[MobileVet]

Bill Gross started carsdirect.com with no cars. They made the site and offered the cars for sale.

When people bought them, the team would run out with a credit card and buy a car for real and then sell it to the online user.

True story.

[ehnto]

Where I live onselling is illegal, but it is still a pretty common practice for small online retailers to just not stock some items and go buy them at retail when it's ordered. It makes a little bit of sense, since it lets you expand your catalogue without keeping stock on hand or negotiating a supplier. For a small ecomm store, that can mean the difference between looking like a legitimate retailer a customer can trust or not.

This is different to the practice of buying up stock on sale and reselling on marketplaces.

[namibj]

How's all dropshipping illegal? Why'd you have to own the item to sale-and-delivery contract it to your customer?

Note that if strict, this would ban made-to-order sales that aren't marked as such to the customer.

[MobileVet]

Btw, that was 1998. Bill was ahead of his time.