Latest news with #dropshipping
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
AliExpress Business Introduces Enhanced Supply Chain Suite to Support Creator Commerce
LONDON, June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- AliExpress Business, a dedicated business unit within AliExpress that serves buyers and sellers worldwide, today unveiled its upgraded Supply Chain Suite—an integrated toolkit designed to help SMEs, dropshippers, content creators, and group buying organizers to bring products to market more quickly, cost-effectively, and with minimal operational burden. The Suite provides end-to-end support for sourcing, content creation, and distribution. With features such as per-piece wholesale pricing, no minimum order quantity (MOQ) requirements, and rapid production turnaround, businesses can bring new products to market in days rather than months. The enhanced Suite features four core capabilities specifically designed for today's distributed commerce landscape: AI Trend Analyst: Leverages AliExpress's global consumer insights to help merchants identify high-potential, high-margin product trends in real time. AI-Powered Visual Studio: Produces ready-to-market visuals tailored to different consumer segments under 60 seconds. In fashion, for instance, it enables automatic skin-tone adaptation, multilingual localization, image-to-video conversion, and AI-generated style variations to maximize resonance with target consumers. Creator & Buyer Network Integration: Connects sellers with a curated network of online influencers and group buying organizers to co-launch product campaigns and expand reach through peer-driven communities. "One-Shop" Web Interface: Simplifies the sharing of curated product selections via social platforms, such as WhatsApp and Facebook, helping group buying organizers promote products directly to their networks. "Today's commerce landscape values speed, flexibility, and community connection," said a spokesperson from AliExpress Business. "Whether you're sourcing the latest trending items, producing made-to-order goods, running your own shop, or leading group purchases, our Suite gives you enterprise-grade capabilities—without bulk commitments or long lead times." With the increasing accessibility of e-commerce technologies, micro-entrepreneurs are now equipped with digital tools to transform their operations. This enables them to collaboratively enhance the broader retail ecosystem alongside established retailers. By catering to a diverse range of business profiles—from creators monetizing their audiences to SMEs expanding their offerings—AliExpress Business bridges the gap between product innovation and mass market reach. Eligible participants—including creators, SMEs, and group buying organizers—can enjoy: Easy store setup with no entry barrier, and per-unit wholesale pricing—no MOQ required Opportunities to join official marketing campaigns hosted by AliExpress Business Free credits for AI-generated content and visuals To explore collaboration opportunities, please reach out to our team at AliExpressBusiness@ About AliExpress Business AliExpress Business is a dedicated business unit within AliExpress that supports millions of global wholesale transactions through AI-powered product sourcing, agile manufacturing solutions, and flexible logistics options. About AliExpress Launched in 2010, AliExpress is a global e-commerce platform dedicated to creating a better shopping experience for hundreds of millions of consumers in more than 200 jurisdictions. In addition to the English version, the AliExpress platform is available in 15 other languages. AliExpress is part of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE AliExpress Sign in to access your portfolio
Zawya
21-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
How to drop-kick dropshipping risks and build a sustainable business?
By Grant Lapping, Digital Executive at midnight, the innovation agency of iqbusiness Over the past few years, the barriers to entry in ecommerce have crumbled, enabling nearly anyone to set up an online shopping presence within a matter of hours. You can easily set up a fully functional website with a product catalogue, secure billing and logistics for a relatively small investment in time and money. This has set the stage for explosive growth in 'dropshipping', a business model where an online retailer sells goods on to end-customers via third-party suppliers. The third-party distributor or manufacturer ships goods directly to the consumer. This eliminates the need for inventory management, storage costs, and upfront stock investment. Dropshipping is a booming market, which was valued at $366.76 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $3.47 trillion by 2033 at a compound annual growth rate of 28.4%. It's not easy to get a piece of the pie, but there are many entrepreneurs who have turned dropshipping into a lucrative business. A dropshipping business operates by maintaining control over the front-end ecommerce platform—usually a Shopify website or an Amazon storefront—while outsourcing order fulfilment to third-party suppliers. While this model offers a streamlined entry into online retail, it carries risks that warrant careful consideration. Entrepreneurs generate revenue by directing traffic to their site via SEO strategies, social media marketing, and paid advertising. The dream, for many people, is to develop their dropshipping business into a side hustle that generates passive income and requires little ongoing effort besides optimising their marketing. The pitfalls of a low-barrier market However, the ease of entry into dropshipping creates intense competition and attracts many fly-by-night operators. Arguably, the biggest challenge you will face if you set up a dropshipping business is establishing your credibility. Many consumers will hesitate to buy from unfamiliar sites, an obstacle that can be hard to overcome. Why should a consumer give you their card details, when they know and trust established marketplaces such as Takealot, Amazon, or Temu which offer similar products with a trusted brand name? Here, it's a matter of playing a longer game of earning positive reviews and building a good reputation. Product differentiation is another hurdle. Since dropshipping relies on third-party suppliers, you may struggle to offer unique products that stand out in the marketplace. It's easy to get caught up in price wars with competitors offering identical items, eroding your margins. Platform fees can also eat at profitability. Furthermore, your reliance on third-parties for fulfilment means you have no way of controlling the quality of the product that you sell and limited control over the fulfillment process. The result could be unhappy customers or financial losses due to product returns. Building a successful dropshipping business Dropshipping can be a rewarding venture, but it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Like any other business, it takes patience, long-term commitment, and perhaps a bit of luck to succeed. Here are some of the best practices to consider for successful dropshipping ventures: Find reliable suppliers – It's essential to use suppliers that have solid reputations for quality products and efficient fulfillment. Poor service or low quality products can damage customer trust and lead to negative reviews. Try to sample products that you want to sell to make sure they are safe, functional and meet the supplier description. Identify a niche market – Successful dropshipping businesses focus on a niche where they face less competition and can establish brand authority. Consider combining your expertise or interests with your dropshipping business—for example, if you're a dog lover or fitness fundi, you'll understand customers who share your passions. Consider acquiring an existing brand – Instead of starting from scratch, you can acquire an established dropshipping store with positive customer reviews to get a head start. Platforms like Flippa, Empire Flippers and EcomSwap facilitate these acquisitions, though due diligence is required to ensure authenticity. Invest in brand building – Effective marketing through SEO and content-driven campaigns on platforms like YouTube and TikTok can help create brand recognition and drive conversions. Set aside some budget for advertising and monitor your costs for customer acquisition. Weigh Amazon vs. Shopify – Selling through Amazon grants access to an existing customer base but comes with strict regulations and a 15% commission on sales. Platforms like Shopify provides full control over branding and customer data but requires independent marketing efforts. Many dropshippers use both platforms to maximise reach. Final thoughts Dropshipping can be a viable business model, but it requires careful planning, strategic differentiation, and long-term brand development. Entrepreneurs who chase quick profits without building customer trust and a unique product offering are unlikely to succeed. However, those who focus on customer experience, branding and marketing can capitalise on a fast-growing market Article by Grant Lapping – Digital Executive at midnight, the innovation agency of iqbusiness, Africa's future-focused management and digital growth enabler.
Daily Mail
06-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
How to spot a dropshipping scam on your Instagram feed: All the clues that 'rip off' middle men could be about to trick you into buying goods they don't even own
Have you been scrolling through Instagram and come across a clothing deal that looks too good to be true? Perhaps a trendy-looking brand is shutting down after 25 years in business, or they have over-ordered on polo shirts and are having a fire sale. More often than not, you've never heard of the brand - but what does that matter if you're getting a good deal? It matters because you're turning your cash over to scammers who milk innocent shoppers by selling cheap Chinese-made goods at an inflated price. These scams - known as 'dropshipping' operations - see tricksters buy up extremely cheap goods before trying to sell them online with a wildly unfair markup attached. Often, they don't even own the goods - instead ordering them to you directly via wholesalers and taking their cut as a middleman. While not illegal, these operations are intended to be a quick and easy means of making money, and are easy for scammers to set up. Platforms such as Shopify, an online shopping platform, can drum up a legitimate-looking website in minutes. Con artists will drum up convincing-sounding descriptions for their items and even generate images using artificial intelligence (AI) to legitimise the scam. They then embark on an aggressive advertising campaign on social media, buying up ads on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to entrap as many buyers as possible in a short space of time. If they're lucky, they make off with a handful of cash - while buyers ensnared by what looked like a legitimate shopping operation are left with goods of questionable quality, for which they've paid through the nose. So how can you spot an Instagram scam and avoid falling victim to the dropshippers? It's easier than you think - and you don't need to be a techie to catch them out. Is this a legitimate brand? Social media makes it easier than ever for scammers to create legitimate-looking brands - but there are ways of spotting whether someone is having you on. For one, dropshippers make and scrap brands regularly, hoping to catch shoppers off-guard. That means you can often spot a dropshipping scam by checking how recently its website was registered by performing what is known as a 'WHOIS lookup' - an easy way of spotting scams, particularly those framed as businesses closing down. A WHOIS lookup involves looking up when a website was registered, and is done by entering a web address into a lookup tool such as ICANN Lookup. If the website was registered fairly recently, that's a red flag. UK based enterprises will also likely register as a company with Companies House. If you can't find any mention of the firm on Companies House, or any suggestion the firm is based in the UK, be wary. Social media can also be a great help. Scammers regularly reuse Instagram and Facebook pages, recycling them by changing the names and profile pictures. You can check the profile of an Instagram advertiser by hitting the '...' button at the top right of a post and choosing 'About this advertiser'. Similarly, if you click on the name of an advertiser on Facebook, you can view information about when a page was registered, if its name was changed and where its administrators are based. This is called Page Transparency, and is located in the About section of every Facebook Page. In one case, we found a page purporting to be a London-based fashion brand closing down after more than 20 years. In reality, the page was created in 2022, and only changed its name to that of the fashion brand in March this year - while its admins are based in the US and Vietnam. And Facebook's Ad Library - a publicly viewable record of adverts run by a Facebook page - showed it had been running adverts since March, and not once prior. If you spot any red flags like these, run for the hills and save your cash. You can look up when a website was registered to find out how long it has been going. If it has only been a short time, it's likely to be a dropshipping operation Facebook's Page Transparency feature requires pages to declare where their administrators are based. This 'London based' fashion brand was under another name until two months ago - and is run by people based in the US and Vietnam Can you find the goods elsewhere? The most aggravating element of dropshipping is that the goods being sold are readily available across the internet for much less. Fortunately, it's easy to find out if you're being hustled. If you are using Google Chrome on desktop or on mobile, you can use the built-in Google Lens feature to select an image and look for similar results elsewhere. On desktop, you can right click the photo and select 'Search with Google Lens' - on mobile, it's in the address bar, represented as a camera icon. After you have selected the item, Google Lens will then search for identical images of goods sold elsewhere. Within seconds, you'll likely spot the same clothing for sale elsewhere, usually for much less. If you don't use Google, or would prefer not to, you can also look up images using another reverse image search engine such as TinEye. Save a picture of the clothing in question to your phone or desktop, and upload it to the site - if there are identical matches, the item is probably being dropshipped. How long does it take to ship? Dropshipping operations see scammers put in orders with wholesalers in Asia directly after taking an order from a victim. This means that the goods must then be shipped from countries such as China, which will take days to reach the buyer. Take a look at the shipping policy of the website you are on. If it isn't offering delivery in the space of a few days, it's likely to be a dropshipping operation. Have the goods been inexplicably discounted? Dropshippers catch out unwitting victims with the non-existent threat of missing out on a good deal. They will either say the business is closing down, or has over-ordered on stock, or is having a fire sale. As a result goods will almost always be listed at an extraordinarily high price suggesting quality, marked down to convince buyers they'd be absolutely stupid not to buy while they can. There may even be multi-buy discounts, taking a percentage off the total for buying in bulk. But even these 'discounts' are hugely inflated compared to the price the dropshippers will have paid for the cheap goods in the first place. On one website, we found an 'elegant spring coat' for sale for £49.95, marked down from £144.95. But using the Google Lens trick, we found the same jacket for sale on Amazon for £35. Similarly, a £100 waterproof jacket, reduced to £30, was on sale from Amazon for just £7. As per, the old adage applies: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Tools such as GPTZero can tell you, with a relatively high degree of confidence, whether text has been written by a person or generated with AI A MailOnline reporter even tested out an earlier version of this article to ensure it could recognise human-written text. Thankfully, it passed the test Is AI involved? Artificial intelligence products such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot are ubiquitous in their usage across dropshipping operations - but that makes it easier for you to catch out scammers. Since dropshipping is a minimum-effort, maximum-payout scam, those trying it on will likely use AI to generate descriptions of the items for sale to save them time. But you can copy and paste this text into an AI detector such as GPTZero, which will give a percentage likelihood that text was generated by artificial intelligence. We fed the description of a quarter-zip jumper into the tool and it told us the text was highly likely to be AI generated. For reassurance, we also fed this article into the same tool, and it told us that it appeared to be written by a human - to the relief of our reporter. Beware images too. There's a danger that they have been made with AI in order to make a dropshipping enterprise look legitimate. In one case, a website was topped with a photograph of a fashionable older couple holding hands outside what appeared to be their shop with a 'closing' sign in the window. But closer inspection of the image reveals some telltale clues that none of what is on show is real. The couple weren't reflected in the window of the store - and one of the reflections in the closing-down sign appeared to continue the fabric of the tan jacket that hung behind it in the window. A view of the full-size image also revealed some disturbing details - such as their clasped hands melding into a bizarre horror movie-esque disaster, and the woman's eyes travelling in different directions. Her necklace also appeared to disappear into her t-shirt, while the lining of her jacket similarly faded into the outer layer. Like text, you can check if images are AI generated by uploading a screenshot of the image from your phone or desktop to a service such as WasItAI, which can give an accurate reflection of whether a picture is real. Can you contact the seller? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, goes the expression - and when it comes to spotting dropshippers, it's a good rule to follow. Legitimate online enterprises operating under UK regulations are required to provide certain contact information, such as contact details and an address. If you are struggling to find these details on the website of a clothing retailer it's highly likely the brand is operating outside the UK - and probably doesn't want to give you an address. Have a look at the terms and conditions too. In one case, we found a dead giveaway of a dropshipping operation tucked away in the return policy of a website claiming to be a London-based fashion house. In all capital letters, it noted: 'All returns will be sent to our central warehouse in Asia at the buyer's expense' - suggesting the items were never in London in the first place. What are other people saying? Beware the reviews on any dropshipping website: if there are a handful of five-star testimonies with bland praise (e.g. 'so many different styles!') then run away. Instead, take a look at what people are saying on social media in the comments of the adverts. People are wising up to dropshipping operations and getting better at spotting them - pointing them out to fellow social media users. One example of advertising we found was littered with warnings that the website was likely to be a scam. Trust the wisdom of the crowds - and don't be taken in by slick Instagram ads. Go with your gut If all else fails, resist the temptation of put in an order until you've asked yourself whether you're falling victim to a dropshipping scam. If something feels off, walk away. There will be another discount another day. MailOnline has previously pulled back the veil on how dropshippers operate, buying up cheap goods from wholesale outlets such as AliExpress and disguising them as premium quality goods. We revealed how everything from clothing to electricals like Bluetooth speakers and even baby bath mats are ripe for the picking. These are then aggressively advertised on Facebook and Instagram, or hawked via influencers on TikTok who are paid fees or commission to promote them. But these goods can be dangerous, not approved for the UK market, and sold by scammers operating outside of the UK who fail to respect consumer law. Dr Gillian Brooks, associate professor in strategic marketing at King's College London, previously said that dropshippers try to build up 'trust' with would-be targets in order to make them think they're getting a great deal. 'They think they're buying from their friend or someone who they trust,' she said. 'Or they think they're buying from what could be perceived as a "mom and pop shop" where, in fact, it's all a facade. That's not who you're buying from.'
