Have you guys done well using Chinabuye dropship services?

It's as simple as just marking it up like any other supplier. While price is important it's not the only reason people will buy from you. If your site looks the part, the products look/is great, free shipping, fast shipping and product guarantees these are all things people care about.

Also, a lot of people simply cbf shopping around a lot and will buy at a price they are happy to pay. I used to work in electrical retail and some people would go back and forth between our competitors haggling for the best price and wasting heaps of time, others didn't care and just wanted to get the product an go.

Its the same with online. Chinabuye isn't dominating every online marketing channel on the internet with their low prices, you can easily resell at a higher price. A lot of people (you included) have reservations about buying from China, you want to know they are legit, the product is good etc. I suggest you buy from them yourself and see if the product is good/shipping times etc. If you put a <insert your country> storefront (eg. 'US owned company' with a pic of the national flag) on your website people trust that too.

While I have never resold from Chinabuye, the answer is yes you can do it because I am already doing it with other stores from China.

Thanks for that. But what I am trying to say is that these days Google automatically shows the potential customer a list of stores selling the product they are searching for, and, naturally, the inclination would be to check out the cheapest one. I suppose the only advantage would be that a customer may hesitate ordering from from China because of distance, slightly negative reputation of 'made in China' products, although I am sure lot of people probably now realize many everyday products they use are actually manufactured there anyway.

May I ask, without giving specifics, how long do your customers in New Zealand get your products dropshipped from China and what sort of profit margins we are talking about here?

Thanks

I see what your saying but it's not as clear cut as you think. Sure many people would buy from the cheaper place but that means looking through multiple online stores.

With one of my stores the supplier literally has an Adwords ad next to mine on one of the popular keywords and I still get sales at x2 markup. Shipping options vary depending on what you choose but its actually much faster than you think. Expedited shipping is around 3-6 business days from China warehouse to your front door (anywhere in the world). There are cheaper/longer shipping options.

PS. I'm in Australia not NZ

Current stores include Cubecart, Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce. All new sites I'm now using WooCommerce for new stores because its so damn easy, highly functional and very user friendly for customers. As you pointed out there are heaps of themes too so anyone can have a professional looking site for next to nothing if you know how to set it all up. I haven't used Jigoshop.

I have a data entry team who add products and they copy whatever specs including images from the supplier website.

Do you rely on search engines to bring all your traffic or do you use other methods like ppc as well?
Initially I use Adwords and shopping comparison sites. Both are PPC but convert very well. Once I know the site/product converts I'll invest in SEO on the best sellers that get good search volume which over time boosts sales. I see SEO as the icing on the cake - not necessary but it makes the deal much sweeter!

And, how do you inform your dropshipper when someone places an order with your order? I imagine this is done manually, not automated, right?
We have to place the order on the suppliers website. It's manual work but we automate this by hiring someone to do this as well as customer service (email and live chat).

I do have have small dropship store myself and email the dropshipper. But with my one I get around 20 orders a month so its easy to manage it.
Yep it really doesn't take much time. We have one guy doing order processing/customer service on many stores and we don't even hire him full time.

Hope that helps!

I think I will need to contact relatively big internet stores in the UK and see if they would offer reseller prices. The problem with buying from China is the delay in shipment. I think speed of delivery is one of the biggest factors people take into consideration when buying, and if I were to have it shipped from China to the UK it will take at least a few days. As a startup, who has to mark up prices based on dropshipper proices, the last thing I want to do is have items delayed.

I m going to order something from Chinabuy tomorrow and see how long it takes. I would like to try out one or two stores base on products from Chinabuye or some other Chinese store because of the lower costs, but for main niche stores I think I have to try to find UK suppliers so they can have it delivered within two days at most, even next day if ordered before a certain time of day (provided customers choose expedited delivery).

You say you use data entry freelancers to type in all the information. Do you source them from a developing country, and how much do you pay? How do you ensure your Payment gateways are not altered in anyway?

Sounds like a good plan. We have local suppliers too. The most important thing to start with is just do something!

You say you use data entry freelancers to type in all the information. Do you source them from a developing country, and how much do you pay?
With data entry we found the guy on Odesk. He's built a business around all the work we're throwing at him and I think the team is about 6 people now. They are very fast and very accurate (We can build full stores in under a day because of this.) They are based in Indonesia and work for pretty cheap...roughly ~$3-4 an hour I think. Their cost of living is so much lower compared to Australia it creates a win-win scenario.

How do you ensure your Payment gateways are not altered in anyway?
You can create a new user account with less privileges. In saying that we don't always bother because we've worked with them so much we've built a solid business relationship and trust them. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them? Also we're flying over to meet them in January which will be awesome.

I am definitely taking action. I have sent around 20 stores emails today asking whether they would offer dropship services? I think I will send another 80 stores or so to take it to 100. I will then wait on some of their replies.

As a wholesaler myself I think you are approaching this the right way. We don't really advertise our dropshipping as much as we could but very few whole sellers these days would turn a blind eye to an interesting new market they are not well represented in. What is your target product range if you don't mind me asking?

I did not send 100 emails, more like 20. I want to be selective and send them out to places where I think there is some chance they could offer dropshipping rather than send them out here, there and everywhere. Out of the ones I sent, a few of them have come back. One of them said they do indeed offer dropshipping.

Now I need to set the store up. They told me to email another department to get a list of products.

I think I am going to go with your suggested Woocommerce. Can I ask whether I would be able to use the same them for several stores and then make minor alterations so they don't look the same. The themes are quite expensive at $70 so want to avoid having a theme for store. They won't be connected stores anyway, so even if they look the same it shouldn't be a big deal. Would you suggest I have a blog on the same domain so I can review new products that are to do related product line that I will be selling. I am thinking this will allow me to rank for more long tail words for domain as a whole.

I will hire a data entry person on Elance who will upload the images and do the initial product descriptions for all the items I want to list. And then later when I want to add further products I could do that myself as it will likely to be very few at a time.

On a different note, how do find information on wholesalers? They are more likely to do dropshipping than stores.

Great work sounds like you've got the ball rolling!

Can I ask whether I would be able to use the same them for sevral stores and then make minor alterations so they don't look the same. The themes are quite expensive at $70 so want to avoid having a theme for store.
Of course man. Leverage whatever resources you can and get some money in the bank. Once you have more resources to throw at development you can experiment with more themes etc. What theme are you looking at? I've bought a few so I can give you a copy. (This is legal it's just not a supported license.)

I will hire a data entry person on Elance who will upload the images and do the initial product descriptions for all the items I want to list.
Great. Make sure you give very specific and literal instructions. Many people in other countries have experience working for big companies that discourage discretion and encourage 'follow the f'ing instructions'.

On a different note, how do find information on wholesalers? They are more likely to do dropshipping than stores.
Just lots of researching basically. There is no magic bullet here it just takes time. This is my businesses bottleneck.

I'm using Chinabuye for one of my ecommerce stores. I like the looks of their products and depending on which shipping option you choose, you can get the products shipped pretty fast. As a shopper, I'll always choose a local based shop over a China shop, so that's always an advantage I think over your customers choosing ChinaBuye instead of your shop.