Top 7 Fulfillment Centers For Drop Shipping

Fulfillment centers can be a great option to consider for a couple reasons. First, they can be great places to store your products. And second, shipping your products for your drop shipping business can be easier. If you’re still trying to decide which products to retail for a great profit read our recent article on choosing profitable drop shipping products

Once you have chosen a profitable niche for your drop shipping business you’re ready to move forward. If you have not found the right drop shipping business to set up here is a free list of dropshipping suppliers to help you get started. The next step many dropship business owners take when wanting to expand is to consider a fulfillment center.

Why use a fulfillment center?

Well, sometimes as an e-commerce business owner building you’ll come across suppliers that do not offer a drop ship service. If you still want to work with that particular supplier, then you would need to purchase the products from that supplier in advance. This does cost money. From there you’ll need to consider stocking those products yourself and then shipping them out.

Storing, tracking and shipping the products yourself can be a hassle. And that might not be worth it for you to do. That’s where working with a fulfillment center service come into play.

Fulfillment centers will store, track inventory, and ship the products out to your customer for you after you retail them.

Using a fulfillment center is not a solution I recommend for newbies. The reason for that is because it can be time consuming and cost you a bit of capital upfront to work with these fulfillment centers.

Working with fulfillment centers is usually best for people who are willing to invest the funds necessary. From there you can have more control over your products as you work with your fulfillment center.

Two major benefits of using a fulfillment center:

1. You can gain more control over the inventory and shipping times of your products. You no longer are relying on your supplier to ship the products out, which can help you serve your customers better in terms of getting their products to them faster and communicating that to them more reliably.
2. Many times you can secure better pricing from your suppliers going the wholesale route because you are purchasing a product in bulk and storing/shipping it yourself through a fulfillment center.

To clarify, when you follow the standard drop shipping model, that will consist of the supplier storing and shipping the product out to your customer for you.

Alternatively, wen you follow the wholesale purchasing model, that is different. Instead, you must buy products in advance and make arrangements to have them delivered successfully to your customers.

It is, as I mentioned earlier, more involved, but it can come with perks such as control and better pricing deals.

What’s the cost for fulfillment centers?

The cost will differ with each fulfillment service, but the costs will usually include:

1. Storage Fees
2. Shipping Fees
3. Possible inventory/tracking fees sometimes

Here is the list of my top 7 fulfillment centers for drop shipping:

1. http://ifs360.com/
2. https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/benefits.htm
3. http://www.hellmann.net/en/united-states/products-services/ecommerce/
4. http://redstagfulfillment.com/ecommerce-fulfillment/
5. http://www.efulfillmentservice.com/
6. https://www.shipbob.com/Home/Integrations
7. http://www.warehousingandfulfillment.com/get-quotes/fulfillment-quotes/e-commerce-fulfillment/