, dropshipping releases the merchant from having to fulfil their orders. That means you skip the time and cost of manufacturing products or acquiring stock, storing inventory, and shipping to customers. One of the main benefits of dropshipping is that it simplifies fulfilment processes for merchants. It can also reduce initial overheads and outlays which is important for entrepreneurs building a startup eCommerce business, especially those operating on a small budget.

So, as a dropshipper you might be wondering, if your supply and fulfilment are taken care of then what’s your role as a business owner? There’s still plenty to do. You’ll have to research the market, choose the right products, build your online store, calculate your profit margins, run targeted marketing campaigns and provide great customer service.

Below picture completely explains you the work flow model.

ADVANTAGES:

• Choose Products from a variety of Dropshipping suppliers and make it yours whichever are your choice
• Import Items to your online store directly and set prices according to your margin
• Accept and Forward Orders to Suppliers
• Ship and Fulfil your orders through suppliers

DISADVANTAGES:

This model has disadvantages too. 

• If the product provided by the supplier goes faulty, then you have to take the responsibility and also the loss of credibility
• Already supplier would have fixed the price of the product at maximum and sell it to you and you cannot increase its price because no one will buy and you would loose profits and land into loss.
• You don’t have any idea about delivery partner as that would be enabled by supplier. If anything goes wrong, you have to face it.
• You don’t even know about supplier and his history, whether he is genuine or not.

And many more..

But for beginners, this is the only way. That is why you now-a-days see a lot of sale over Instagram.

After mentioning so much about this, it is my duty to provide platforms which help you to do Dropshipping. Wix, Shopify are the platforms which will provide you best Drop shipping models. 

Check out the links below for complete details.

Shopify is a latest innovation in business models. It has all the features once can think about. I guess this would be the future and it would be better if we adopt it as soon as possible.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Online Business is a boom in our country and many have chosen this path as their career. This is due to the ease and flexibility these models are providing. If you are really interested in business and don’t know how to begin, please know about these models in more detail and make your career successful. If you already have a business, then you have to compulsorily take a look on this. Hope this makes a difference in your thoughts.

Happy Exploring