Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a newfangled word that is not always understandable either to ordinary users or business representatives. Meanwhile, this is a rather interesting business model that can help you take your first steps in entrepreneurship or diversify your sources of profit. Let's figure out together what it is and what it is eaten with.

Let's assume that you have loved printed materials since childhood, love to hold them in your hands, smell the paint and look at freshly printed images. You understand printing technologies, you can prepare a layout taking into account all the requirements, suggest how to save money, what finish to choose and what material to prefer.

And besides the fact that you know how to sell printing services, you have thoughts about your target audience or understanding how to attract it, what advertising methods will be most effective.

The only thing missing is funds for your own equipment. Especially taking into account the fact that for high-quality services this very equipment must be a lot and different - pre-press, printing and after-press. And preferably, new and modern, with a high degree of automation.

Crediting, leasing and other options for buying on credit carry many risks, especially taking into account modern realities. And it’s quite difficult to predict demand and payback period in a market that is already oversaturated.

Thus, you have knowledge, potential buyers, but no production. Why not try to use someone else's?

Operation scheme

You create a website and/or social media accounts, promote services online, or distribute printed advertising materials in places where you are most likely to have an audience to reach. For example, some new large residential area, where the infrastructure is not very developed.

Online - through the same social networks or website - or in your own office, you accept orders and bring them to perfection, that is, create a layout , adjust the existing one to the typographic requirements (check the fonts, pictures, layers and everything that is required), specify the material, circulation, timing and delivery method.

Where exactly the layout will be printed does not matter to your customer. The priority is quality and the ability to receive your order quickly and easily, without extra effort.

Next, you transfer the order to the printing house with which you work on dropshipping terms. Its task is to print and deliver the circulation to your buyer's address.

Pitfalls

For an entrepreneur who has found his own customers and entrusted them to the printing house, there may be several unpleasant things. Firstly, the quality of the product must always be predictable and meet expectations, so that the same customers return and recommend the service to others. Secondly, there must be confidence that the client will not contact the printing house directly after the first order.

Solution paths

In order not to worry time after time about the final result in general and the customer in particular, you need to carefully approach the choice of a partner. High-quality printing is provided by a printing house with a large fleet of its equipment, which includes various technological solutions (offset, digital printing, die-cutting, varnishing, lamination and others).

It is also worth remembering that a large printing house is not interested in taking away your small one. client. It is much more productive and profitable to establish a relationship with you, as a customer who collects small orders and independently “finishes” them. Since it is precisely small orders that take a lot of resources from the printing house - managerial and design, but do not bring significant profit.

When placing an order, it is worth warning the printing house about your business model so that the packaged edition does not include “identifying marks” - business cards, brochures or other promotional products. And then your client will not guess anything.

So, dropshipping is a business model that is beneficial to all parties to the transaction. An entrepreneur working according to this scheme promotes services and gets clients. Customers receive quality services and a good consultant. The printing house receives an order ready for printing. Everyone wins. Why not try it?