Dropshipping

Dropshipping is where you can have a package sent directly to your customer. This saves you from needing to ship the order to yourself and then pay again to reship it to your customer.

Dropshipping can help you in several ways:

1. Low upfront investment: Since you don't need to purchase inventory upfront, you can save on upfront costs like inventory storage, warehousing, and bulk purchasing.

2. You can focus more of your efforts on marketing, customer service, and building your brand. You do not need to deal with handling inventory, packing, and shipping, which can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

3. Drop shipping lets you test and experiment with different products and markets without the risk of being stuck with unsold inventory. It allows you to easily add or remove products from your online store based on market demand.

Yes. Drop shipping allows you to sell products before you buy them. Once you collect money from your customer, you then order and pay for the products that are then sent to them by us.

Yes. You can offer more products because you don't need to buy them before you offer them for sale. You do not need to invest the money, deal with the storage, or take the risks that would go along with offering lots of products some other way.

The main problem with dropshipping is that you are separated more from your customers. Customer loyalty is probably the most valuable part of your business, and when other companies are handling the order shipping and inventory issues, you can lose something this way. Drop shipping typically also gives you smaller profit margins overall than handling the orders completely yourself.

This is often the biggest potential problem with dropshipping. Some problems can be managed, but take extra effort from you.

1. One big problem is that you do not control products being in stock. Africa Imports shows the quantity in stock for all items on our website, but items can sell out between the time that you advertise a product for sale, and when you want to order it. This happens most frequently with clothing that comes in different colors and sizes. If there are only a few of an item in stock, and it sells out between the time that you show it to a customer and when you order it, you can hurt your relationships with customers this way.

2. Customer communication. There are different details and questions about your customers orders that you will not know or be able to answer. Many of the common questions (such as tracking numbers and shipping times) can be found, but there are many other questions that customers will have that you will not be able to help them with when you are not the one handling the products and the shipping.

3. Being an exclusive supplier. Other people can do dropshipping also. Many customers will feel better dealing with someone who is selling products that they have on hand instead of them being drop shipped from a third party.

There is a $5.00 extra charge for drop shipped orders. With both this and the shipping cost, small orders can be expensive to send by drop shipment. One option is to keep at least the best selling items in stock yourself to ship to your customers directly.

Yes. For customer convenience, Africa Imports carries thousands of different products. There are some items that we sell that are available through many other places. But most of the items you will order from Africa Imports are not available anywhere else.

No. Drop shipped orders from Africa Imports are sent to your customers with your company information as the sender. So the order that they receive will look as if it was sent from you. The paperwork sent will not show Africa Imports information. It will also not show any prices.

If you want to place a drop ship order online, you can enter the customers name and address as a separate shipping address and choose the drop ship option during the check out process. The $5.00 shipping charge will be added to the cost of your order.