Hello, dear friend, I will recommend a powerful tool named ShopMaster which can monitor amazon source product price and update your product price in your store. This feature is also apply for Aliexpress & eBay source products. Hope that helps you. :o)

Hi,

You can refer to Dropshipmate shopify app which has a feature to set Daily Auto Update/Sync. It can help you sync your shopify prices according to the amazon prices. You can also see 18+ websites listed in this app including Aliexpress, Walmart, Amazon, Ebay, Dhgate etc., This app also helps in importing Product Reviews too.

All the Best...

Does anyone have any leads for wholesale or dropshipping suppliers in the U.S. for coffee products? Things I am looking for are mugs, cups, grinder, apparel, accessories, coffee blends, beans, unique stuff within the industry and possibly coffee makers depending on what kind.

Just trying to source my products within the U.S. for my store. Y'all can check it out if you want to get a feel for what I'm going for.

http://www.roastedemporium.com

Hi there,

My name is Michael and I started an e-commerce business (TeaParky.com) in April 2017 that sells loose leaf tea and Matcha with a portion of sales being donated to fight against Parkinson’s Disease. I just wanted to document my journey so far in hopes that others are able to learn from it or provide advise!

Why I Started The Company?

When I was the age of 10-11, my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, and has had the disease for a bit over 15 years. It’s been largely a struggle having grown up with a parent and watching my dad slowly lose his ability to move and talk, but at the same time it’s helped me develop empathy and a perspective on life that I would otherwise not have. As a result, I’ve been looking for ways to turn this unfortunate break into the biggest blessing of my life. Having a strong interest in business, I decided that starting a business to raise funds/awareness for the disease with the way I was going to do it.

While I was looking into different ways I could start a business with very little capital and not much risk, I came across an article called 72 hour dropshipping business, in which a Shopify team was given the challenge of creating a dropshipping e-commerce store in 72 hours and turning a profit. If you have yet to read the article and are interested in dropshipping, I highly recommend Googling it as it provides specific step by step instructions on how they did it. The product they chose was Matcha, a product I was highly unfamiliar with and had never tried before. After reading the article, I was convinced that an e-commerce dropshipping was how I was going to do this. I also decided I needed to try Matcha, and although I didn’t like it too much myself, I figured the blue print was there and the health benefits were fantastic and that I could market it as an alternative to coffee. As a result, I decided to launch my business to sell Matcha! (More on this later on, as you’ll notice if you go to my site TeaParky.com, Matcha isn’t front and center anymore)

The name Tea Parky was very easy to create. I wanted the flexibility to expand into other products in the tea space other than Matcha, and I wanted Parkinson’s to have some type of influence on the name. “Parky” allowed for that as it isn’t blatently obvious that there’s a connection to Parkinson’s Disease and can be associated with parks and trees and nature, which is a great image when thinking about tea. I originally wanted to name it Parky Tea, but the domain name ParkyTea.com was unavailable, so I had to reverse the name.

The Process of Finding a Supplier, Creating a Logo, Website, Etc

After deciding I was going to start an e-commerce dropshipping business that sells Matcha, the next step was trying to find a dropship supplier who would do private labelling as well so that I could put my logo on the product. I decided the easiest way to do this was to go through Google and type in “Matcha dropshipper”. After scrolling through about 10 pages of Google and emailing every potential lead, I came across a company called 3-Teas (3-Teas.com). It is run by a lady named Lesley, and I had seen her name and company pop up across many of the links I had opened up, with her commenting in various Shopify forum discussions of people looking for a tea dropshipper/supplier. I absolutely appreciated her hustle and decided to reach out to her for samples and pricing. After sorting all of it out, I decided to go with her as my supplier. I haven’t had an issue since and she is very courteous, accommodating to all of my little needs and quirks. She has no idea I am writing this nor am I receiving anything for this, but I highly recommend her as your tea/matcha dropshipper if you are looking for one.

While I was emailing and waiting for responses/samples to arrive in the mail, I took the time to think of how I wanted to design my logo and where I was going to start my e-commerce store. The e-commerce store was essentially a no-brainer, as the 72 hour dropship business article used Shopify and it seemed like a very common and user friendly platform.

With regards to my logo, I initially tried to create one in Microsoft word, and had used it when I first launched and in my first couple of sales. However, I was starting to notice that the quality and definition of my logo wasn’t up to par when it was printed out onto packaging, and realized that I needed to have a more professional looking logo. I decided that spending a bit of money on a logo was definitely necessary as it would be the first image potential customers see, and I couldn’t cheap out on it. I ended up spending 40 dollars on Fiverr.com to get a logo I was very happy with. If you’re looking for logos, there are many people on Fiverr who are willing to design tens of logos until you are 100% happy with it.

With regards to the packaging, that was not something I had to worry about as Lesley took care of the whole thing. The only thing I needed to do was provide her a label of a certain size. That part was easy as I went to Microsoft word and designed my own label.

My First 10 Sales

After finding a dropshipper and creating my website, I was now ready to sell! I had absolutely no idea how I was going to get the word out and read numerous posts and blogs on how to market (more on this in the segment below). In fact, shopify has a regular e-newsletter they send out and one of them was titled something like 50 ways to get your first sale. A number of them included reaching out to friends and family, so that is exactly what I did. My first sale ended up being from my cousin, and slowly afterwards many more sales trickled in from friends and family. My first 10 sales were all from friends and family. It’s pretty humbling to think about the support I’ve received since starting the business from those closest to me. We often take these people for granted, and this has definitely helped me learn to appreciate them more.

Advertising Growing Pains And Current Marketing Strategy

After the initial boost from sales to friends and family, I needed to figure out a way to gain traffic and sales from random people. There were many, many suggestions I had read about, from Meet-Ups to FB advertising/Instagram influencers to increasing SEO to social media accounts, etc. Below are some of the things I have tried since opening up my store in April 2017:

Facebook/Instagram Advertising – I tried to sprinkle just a little bit of money into Facebook/Instagram advertising, targeting an older audience who had interests related to matcha, tea, and Parkinson’s Disease. While I found it was a little effective in creating clicks and traffic to my site, I didn’t find much success in producing sales. In total to date, I have tried 7 campaigns for a total of $50 and 1 sale. A lack of sales could totally be the result of me not spending enough money and going 100% in, but at the same time, I thought it would be too much of a risk given my low budget and lack of capital.

Instagram Influencers – I’m a huge follower of Gary Vaynerchuk (if you don’t know who he is, please do yourself a favour and look him up. It will change your life), and he talks a lot about Instagram influencers being the most undervalued commodity in advertising and marketing right now. I decided to give it a try and reached out to a couple foodie accounts with roughly 5-10K followers. Both did an Instagram story and a post about the baking/cooking they did with the Matcha. Usually, Instagram influencers cost a bit of money to post, but given the cause of my company, all I had to do was provide them with a sample. This led to 2 sales and was much more effective than the $50 I spend on FB/Instagram advertising (how I track these sales was to offer them a unique promo code they can send out to their followers). However, it also takes a lot more time building connections and reaching out in Instagram DMs. I guess it would make sense that more effort = more effectiveness.

Bloggers – I took the exact same approach as Instagram Influencers with bloggers. Reached out to a ton of food blogs, told my story, offered a sample and asked them to post about it. I was able to get 3 blogs to post about it, but ultimately it led to 0 sales. 2 of the 3 blogs didn’t even ask for a sample, so the cost of this was next to 0.

Running my own social media accounts – I currently run an Instagram account (@TeaParky) and a Facebook account (@TeaParky). I use most of my resources on the Instagram account and the Facebook account is simply a repost of all my Instagram posts, which is a major no-no but at the same time, I currently just don’t have the time to make unique posts for Facebook. I’ve found that these accounts have given me a lot more exposure and I use it to interact with other accounts out there. While I can’t exactly calculate the amount of sales I have generated as a result of my social media interactions, I can safely say this has helped significantly. My Instagram account is at 1,500 followers and it has been a blast to constantly come up with creative new material. I do this thing called #DoesMatchaGoWithEverything where I put a spoon of matcha into different things from alcohol to chips to sriracha and consume it! Those videos generally create the most engagement and are a blast to do.

Reaching out to Parkinson’s organizations – This has turned out being one of my most effective marketing techniques. A portion of all sales are donated to 3 separate groups: Michael J Fox Foundation, Parkinson Society British Columbia (PSBC), and Rock Steady Boxing (RSB). After presenting these organizations with a first cheque for all the sales that have come in since launching, PSBC and RSB were gracious enough to feature me in their e-newsletters and social media. In fact, I currently have a story profile on the PSBC website at the link below:

https://www.parkinson.bc.ca/resources-services/inspirational-stories/michael-cheung/

This has helped me connect with so many people currently affected by Parkinson’s Disease, some of who have made a purchase. This is honestly the best part of starting my business so far. It’s so cool to hear from others who are currently going through the same thing to know that we’re not alone, and truly inspires me to push hard on this project and make this a success. If someone diagnosed with an incurable disease can wake up everyday determined to fight like hell, what excuse do I have to be lazy?

At the end of the day, I’ve found that if you’re able to provide people value without expecting much in return and do that as many times as possible at the lowest possible cost, that is how you create the beginnings of a successful business. Since starting my company in April, I have no broken even given the significant costs of incorporation the Shopify plan, marketing and handing out free samples, but I believe in providing as much value as possible and hopefully someday that will correlate to success. And if it doesn’t, I’d like to think the loss in funds was worth the ability to provide so many people with value, especially the hundreds of interactions I have with people who have Parkinson’s or have been affected by Parkinson’s on Instagram. After all, I am currently writing this blog hoping I can help out others in my position learn from my mistakes without asking for anything in return.

Biggest Mistake and Pivot

Having launched my company on a product I had never tried before and didn’t know too much about was a mistake that I fought with for 6 months. I constantly told myself that it wasn’t the product but rather the cause and my story that would help me become successful and generate sales. While this was the case, I found that it led to a lot of one time purchases, and very rarely did I get repeat customers. This was because customers were purchasing to support the cause, not because they enjoyed the product. Also, matcha is a very novel product that many people have never tried before, and the price point is way too high for people to take a risk on something they’ve never tried. In addition, matcha is an acquired taste and many people find it extremely bitter. Needless to say, in hindsight it wasn’t very smart to start my business selling matcha and that I should have made the pivot to loose leaf teas much sooner than I did. However, just like in life, we often tend to cling to a mistake because we’re too stubborn or scared to admit it, and are afraid of the change that needs to happen once we admit the mistake. This leads us to turn small mistakes into large ones as we spend more time digging ourselves deeper into the hole. I read an article that said that successful people are the ones who aren’t afraid to admit a mistake early, and use it to pivot to something better. Mistakes and pivots are necessary to the path to success.

I shouldn’t have started my company selling a product I wasn’t familiar with and didn’t consume myself. As a result, I made the pivot to loose leaf teas. 5 flavours to be specific (oolong, peppermint, green, earl grey, orange pekoe). These flavours were decided upon through a contest in which we asked for suggestions in exchange for the teas to be named after them. If you go on the website (TeaParky.com), you will notice that every loose leaf tea is named after someone. This has also become a bit of a marketing effort as it not only helped me select flavours that my potential customers would be interested in, but also create a personal attachment for 5 individuals and my products.

This decision to admit my mistake and pivot has been one of the most important decisions of my business so far, and I am very happy about it. It’s hard enough creating a successful business as it is, let alone constantly wondering if the product you selected was the right one. I still currently sell Matcha on my website, but it is not as heavily promoted as before. I have since then started to evaluate all aspects of my life with the same approach and tried to admit mistakes and pivot before I dug myself into the ground even further.

How I Found My Loose Leaf Tea Supplier And All My Supplies

First thing I did was reach out to Lesley at 3-Teas.com (my current dropshipper for matcha) to ask her if she dropshipped loose leaf teas. Luckily for me, she had an array of teas that she could also dropship. However, given the low price of loose leaf teas that bigger companies such as David’s Tea had, the dropshipping method didn’t make sense from a financial perspective. Also, I was starting to find that things such as delivery of samples became very costly due to the fact that I was being charged the same fee everytime by my supplier. If I was able to control everything myself, I would be able to decrease my costs and increase my ability to market more and hand out free samples. After all, nothing sells the brand quite like a taste of the product.

As a result, I decided that I was going to try to package and ship out the loose leaf tea myself. To do this, I would need a bulk supplier, my own packaging, labels, etc. I was able to purchase bags, labels, and a heat press off of Amazon for a very good price, and realized that if I was able to condense my packaging enough, I would not be charged the parcel rate for shipping. This would significantly decrease my costs and allow me to compete with the bigger tea companies who have e-commerce stores. I was able to find multiple bulk tea suppliers who would allow for their tea to be repackaged and rebranded and ultimately decided upon one that I was most happy with. Currently, I am weighing the loose leaf tea and packaging the bags at home. It obviously takes a lot more time and effort than dropshipping, but the cost savings and flexibility are more than worth it. I have kept my current dropshipper for matcha because she has been absolutely incredibly supportive throughout the process and I would love to keep that relationship going.

Currently, David’s tea charges around $8 for 50g of tea. However, their shipping costs are very high depending on where it is being shipped to. As a result, the total cost of the tea after shipping is included is actually the same as my tea, which is presented at a higher cost because my shipping costs are lower. I haven’t quite figured out a way around this as I feel as though the David’s Tea method is trying to trick the customer by putting the majority of the amount on at checkout (I’ve tried to put teas like Earl Grey in my cart for $5 dollars only to find my shipping was another $9 at checkout). Whereas, I would like to be honest with the customer upfront, although this may turn them off when they see the initial price.

Future Aspirations

I understand that Rome wasn’t built in a day and I have long term aspirations for this business. Patience is a word that I try to preach in everything I do. I would like to try to expand into local tea/coffee shops and see what kind of traction I can get this upcoming year. This process has been very fun for me to pursue and I love the challenge of trying to start my own company, with only $1,000 of capital no less! If you are on the fence about starting a business, I can tell you even if you lose the small investment that you put in, the people you meet and the things you learn will make the process more than worth it and open up other doors for you that you didn’t know existed. Just recently, I was brought up to make a cheque presentation and speech in the middle of a wrestling ring in a shopping mall! Never in my wildest dreams…

Thanks for taking the time to read about my journey so far. Not even a year in and I am having a blast! If you have any questions or advice for me, please comment below and I would be honoured to respond.

And if you’d like to check out the website, please visit TeaParky.com!

what if i dont want to fill in my address and how will shopify use my address i dont want people turning up to my house 

Hello, Panayiotis and Daniel.

You are not required by Shopify to display your address, or reveal your real address anywhere on your storefront - the decision is entirely up to you. If you're concerned about your privacy it may be worthwhile to rent a post office box or similar service as a business mailbox to accept any returns and to use as your return address. International returns can be a little trickier, but your suppliers can let you know their preferred method for handling returns on their end.

The address as it is entered in Settings > Shipping of your store is not displayed on the storefront, it's only used for shipping calculations and as a return address on shipping labels you purchase through the Shopify admin, but this is not a concern if you are dropshipping as your suppliers will take care of shipping the product to customers. 

It's also worth noting that if you use the store Privacy and Refund Policy templates offered by Shopify to read through and ensure that if you include your address for returns that it is your business address you prefer your customers to see. 

For more on these settings please visit the help guide here or get in touch with our 24/7 Support Team to discuss your store settings.

Kind Regards,

Leon 

Hi, Christopher!

My name is Jade, I am with the Social Care Team at Shopify.

I really like the choice of mugs that you selected on your website, they look very unique! I'm not sure if you already know but you can actually add a product image to your variants. Your Cozy Deer Christmas Mug, for instance, has two variants - the Lace Finish and the Sweater Finish. If you add variant images to your product page, when your customer selects the Sweater Finish for example - this will make the product image of the sweater appear. 

Here are the steps to set that up:

1) Login to your Shopify admin.

2) Click Products on the left sidebar.

3) Click on the product that you would like to edit - in this case the Cozy Deer Christmas Mug.

4) Using my test store as an example, I have a T-shirt that comes in multiple sizes in Black and White. When you scroll down the page to where it says Variants, you can see these grey boxes on the left side (like this: https://screenshot.click/28-25-1l03s-9kcp2.jpg). 

5) When you click on one of the grey boxes (like this: https://screenshot.click/28-26-6a1jp-nsyit.jpg), you will be able to add the variant image to that product. 

6) You will need to repeat these steps for all of your product variants - mine looks (like this: https://screenshot.click/28-28-kvspw-bbl68.jpg) when it is done. Yours will look similar.

Next to answer the question that you asked! The best and also the most economical travel mug that I have come across is from a company called Contigo that is based in Chicago. Their products are in a within a good price range. I had the $11.99 Snapseal one until my husband misplaced his and now he has claimed mine as his own. They have the option to become a reseller on their website.

There are several coffee companies in the United States that are small businesses that do fair trade and/or organic coffee that you may want to consider. Not to push fair trade or organic, I'm mainly suggesting this because like you, these companies have a lot of heart behind their brand and even if they do not say specifically that they do dropshipping on their websites, many of them have the option to resell their products and may be open to dropshipping with your business. 

I've seen a company based in the United States before called CoffeeSock that sells organic cloth coffee filters that are made in the USA and come in a variety of different sizes.

I read an article called 14 Fair Trade Coffee Brands Worth Waking Up For and many of them are located in the United States. If you visit the company websites you can find out more about their businesses and contact them directly.

Have a great day and best wishes with your store!

\ (•◡•) /

I'm currently using CollectiveFab as a dropshipper, but they don't seem to have much stock and products often sell out before I can really get any sales. I love the style they carry though (urban, young, trendy). They also carry plus size, which is great because my store caters to all sizes. Is there any other US dropshippers with the same style of clothing (and plus size) with a higher stock count?

Hi, there. I would like to recommend a FREE tool named ShopMaster which is applicable for dropshippers. You can use ShopMaster to import products from Aliexpress, eBay, Amazon and other more than 25 sites, repid listing onto eBay, Shopify & Wish stores, and inventory monitor & auto repricer, auto-order, and other more powerful features, welcome to join ShopMaster . Happy dropshipping!!! :o)

Thanks so much everyone. Will check it out.

Are you looking for products that are known, like Calvin Klein, Nike, Gucci, etc? Or any other products?

Only way to get brand authorization is if the money is going directly to your bank account. However, you can sell the products if you use PayPal or other payment gateways, you will be fine. It is just that when they add the products to your site directly, they are nervous about the fulfillment process on your end. We have added name brand products to people's store before. However, they have to manually order the product. 

I'm not necessarily looking for name brand products.  They definitely need to be of trendy and urban style though.

We can help you with finding products. Why not do a mix of Oberlo and name brand products?

Hi 

I am looking to outsoucre the fulfilment for my store ( I sell shoes so fulfilment is pretty straightforward) and am currently looking at 2 providers well adapted for a store my size: ShipBob and shipMonk. I am having a hard time determining which is better; Ship Monk is slightly cheaper and more repsonsive but ShipBob recently raised a lot of capital which gives it more credibility I think. Any feedback from shopify store owners out there? Thanks in advance!

Bhupi

Hi,

You can find US based dropshippers on Aliexpress.com It has a filter option to choose suppliers from. Using Dropshipmate you can import products easily into your shopify store from Aliexpress and also from other supplier sites like Amazon, Ebay, Alibaba, Dhgate etc., This app also helps you to import Product Reviews along and enables Auto Update Sync.

All the best...

Hi,

Try shopify app Dropshipmate where you can find many supplier sites like Aliexpress, Amazon, Ebay, Walmart and 15+ etc., from where you can import products into your shopify store in a single click. You can also import Product Reviews and also can enable Daily Auto Update/Sync.

All the Best...

Hey,

I've tried searching on these forums but I haven't found a solution to my problem.

Bit of background first - we're opening a store in which we stock and dispatch goods from creators. This includes both physical products and digital downloads - so they send us the stock, and we send it all out. 

I would like an automatic notification email to be sent to the creators when their products have sold. Sort of an automatic, 'hey, friend! Someone bought your product! You earnt money! Woo!'

So far I've used this guide to create a custom shipping fulfillment for each creator, and changed the 'fullfilment' notification email wording to suit this purpose. It works absolutely perfectly for physical goods, whereby upon us updating the order as 'fulfilled', the creator gets the email saying they've sold product/s.

However, the massive problem is that unfortunately this has really messed up my automatic digital good fulfillment service. Because I've had to create custom shipping, this means that every digital download product variant does not automatically fulfill itself - in order for the customer to recieve their digital goods they have to wait for us to manually click fulfill, which is pretty much useless for the automatic gratification society of the 21st century.

Is there anyway I can automatically send a notification email to the creator whilst having my digital downloads automatically fulfilled? Or is this just not possible with Shopify?

Please don't refer me to any non-free apps :)

Thanks!

Hi,

I am looking for for some dropshipping suppliers in Australia. Have some niches in mind that I want to sell? Any  idea of any supplieres who can do dropshipping in Australia??

wholesalers with reasonal MOQ should also be fine.

Regards,

Saiprasad

Hey there Rachelle and group,

I totally here you about quality being the major concern. Forget about womens apparel that's made in China and start working with droshippers who have apparel made in USA. For example, http://moyfashionhq.com/apparel-dropshippers/ has womens apparel with TRUE USA SIZING (Small - 3X). 

We have built a custom dropshipping program for Shopify websites that allows you to:

• Push a few, or all, of our styles automatically to your website
• Removes out-of-stock styles from your website automatically
• Sends your orders to our warehouse fulfillment center automatically
• Pushes new arrivals to your website automatically
• Ability to private label dropship orders along with blind shipping!

Again, all of our dropship apparel is MADE IN USA and we ship to your customers WORLDWIDE ;) 

- Ely

ELY@MOYFASHIONHQ.COM

Dropship Account Manager