Growing sellers know that in order to scale their business, they need to sell more products on more channels, both as means to reach a wider audience and to maximize their digital footprint. Drop shipping is a great way to offload fulfillment while expanding product assortment.

New sellers often turn to drop shipping as their entry point to ecommerce, while high volume merchants use drop ship vendors as alternative fulfillment options to supply consumer demand. Drop shipping enables merchants to diversify product lines, experiment with new brands and verticals - without the financial risk of carrying untried inventory.

Despite these benefits, however, there are hidden costs and challenges when you drop ship without using proper automation software.

Challenges in Scaling Your Drop Ship Business

The more SKUs you manage, and the more channels you sell on, the harder it is to handle pricing. Each drop ship vendor will have their own fees and different lead times. You will have to adjust pricing on every marketplace you list on, depending on the competition, changes in vendor pricing, and stock availability.

Managing prices on the frontend and backend can get rather tedious, not to mention opening yourself up to human error. You’ll need an intelligent drop shipping software that can automate repricing based on vendor fees and competition.

Inventory transparency is a bigger challenge, since you don’t hold the physical inventory. Without an accurate picture of your vendors’ stock, you can easily oversell if your suppliers run out of inventory without updating you in time. As it was put in the article by Bigcommerce, even the slightest transgression can cost you a customer.

Refunds, cancellations, returns and replacements must also be handled swiftly and efficiently. Disappointed customers will blame you, not the drop shipper, for any delays and issues with their orders. This is why order management automation is key to winning customer loyalty.

How Drop Shipping Software Can Scale Your Business

Automation software, particularly a multi-channel listing and order management solution, not only helps you win on customer experience, but it also enables you to increase savings by reducing costs related to mis-ships, unnecessary labor and other inefficiencies.

Here are some ways a robust drop shipping software like Jazva can help streamline and optimize your drop ship operations:

Automatically Route Orders to the Best Drop Ship Vendor

In Jazva, you can set each product to have multiple drop ship vendors. When a drop ship order comes in, Jazva selects the vendor with the cheapest cost to drop ship the order from, provided that the vendor has enough stock to fulfill the order. This way, you won’t have to guess or calculate which vendor use.

Drop Ship Kits and Bundles to Boost Sales

Discounted kits, multi-pack bundles and gift bundles offer great value to consumers. Jazva gives you the flexibility to build kits from your drop shippers’ components, so you can expand product offerings and increase conversions.

Multiple Ways to Manage Drop Ship Orders and Inventory

Jazva is a robust multi-warehouse and multi-vendor inventory management system, providing a centralized platform to manage orders and inventory. Aside from regular email reports, you can establish data feeds with your suppliers. Drop ship orders can be handled through electronic data interchange (EDI), and drop ship inventory can be managed through FTP.

This ensures you have full visibility of stock levels, while improving fulfillment speed and reducing delays and stockouts.

Ready to Scale Your Business?

Jazva gives you the confidence and capacity to succeed in ecommerce. Increase sales volume, diversify product lines, try to new verticals, manage listings efficiently, and never run out of stock! Let Jazva do the heavy lifting, so you can focus on the growth of your business.

See how Jazva can simplify your entire multi-channel operations