Online company Q

fgh001

First of all I apologise if this in wrong section.

I'm interested too know if you have a online company, is it possible for say a 'middle man' to keep hold of your stock and despatch your products on your behalf? Meaning there would be no need for your own warehouse/ storage facility?
Do amazon do this already?

paddyrg

The phrase you're looking for is either 'fulfilment' (you hold inventory and have it delivered to third party warehouse who optionally take, pack and ship orders) or 'drop-shipping' (third party holds the inventory and do everything but taking the orders/money), very possible, but be aware that your brand/reputation is in somebody else's hands.

Aquamania

fgh001 wrote: »

First of all I apologise if this in wrong section.

I'm interested too know if you have a online company, is it possible for say a 'middle man' to keep hold of your stock and despatch your products on your behalf? Meaning there would be no need for your own warehouse/ storage facility?
Do amazon do this already?

Yes .

patman99

Amazon do do this, but be warned. They can take up to 6 weeks to add fresh stock or new lines into their systems. They will happily take your stock and your monthly fee, but as one retailer found out, they only deal with the updating of the stock when they have some spare time in between picking/packing their own lines.

InsideInsurance

There are fulfillment companies, as mentioned where you deal with it all but the company does the warehousing/ posting etc.

Slightly similarly there is drop shipping where your supplier sends the goods direct to the customer thus avoiding you needing to have stock. Can work well if most your goods come from one supplier but P&P will get expensive if you have a larger number of suppliers. Some go a step further and you basically white label their store and decide what % you want to add/ subtract.

patman99

The one advantage of drop-shipping is the saving in postage. I use AliExpress to drop-ship stuff I sell on Ebid and ebay. The P&P is usually free. The only thing is that it can take up to 15 days for the item to arrive so I have to note this within my listings.