You don’t want to sell the same old boring things that a million other companies already sell. You want fun, exciting ecommerce niches to occupy your mind. That will lead you to greater enjoyment and profits building your dropship business. It’s critical to choose a winning niche with unique products in a market with plenty of growth potential. And thankfully there are many ecommerce niches that match that criteria.
While no one has a crystal ball to see a guaranteed future, we can make predictions based on the current market trends, and how customers are behaving. Looking across those metrics, we’ve identified six different plays that might be right for your growth.
1- CBD Products eCommerce Niche
There’s a lot of talk about CBD products right now and business is growing. New advances in products and laws have made more people get involved and have eased some concerns about operating legally. The total cannabidiol market is to deliver $22 billion in sales by 2022, providing plenty of room for new customers and companies. North America is the leading region for growth and purchasing.
Part of the reason for this explosion is the growth of products using CBD oil to treat pain, anxiety, acne, headaches, and even some companies recommending them for secondary symptoms related to cancer. You’ve got plenty of opportunities but need to be careful in this space.
Your challenge is shipping CBD safely. You do have protections for your products under the law, but only where CBD is legal. You are responsible for knowing where that is the case and protecting your business. You’ll also want to check that you can use the carrier in your area. If, for example, you also sell marijuana products from your store, UPS will not accept shipments of CBD or hemp products from you.
2- Personal Health and Wellness Dropship Niche
During some of the more tense days of the covid-19 pandemic, people were buying fitness supplies, gardening products & survival gear at rates so fast that companies couldn’t keep up. That’s always a great sign for your target market. What we’ve seen is an increased demand in all types of locations, family styles, homes, and more. It seems every style and need has at least one survival brand designed for it right now, but that can be hard for customers to figure out themselves.
The coronavirus is going to create some scars. People will naturally be afraid of it later this year and into next, and they’ll want to be prepared. This means having a plan to minimize contact and keep their loved ones safe. Shelf-stable food, plantable crops, harvesting gear, knives, water storage, and more all will play a role.
At the same time, you have opportunities to target these buyers with related products and messaging. If you go the cleaning or medical supply route, consider focusing on this group to become your bulk buyers.
3- Natural Skin and Baby Care Niche
Natural skincare and baby products are a booming industry and they’re perfect in e-commerce for a couple of reasons. First, you can create packages and platforms designed specifically for diverse needs. With a website, you can group all of your products based on things like the scent, color, or skin type. Building out guides for oily skin and linking to internal products at every step is an effective way to drive traffic, boost SEO, and land a few sales.
There’s a current push for natural and safe ingredients in all health and care categories. What’s great is that you even have an overlap. For instance, the market itself defines some products along with skin type whether they’re for mom or baby. Plus, you’ve got many overlapping categories in lotions, powders, shampoos, oils, and more.
Many leading companies in this space allow for resellers and make it easy to join their product efforts, so you won’t need to build out your own product line if you don’t want to.
Also, skin and baby care were deemed essential products by Amazon during the coronavirus pandemic. That meant Amazon didn’t pause any of these shipments to its warehouses or end customers as it was trying to manage demand. It’s a nice bit of reassurance for any business that the largest marketplace is going to prioritize your products. You always want to know the status and risks of fulfillment operations.
4- Pet Food and Supplies Niche
Pet food represents a fantastic opportunity that also sheds some light on larger spending purchases and potentials for your store. While the product itself isn’t an ecommerce niche, your service and capabilities can be. You may specialize in a type of pet or supplies, build recommendations around different goods, or target a specific market within the pet community.
For example, if you’re aiming at social media sales, you might look at selling lighting and camera equipment designed to get the best shot of a pup without causing them distress. Some animals are sensitive to strobe lights, so you might be able to make specific recommendations that help people protect their pets at the same time as having fun.
Another option might be to develop your own services and kits, where you bundle specific items and send them regularly to people. Pet food spending was up 159% in e-commerce channels during the early COVID-19 months.
Companies who were able to lock in someone willing to spend a certain amount and get food or supplies auto shipped at specific intervals gained valuable customers. Here, the biggest burden is to get people to sign up — and then their likelihood of cancelling is low as long as you’re not prohibitively expensive or providing bad service.
5- ecommerce Niches with Goods that Bring People Together
In many places, we’ve seen people start going out and gathering as soon as quarantines and stay-at-home orders were lifted. They sought out their friends and family at restaurants, bars, and movie theaters while also looking for personal care and related services.
There will likely be a cultural push to get things to feel like they’re “back to normal” across the U.S., especially as Summer progresses. It’ll likely to coincide with some shopping shifts. Things that took a dive during the pandemic — camping equipment, coolers, party supplies, and more — could return as people want to get back to that old feeling.
Some of the products taking the biggest hit involved traveling and gathering. There’s potential for large pent up demand for these companies, and there also might be fewer people able to meet that demand.
The opportunity for new e-commerce companies is that many previous shops and stores likely stopped carrying these goods during the pandemic. You can look for dropship niches where sales were down and see if it makes sense branching into these product areas as new opportunities. So as snorkeling dropped 56% in sales, but you know your audience likes the idea of going to the beach, consider expanding your influence and tackling the family set of these goods.
6- The Direct-to-Home Shift
The last dropship ecommerce niche to consider is one where people still need to go into a store to buy what they want. Your opportunity is in removing a variety of middlemen and ensuring people are happy and get products right to their door. We think this trend will continue to be dominated by this direct-to-consumer approach that’s been growing for years.
What you can do now is target both consumer and business opportunities. Quill, for example, has become a popular supplier of office supplies and during the pandemic, they made it easy to shift orders to homes, as well as keeping businesses running.
Your mission is to find an ecommerce niche that works in the office and can benefit from direct sales, and then also see if it has potential for remote workers. Right now, that might means everything from printers and pens to chairs and desks. There’s potential for high-end cameras as well as green screens.
Professional-quality furniture or picture frames are in demand as people try to create the perfect Zoom background.
This is just one of the many niches available, but it helps to highlight the trends were seeing. Everything has changed, and that means plenty of opportunities abound.
If you would like some personal guidance choosing your winning, profitable ecommerce niche, reach out to us here to speak with us free for 30-minutes.
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