Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment model in which the seller markets products and accepts customer orders without holding inventory, transferring each order to a manufacturer, wholesaler or fulfillment house that ships the product directly to the customer. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Core MechanismSeller accepts customer orders without holding inventory; the order is forwarded to a manufacturer, wholesaler, other retailer, or fulfillment house, which ships the product directly to the customer. 1 FAQs
Who ships the product in a dropshipping sale?
A manufacturer, wholesaler or fulfillment house ships directly to the customer, not the seller.
In dropshipping the seller markets products and accepts customer orders without holding inventory, transferring each order to a manufacturer, wholesaler or fulfillment house that ships the product directly to the customer.
Connections
Associated With
Amazon found early success applying the drop shipping model to book sales, listing over a million titles while physically stocking about two thousand.
Source Wikipedia, Drop Shipping
Open Questions
Source Wikipedia, Drop Shipping
Sources
1. Wikipedia, Drop Shipping
Wikipedialead section
Drop shipping is a form of retail business in which the seller accepts customer orders without keeping stock on hand.
lead paragraph, sentences 1-2
Drop shipping is a form of retail business in which the seller accepts customer orders without keeping stock on hand. Instead, the seller transfers the orders and their shipment details either to the manufacturer, a wholesaler, another retailer, or a fulfillment house, which then ships the goods directly to the customer.
- Associated With: Amazon
View the Source Open Questions (1 open question)
In what year, or decade, did dropshipping emerge as a named retail practice distinct from ordinary mail-order drop-shipping arrangements?
The source article defines dropshipping and discusses its modern online-retail context, including early platform-era examples, but names no year or decade for when the practice began or when the term itself entered use.
What would resolve this A retail-history source giving a specific year for the first documented drop-shipping arrangement, or explicitly stating that mail-order drop-shipping has no single citable origin because it grew gradually out of ordinary wholesale distribution.
Business HistoryWikipedia, Drop Shipping
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