drop-ship (or dropship)
verb

- to provide (goods) by direct delivery from the manufacturer to the retailer or customer

Oxford Languages

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WORD ORIGIN

The term “dropshipping” first appeared around 1927 but started to gain high popularity during the 1980s when this order fulfillment method rapidly expanded on the online sales market.

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DROPSHIPPING IN A NUTSHELL

Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the merchant never sees or handles the product.

In dropshipping, the retailer acts as a middleman between the customer and the supplier, passing the order to the supplier, who then ships the product directly to the customer. The retailer makes a profit on the difference between the wholesale price they pay the supplier and the retail price they charge the customer.

Dropshipping can be a useful model for businesses that are just starting out and want to minimize their inventory costs, or for established businesses that want to add additional products to their offerings without having to handle and store the physical products. However, it can also have some challenges, such as managing relationships with suppliers, dealing with shipping and delivery times, and maintaining accurate product information and stock levels.

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DROPSHIPPING STATS & SOURCES

- About 33% of online stores use dropshipping as a fulfillment model. (Fundera)

- Approximately 23% of all online sales are fulfilled through dropshipping. (Repricer)

- Ecommerce retailers opting for dropshipping could earn 50% more than those with an onsite inventory. (Shift4Shop)

- Dropshippers earn around 20-30% profit from each sale. (BlueCart)

- Electronics accounts for 30% of the North American dropshipping market. (MarketDataForecast)

- The dropshipping market is set to surpass $372.47 billion in 2025. (Oberlo)

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SYNONYMS

- for the act of selling or trading

auction, auctioning, back-and-forth, bandying, bargaining, barter(ing), big business, black market, bootlegging, business (relations), buying, buying and selling, buying of goods, capital and labour, commerce, commercial enterprise, commercialism, commercial transactions, consumerism, contracts, custom, deal, dealing(s), dicker, doings, DROPSHIPPING, economics, enterprise, exchange, exchanging, export, financial transactions, free enterprise, give-and-take, haggling, hawking, import, import and export, industrialism, market(ing), marketplace, merchandising, peddling, production and distribution, purchasing, quid pro quo, retail(ing), sale(s), shopping, swap(ping), swop, trade, trade-off, trade in, traffic(king), transacting, transaction(s), vending, wholesale, wholesaling

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“Did you know that DROPSHIPPING accounts for around 35% of Amazon's sales?”

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