A happy baby makes a smiley family. This beautiful sentiment inspired Tracy, a new Sydney Mum, to design a range of products for happy babies.
Tracy started her Shopify store, Smiley Little One, to provide safe and practical products for Australian families. Her past experiences with traditional online sales meant that for this store, she wanted to create a business that was flexible and would suit her young family.
The processes required to run a ‘classic’ e-commerce store can quickly become a chore. Purchasing and selling physical products involves daily trips to the post office, endless wrapping, packing, sending of items. Add that to the challenges of storing piles of inventory, and Tracy knew that the traditional model was one she didn’t want to use for Smiley Little One.
Instead, she chose dropshipping as a way to create a high profit business without having to sacrifice precious family time. She set about curating a range of high-quality baby wrap carriers, ring slings and toys that she sells using a dropshipping model.
Why Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a powerful, modern, low-cost way to serve your tribe and fans without having to purchase and hold physical products. A dropship store allows you to find and sell a personally curated range of products with less effort and no upfront purchases. Once your store is set up, you can sell to as many customers as you can handle, and you can grow quickly without facing the usual problems of needing more supplies or more storage space.
This means that with dropshipping you can increase your sales month over month without having to invest more time or effort.
Dropshipping is the ultimate in scalable revenue.
The key to long term success in dropshipping is developing a loyal tribe of fans who return to your store over and over. These fans are people who love your brand and what you stand for. They appreciate the way you have selected products to suit their needs and lifestyle. Returning customers are up to 80% more profitable than new customers, who often have to be found using advertising or paid promotions.
There is one challenge when selling to loyal fans: finding fabulous products that will excite and inspire them. To make healthy recurring revenue, your dropship store needs to showcase products that are much better quality and better-branded than anything that arrives in a plain box from Amazon for $4.99.
The Problem with Dropshipping
Tracy knew exactly which products she wanted to sell. The problem, she discovered, is that not all suppliers want to participate in dropshipping partnerships. Suppliers incur administration and labour costs when they dropship for their stockists, and some just don’t want the extra hassle.
The Solution
Fortunately, one of the brands that Tracy approached had a winning suggestion. The brand owner told Tracy they would only work with her if she could provide automated processes for sending orders and receiving fulfilment updates. They knew of a new automation app that could help.
The app – Dropship Connect – automates processes for the supplier, which makes it easy for them to receive orders and get paid. So they can increase their sales without incurring extra administration tasks.
The Result
Tracy and her supplier now have a profitable partnership. Tracy sells products on her Shopify store, and her supplier ships them straight to Tracy’s customers.
Tracy can see when the orders have been fulfilled, and her card is charged automatically for the agreed price; no more manual payments for Tracy and no more chasing unpaid invoices for her supplier.
It’s a win for Tracy, and a win for her supplier.
To learn more about finding great suppliers, check out this helpful post. Or book a call and we will answer your questions personally.
