Dropshipping

If you’d like to launch an online store but do not have your own inventory, dropshipping can be a good way out – you can sell products without ever having to stock any inventory. You can connect your store to Alibaba, Syncee, Spocket, Printful, and Wholesale2B to start dropshipping.

With dropshipping, a third-party company (usually, it’s a manufacturer or a wholesaler or a fulfillment company) takes care of producing, storing, packing and shipping products to buyers, while all you have to do is marketing and selling their products as if they were your own.

What is dropshipping

In a nutshell, dropshipping works as follows:

• The customer places an order for a product in your online store.
• You forward the order and customer details to the dropship supplier (either manually or automatically).
• The dropship supplier packages and ships the order to the customer in your name.

The following types of dropshipping are popular:

Acting as a reseller of products. For example, you can resell learning toys of a supplier (e.g., offered via Wholesale2B, Spocket, Alibaba, or Syncee) if you are an expert in child education, and thus you can market them wisely. The orders will be fulfilled by the dropship supplier.

Using a dropshipping print-on-demand service. For example, you are from a music band that wants to sell merchandise to fans, or you are an artist that wants to sell their artworks in the form of canvas prints or framed posters. A print-on-demand service like Printful can produce and store these products, print your designs on them once they are notified of an order, then pack and send the ordered print products to buyers in your name.

To start selling dropshipped products, you should partner with a preferred dropship supplier and list their products in your online store. When you receive an order, forward the order details to your supplier, and they will ship it to the buyer for you.

We have ready integration with Wholesale2B, Spocket, Syncee, Alibaba, and Printful dropshipping services. You can connect your store to them by installing their apps from the App market. After that, you will be able to quickly import their products to your store and automatically notify them of new orders that they should fulfill.

Connecting your store to Printful

Printful is a print-on-demand dropshipping service that can be used by designers, artists, sports teams, musicians and others who want to sell branded products or merchandise. It is integrated with your store via the Printful app.

After installing the app you can choose from a range of products in Printful such as t-shirts, hoodies, hats (embroidery), posters, photo prints, canvas, mugs, etc. You can apply your graphics to the chosen products, set your margin on top of Printful prices and publish the products in your store.

When a customer places an order for such a product, Printful will be automatically notified of a new order. It will print your graphics on the ordered product, pack it and send it to the customer in your name.

The app is free to sign up and you only pay when an order is made.

Connecting your store to Wholesale2B

Wholesale2B is a service that connects you with over 100+ dropship suppliers and handles orders with the suppliers for you. You can connect your store to Wholesale2B service by using the Wholesale2B app. After installing the app you can pick the products of the dropship suppliers integrated with Wholesale2B, change product titles and description to your liking, set your price markup and list these products in your store.

When you get a new order and receive the buyer’s payment, the order details will be automatically imported into your Wholesale2b account where you will need to click on the “Order Now” link to make the wholesale payment. At this point, the Wholesale2b team will process the order for you, send the tracking code to your store and automatically mark the order as shipped. Note that currently only shipments to the USA or Canada are supported.

The Wholesale2B service comes with a free 7-day trial. During the free trial period, you can only add up to 10 items however you can increase this limit to 10,000 items at any trial day by activating the Wholesale2B plan.

Connecting your store to Spocket

Spocket is a dropshipping marketplace where you can find and connect directly with dropshipping suppliers located in the US and EU. Spocket helps you grow your inventory with high-quality goods.

You can connect your store to Spocket by using the Spocket app. After installing the app, your Spocket account will be created automatically, and you can import products from different suppliers to your store. To help you make the best choice for your store, you can narrow down the search by item costs, top suppliers, best sellers, etc. You can also choose where the product is shipped from. For every product, you’ll see the recommended retail price and the price you pay to Spocket + Shipping.

To connect your store to Spocket, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to your store.
2. Click App Market under Apps on your store control panel.
3. Find and click the Spocket app, then click Install to give the app permissions.
4. The Spocket app will automatically open.
5. Go to the app’s Settings to manage your Spocket plan and see your connected store.

Before importing items to your store, you can edit the products’ information. Once you import products in your store, your customers can buy them.

After your customer places a paid order in your store, you’ll need to click the Checkout button in your Spocket app to place the order with Spocket. Once you make the wholesale payment, the Spocket team will process the order for you, send the tracking code to your store, and automatically mark the order as shipped. 

The Spocket app is free to $99 per month. You can also choose one of the Spocket paid plans depending on how large you want your catalog to be.

Connecting your store to Syncee

Syncee is a service that provides ready-to-sell products for big and small retail businesses.

You can connect your store to Syncee by using the Syncee app. After installing the app and creating a Syncee account, you can start searching for products or suppliers. Once you pick the item, you can choose a name for the product and add any margin you want. Then you can add it to your Syncee catalog and then sync this catalog with your store. All products from your Syncee catalog will be added to your store.

After a customer places a paid order in your store, it will appear in your Syncee account on the Manage orders page. From your Manage orders page, you can pay the product directly to the Syncee’s supplier with PayPal or credit card. This payment will be sent to the supplier directly. Once the supplier receives your payment, they will fulfill the order. You can learn more about processing orders with Syncee in their help center.

The Syncee app is free to $129 per month. You can also choose one of the Syncee paid plans depending on how many products from the suppliers you want to sell in your store.

Connecting your store to Alibaba

Alibaba is one of the biggest shopping markets in the world that brings hundreds of millions of products in over 40 different major categories, including electronics, machinery, and apparel. You can import products from Alibaba to your store and sell them as your own. To do so, you can use the Syncee app to connect Alibaba with your online store. The Syncee app allows you to:

• add the ready-to-sell products from Alibaba into your store,
• rename products and add margin to its cost,
• manage orders.

Alibaba connects to your store in two steps.

Step 1 — Connect your store to Syncee app

Since Alibaba uses Syncee as a dropshipping technology partner, you should first connect your store to Syncee with the Syncee app. After installing the app and creating a Syncee account, you can start searching for products on Alibaba.

Step 2 — Connect your Syncee account with Alibaba

To search products on Alibaba and add it to your store, you should enable connection between Syncee and Alibaba.

To connect Syncee with Alibaba:

1. From your store’s admin, go to Catalog → Syncee — Global dropshipping and click Register/Login to open the Syncee app.
2. From your Syncee dashboard, open the menu on the left and select Alibaba → Search products. You will be redirected to the connection page. Click Connect to Alibaba:
   

   

3. Log in with your Alibaba account or create a new one.
4. Agree with the terms of use to connect Alibaba to Syncee.
5. Once your Syncee account is connected to Alibaba, you can go to Alibaba and pick products to sell. To do so, click Go to Alibaba Dropshipping Site:
   

   

That’s it. Now you can search for goods on Alibaba and add them to your store.

Once you find the product you want, click Add to import list, then go to Syncee dashboard → Alibaba → Import list and click Add to catalog. You can choose a name for a product and add any margin you want.

Now you have a new item in your Syncee catalog. To sync it with your store, go to Syncee dashboard → Alibaba → My Catalogs and click Sync. Once synchronization is complete, new items appear in Catalog → Products in your store.

After a customer places a paid order in your store, it will appear in your Syncee account on the Manage Orders → Alibaba Orders page. If you are on the Starter Marketplace Plan, Syncee will not download your orders automatically. To do so, you should click the Syncronize button. Once the order appears on Alibaba Orders page, you can pay the product directly to Syncee’s supplier with PayPal or a credit card. This payment will be sent to the supplier directly. When the supplier receives your payment, they will fulfill the order.

You can learn more about Alibaba dropshipping with Syncee in their help center.

The Syncee app is free to $129 per month. You can also choose one of the Syncee paid plans depending on how many products from the suppliers you want to sell in your store.

Selling products of another dropship supplier

If you want to use another supplier that is not integrated, you can add their products to your store and notify the supplier of the to-be-fulfilled orders. Here is how this can be done:

• Get a list of products from your supplier (ideally, in the form of CSV file or a spreadsheet) and add them to your store in bulk using CSV import.

• Send emails to the supplier about orders that should be fulfilled by them.
  

  You can include the email address of your dropship supplier in the list of the recipients of admin notifications. Or you can use the tools of your mailing service to automatically resend the New Order Placed notifications from your mailbox to your supplier’s address – here is how you can set up forwarding in Gmail, for example.

To make your store ready for accepting orders, you can start with the initial setup guide however take into account the following things:

Use your own product descriptions. Instead of the default texts provided by the supplier, write your own. Unique content is highly rated by search engines, so it will help you to get your store indexed and it will be easier for customers to find you.

Set the supplier’s address as the origin address. If you are going to use real-time shipping quotes in your store, specify your supplier’s address as the Origin address in your store. As a result, it will be used as the ship-from address to calculate shipping costs that shoppers see at checkout.