Drop Ship or Not Drop Ship for the Links of London Wholesale

People always ask whether I offer drop shipping of my wholesale silver links of London jewelry. The simple answer is “NO!” But because there is so much interest in this topic I want to offer a bit of dialogue that I hope will be useful for those considering this sales-strategy.

As a participant in drop shipping, your role is basically to market a product whose authenticity and quality you cannot verify to a customer you do not know. And the bonus: you have no control over the order fulfillment process. How many things can go wrong here?! This approach to sales is clearly not in the links of London jewellery best interest of the consumer and therefore, I posit, cannot be one on which a sustainable business model is built.

Last year a customer of mine, to whom I sold wholesale links of London jewelry, decided to expand her eBay business with a drop shipper and quickly started grossing something like $50,000/ week for a couple of months! But she was now broke. What happened? It turns out the drop shipper was not as credible as she believed. Everything was great for a few weeks, then the calls started coming in. Customer after customer calling with complaints including: “I ordered 3 links of London necklaces and only got 1!”, “My phone is broken!”, “Where is my phone, its been 2 weeks since I paid!” And like a good e-commerce citizen she refunded (EVEN THOUGH most of the payment - she only got to keep $5 per phone - she had already sent to the drop shipper)all the distraught customers and had them return the links of London earrings to the drop shipper. Guess what happens next? The drop shipper stopped returning her calls. So she has no phones, not even broken ones, no money - in fact she lost money since she refunded money she did not have… all in all she was f—d !
So what are the other options? Take your time and start your business the right way. Identify a good wholesale jewelry supplier or suppliers for the links of London jewelry or other products you want to sell, get to know them, and quality-test their products before making any large investments.