Dropship offer in UK - Sell your products

[jimmisavage]

Good morning all,

I posted on here a little while ago about using my website to sell your leather items. After some interest I would like to give some more details so everyone know's what i'm looking for here.

 

I am looking for some people in the UK who want to sell their handmade leather items through my new website. It's quite simple so i'll give you some details on how it would work.

1. You send me images, description and price of your product.

2. I add the product to my website - you do some marketing (optional but recommended).

3. Someone buys your product through my website.

4. I send you the shipping details, invoice to send with the order and the money (PayPal or Bank transfer) minus my 10% fee which you can add the your usual product price if you want. Feel free to include your own marketing information in the package.

5. Everyone smiles and drinks a cold beer.

 

My website is developing into a gentleman's store and I have a lot of products to add and a few other lines of enquiries to pursue but feel free to take a look at what I have so far: http://leathered.co.uk/index.php

 

If you have any questions or would like to get involved then please feel free to message me.

 

Best wishes

Stuart

[ConradPark]

Just wondering a few things, while I do think the basic idea you've got is fine, I would like to know a bit more in detail what it is that  justify your 10% fee? For example, with a site like Etsy and other marketplaces, you get quite a lot of foot traffic and help for only a 3.5% fee. Also, what guarantees do you offer against cancelled orders, refunds and other problems? Do you do any marketing? If so, where? Not On The High Street (UK only) have one of the highest fees of 20%, but they do TV advertising and while they are quite picky about whom they accept, you're basically guaranteed to have a strong start from the beginning thanks to all the effort they do to their sellers. And now Amazon has their handmade section that exposes you to millions of potential customers. There are also so many web hosting sites that offer free or low cost hosting where you can build your own site AND get help with CEO to get google exposure to your own website, Big Cartel is one example of this.

Of the little you have explained so far, I have a hard time to see what it is that you offer, that would make anyone to get involved and justify a 10 % fee? Maybe if you offered a couple of months free trial or something? Anyway, don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to criticize you - I am actually a bit intrigued, but I feel there are a few missing issues that I hope you will answer publicly. After all, this is a good way for you to maybe gather some more serious interest, depending on how you answer.

Edited April 2, 2016 by ConradPark

[Grittyrustic]

We are actually interested in finding leather shops around the world to sell our products. I think this idea might work out ok if the fee wasn't so high. We currently just stopped selling on ebay because of fees like the 10% fee offered here. However, we do have a seller who we dropship our products for but the method of doing it is slightly different than the one proposed here. In the sense that, this other retailer would copy images and product descriptions from our website and add it to his own website at higher price than ours, and then of course when he makes a sale he just sends the address to us within his payment and then we ship to his customer. In this way, there are no fees but a mutual benefit. This retailer actually makes a decent profit without having to do much at all. So asking for a fee in this kind of situation basically means you have a well established website/selling platform with tons of traffic and many potential buyers, kind of like Ebay and Amazon selling platforms. Here is a blog I wrote on dropshipping and what it actually is. Your proposed idea is not actually dropshipping.

[Thor]

I'm not living in the UK so I'm not even part of your target group, but I like the idea that you want to encourage the UK local market. The idea isn't new to me and it sounds a lot like this one http://www.custommade.com/. Only US businesses may enroll, but just like you they're taking a 10% commission fee http://www.custommade.com/maker-signup/.

I like your website's appearance. Obviously it isn't finished yet and you're still working on the site. It must be brand new as the only incoming link is from this site.

Now if you're taking 10% that's a fare bit of an item that might sell for 300 GBP. One should be expecting that you will be spending a huge amount into direct advertisement and that you will be dealing with customer relations etc. At this point and time your website as well as your post doesn't provide any accountable information upon which one could build a business relationship. Your idea, like your website are in a building and finding process. You might want to finish at least on of them first.

All the best for this,

Thor