Starting a brand-new business or enterprise can seem like a daunting task. This is because of the tremendous amount of capital required along with a huge time consumption, that too with incalculable risk. Every business idea requires a different amount of each of the above factors corresponding to the vision of the business ideas itself.
Nowadays, there are a variety of tools and means available that enable you to spend less time concentrating on the management issues and more on getting started. Hence, there has been an explosive burst in the commerce market, which is filled with new businesses and entrepreneurs seeking to make a mark with their ventures.
Dropshipping
One of these business niches includes dropshipping. Trending business ideas becoming increasingly tech-savvy and requiring lesser initial capital, starting your own eCommerce company has never been easier.
A major part of this can be attributed to ‘dropshipping’. By investing in a dropshipping model, a company can outsource its product inventory management to a third party. This includes storage of the inventory, packaging, and product delivery upon order. This enables the company to focus more on marketing and customer service.
Utilizing a dropshipper comes with many advantages. Apart from managing your company’s order delivery, they can also be a way to test if the market is ready for a particular product before you decide to invest in it. The same can be said for the test launch of your company’s own original products. Of course, for this system to work perfectly, it’s imperative to choose your dropshipper carefully.
A poor delivery or state of the product upon arrival can seriously affect the customer’s perception of your company. It can also negatively impact the brand that you’re trying to make and lead to bad word-of-mouth. Hence, a trustworthy dropshipper is very important. It’s also good to test them by ordering a sample of a product to check their efficiency and their reliability.
There are a number of dropshippers available either locally or overseas, which you can choose depending upon the scope and vision of your business. Some also combine and present a customized list of prospective suppliers that can be beneficial to the company. An example of this is Oberlo, an application by Shopify.
It can help you find the best products that go with your company’s idea and brand. It can also help you connect with thousands of suppliers based either locally around you or internationally, should you choose to expand your venture.
It also comes with a built-in analytics dashboard where you can keep track and analyze any and all traffic to your site and products. You can even add multiple suppliers to your Shopify store directly and just manage the sales and revenue aspect of the business.
Print-On-Demand
Another off-shoot of the dropshipping revolution has been the print-on-demand services. Like dropshipping, it puts the management of the product inventory, its storage and future delivery to the consumer in the hands of a third-party company. However, in this case, the end products can be customized with your company’s original designs and graphics. These graphics can be created with the help of a print on demand design services.
These can then be printed on a plethora of items that are available in the market, like T-shirts, bags, phone covers, bed sheets, etc. The opportunities in this niche are endless, with the prospects only defined by the limits of one’s imagination and the long-term vision of your business ideas.
Of course, not every person is an ardent follower of art and even if they are, there’s no guarantee that they have the talent to produce print worthy graphics. This is where you can find freelance designers or visual artists to work with you or your company on a part-time basis. In case you’re really strapped for money, you can even buy artwork from designers. With print-on-demand, the base cost per unit piece is higher since every product has to be printed and there are no bulk order discounts.
However, this comes with the added advantage that the product can be set to be printed and shipped only if there’s an order placed for it. This means that there’s no inventory being wasted nor is your company making a loss with unsold products that you’ve paid for.
There are a number of print-on-demand services around the world that you can utilize. Thanks to the power of the internet, it doesn’t matter where the service is located as you can just send the design or graphics template and they will complete the job for you. Good examples of such services are ShoShopifypify’s Printify and Printful.
After making an account, you can upload your designs and get your product listings thanks to an easy-to-use mockup generator. These can then be listed at your eCommerce website, where in case of an order being placed, they automatically print the product and ship it to the customer, all under your brand name.