What I learned from starting a drop shipping store.

Not sure why but the entrepreneur in me has always wanted to start a drop shipping store. So I opened a store up using Shopify, uploaded my product, ran an add on Instagram and waited. 3 sales came in my first day. A few the next..and by then end of the month I had 87 sales. You must be thinking, wow this is awesome! Well, I guess the order volume is, but I'm drop shipping from Ali so that part not so much.

The seller that I'm drop-shipping all my products from offers e-packet ( which is a shipping method that you want if you’re doing drop shipping).Great! So all my orders were placed and e-packet was selected (mind you I had to pay $2 extra for this). Now, the flood of emails come in. "Where is my order?”…”What’s taking so long”.. So I go into Ali and check all the tracking numbers to see whether or not my customers are receiving their packages. Low and Behold NONE of my packages were sent using "e-packet”. I immediately contact the seller and the response I get it “Sorry we cannot send you product via e-packet”. Then why is is offered upon purchasing the product?! Shipping time was now increased to a max of 45 days. (Ridiculous) I’m about as frustrated as my customers who have ordered their product and not received it after waiting on month.

I start replying to the emails and eventually have to make a template, because they’re all emailing about the same problem. Most customers are understanding, some are not. Some take to Instagram and comment every single post on your profile bashing your company. For those specific customers, I went on Amazon, bought my product, bit the bullet and ate the shipping cost, and sent it to them USPS Express. Not sure if they’re happy or not but I might be able to enable my comments again :)

I decided to write this up because I had to authorize my first refund and have learned a valuable lesson in the process. My key takeaway from this is simple. Dropshipping is not for me.

I have since placed an order for actual inventory and the shipping time for my product should be decreased from 30 days to 3 days ( If I survive).

TLDR : Buy your test product before you start shipping to customers and absolutely make sure that the seller can actually use e-packet to ship your product(s).