[windsurfer]

Drop shipping has been the bane of my online shopping experience. Products are often not as advertised and returns can be a huge hassle, so it has become a word I avoid. How do you plan to raise confidence for consumers in this practice?

[rogerkirkness]

We actually agree with this, we saw that inside Shopify. Bigger retailers are getting smarter about this and enforcing vendor SLAs. Meaning requirements like:

1. Accurate product listings

2. <24 hour ship times, enforced

3. No manual steps, only automated / integrated

4. Easy returns, funded by sellers

5. Sellers based in the same country

Drop ship can range from very small and generally not very durable online retailers to massive and very sophisticated retailers. In the case of the sophisticated ones, you may not even know the difference. Amazon for example has been drop shipping a lot more, but because of their vendor SLA people can't tell it's not from FBA. It's mostly just about good vendor SLAs, local suppliers and short ship times.

The other thing we're seeing is a continuum where people start out drop shipping, and then move to wholesale when the volume grows. That way 1. Consumers get access to smaller / newer brands early and then 2. Eventually the experience gets more controlled. We do both, just generally because our customers are growing but also because you really need both to make the experience good.

[hef19898]

True for Amazon. There are cases, after some really hard internal fighting, of Prime enabled Dropshippers, meaning you even see the "order in x minutes for next day delivery" message. So it is definitely doable, hard work but doable. And every tech improvement to make that easier is very welcome!