Ultimate Guide to Magento 2 Dropshipping

For years the dropshipping model has proved itself as one of the most budget-friendly ways of running an ecommerce business with limited resources at hand. Profitable to commerce newbies and seasoned merchants who seek out new revenue channels, dropshipping survives, evolves, gains new recognition every day, and revolutionizes ecommerce due to such new trends as ghost commerce. 

In the guide, we’ll find out the best strategy for drop shipping and describe the prospects of establishing such a business on the base of Magento 2.

What you need to know to understand dropshipping

Dropshipping is an ecommerce model that supposes working in a tight connection with suppliers. You buy products from a dropshipping provider at a manufacturer price, promote and sell them at your store, while these products remain stored up at the suppliers’ side. What you gain in such cases is no stress over stock management and profit from margins you set at your store. It’s kind of shared responsibility for common commerce services: you process orders and communicate with customers, and your providers do the job related to shipping as they physically own the ordered items.

Dropshipping has risen as the least demanding method for a merchant to get into the ecommerce industry. To drop ship you need no assets except a stable Internet connection and a platform to sell at. You can start as a part of a huge marketplace or launch an independent store — any e-commerce platform works great for dropshipping if it possesses the relevant functionality. 

The popularity of the business model is also defined by its extremely low investment requirements. In theory, you can do deals with so much as a zero balance and increase your service quality when the actual revenue comes to your pockets.    

The main feature of dropshipping is another stress reliever. The ability to sell products without physically storing them puts off the very need in inventory management and nullifies any associated costs and efforts. Once you find trustable suppliers, sales become a comfortable routine available for running from any part of the world at any time. 

Like a decade before, today, dropshipping has thousands of adherents. Undoubtedly, it faced some stepping stones as the industry grew over time. Current B2B orientation of ecommerce and overall business scale increase have given dropshipping a great shake. However, the model has adapted successfully to modern ecommerce tendencies and acquired new strategies of providing merchants with powerful tools for high-quality service. 

One of such improvements is open access to dropshipping on the base of the most famous ecommerce platforms, including rich in functionality Magento 2. 

See the Ultimate List of Dropshipping Services

Magento 2: priceless e-commerce experience

Magento is the phenomenon in the ecommerce industry which reputation precedes the actual software showcase. A giant among similar systems, such as Shopify, WordPress, Woocommerce, etc., for years it has infused the community with innovation in everything related to sales. And Magento 2 is the peak state of the platform at the moment. More than 12% of all ecommerce sites are built upon Magento 2. Merchants who rise with the platform do so with a 3x speed.

Powered by the Adobe resources and grown upon the vast community contributions, Magento 2 is and has always been highly appraised for the 360-degree approach to supporting online deals. Apart from the monumental diversity in toolsets, the platform development course is primarily focused on three principles:

• Scalability. The modular nature of the platform allows users to build systems from the basic ones to truly complex structures and control the number of tools installed according to various business goals. Magento 2 Open-Source and Commerce editions provide users with fully functional solutions for small and mid-sized businesses along with enterprises. Starting dropshipping with Magento 2 will cost you nothing but the opportunity for growth will keep your store at a high wave.
• Accessibility. The software is characterized by high-quality performance and fast response for both backend and frontend. Open code and user-friendly interface guarantee the functionality is available for precise data management and any kind of customizations. Adobe Commerce Cloud ensures the latest Magento 2 improvement can be applied to your store and activated momentarily. Every activity related to orders is exceptionally simple with Magento 2, you can process more and increase profit drastically while spending less time on the automated routine.  
• Intelligence. Magento 2 gives every user the ability to run a business based on data-driven decisions. In-depth analytics on sales, marketing, customers, team performance, and other aspects serve you to predict sales, evaluate investments, and plan your future activity. Detailed reports and dashboards help to visualize your business status and see its growth in perspective. Use the software to learn your audience, follow industry trends, and grow your service providing skills.

What in particular makes Magento 2 a sustainable dropShipping base? The first thing that comes to mind is the free start and unlimited possibilities for business expansion. Having built your store on the Magento 2 logic, you get the functionality that has all means for delivering engaging content and running all kinds of product promotions. The frontend of a Magento 2 store provides customers with a comfortable shopping experience, while backend logic ensures full order automation and advanced customer management.    

If you decide to drop ship with Magento 2 you’ll be able to arrange the flawless order fulfillment for your business. Such a routine is easily configured and maintained with minimum efforts, and you can spend more time on strengthening the relations with wholesalers to support safe product shipments from their side. 

Learn more about Magento 2 Dropshipping

Improved Import and Export: a universal hub for multiple Magento 2 integrations 

Magento 2 and dropshipping platform integration is impossible without an assisting application. If there’s no way to avoid a connector implementation, why not get a full dropshipping solution with a bunch of extra features in addition to the integration logic? Improved Import and Export is the very software that can be applied in multiple use-cases related to data management. By focusing on transferring data of all sizes, it enhances any backend processes from routine updates to powerful cross-platform integrations.

The extension upgrades Magento 2 import and export logic to infuse the system with unique features and enrich the basic toolset. With a primary focus on data transfers, the functionality enables all kinds of synchronization between Magento 2 and any third-party platform regardless of its nature. 

As for the improvements made, the extension can offer the following innovations to the standard import and export:

• All Magento 2 entity support.
• Manual and cron-based automatic data transfers.
• Product and order import and export via REST and SOAP API, Google Drive, Google Sheets, FTP/SFTP, URL, Dropbox, files.
• Full processing of CSV, XML, Excel XLSX, ODS, and Json files (including versions in ZIP and TAR).
• Attribute and category mapping.
• Price adjustments.

Improved Import and Export can become the main tool that brings a dropshipping experience within Magento 2 to a new level of automation and usability. 

No custom development services are required to implement the extension into the database and establish a connection with a dropshipping provider platform. That means you can step up the planned dropshipping course from the moment you install the extension to your store.

Get/Buy Magento 2 Improved Import and Export

Magento 2 and dropshipping provider integration in detail

So how to start a dropshipping business with Magento 2?

Decide on a supplier

First and foremost, you need to form a list of reliable suppliers. Once the task is done, you can enable bidirectional synchronization with all of the dropshipping platforms as Improved Import and Export supports an unlimited number of integrations within a single store. The peculiarity helps to secure your position from the start, while extra options in the wholesalers’ list reduce the number of canceled due to the out-of-stock items orders. 

Ultimate List of Dropshipping Services

Select the relevant connector

The actual connection of Magento 2 and a dropshipping service is established via improved import and export jobs. The cycle is simple: implement product info from a dropshipper side into the store database, process orders with Magento 2, and extract order-related data to send it back for successful shipping. 

Magento 2 drop shipping with Improved Import and Export works without rewriting the standard Magento 2 logic and runs the procedures exclusively on the advanced transfer functionality itself and add-ons. The software creates no supplier or other third-party entities, thus preventing any kinds of conflicts or database crashes. At the same time, the built-in mapping tool ensures all the transferred data is converted to the format processible by Magento 2.  

Experience a dropshipping flow

The dropshipping cycle in Magento 2 is simple: implement product info from a dropshipper side into the store database, process orders with Magento 2, and extract order-related data to send it back for successful shipping.

Improved Import and Export support all types of products so that you stay flexible with your offers and can sell simple, configurable, bundle, grouped, virtual, downloadable products. For transferring any type of those, you just need to select ‘Products’ as an entity type during import. The Improved Import and Export extension will make sure to implement them along with the related content without errors or losses.

Full control over the import process allows you to decide whether to add data or just update it, replace the existing products, or remove those matching to the ones listed in the data file.

Test the connection

Huge diversity in data sources and file formats supported bring new opportunities to any synchronizations you enable. 

• Establish a direct connection between Magento 2 and a dropshipping platform via SOAP or REST API. Get the credentials from your dropshipping provider, specify them as key to the native API channel during import, and transfer XML data tables to your database seamlessly.
• Export orders in an XML file to provide suppliers with necessary info via FTP/SFTP.
• Have the ready data file in the cloud? Retrieve data from Google Drive or Google Sheets, Dropbox right to your Magento 2 store, or extract it directly to your online storage.
• Upload a CSV or XLSX file manually. Add the versions in ZIP or TAR archives and see them unzipped automatically. 

All the transferred data undergoes the validation process so that you may be sure no possible conflicts will arise from working with the database. 

Before you run an import, you can enable the data mapping for attributes, attribute values, and categories. The functionality will automatically modify the import file according to the standards you’ve specified.

How to get 100% out of dropshipping business with Magento 2

Dropshipping with Magento 2 would be incomplete if deprived of the possibilities provided by Improved Import and Export. Using the extension, you can enhance both the Magento 2 functionality and the dropshipping routine arranged within. 

Stock updates

With Improved Import and Export, you can transfer any product types at a speed of 3000 items/min. Dropshipping on the base of Magento 2 with the extension installed becomes significantly less time-consuming. You get to fill your database with thousands of products and to transfer full product content along, including variations, multimedia, descriptions, stock statuses, etc. 

Order export

Once an order is placed and fully processed by Magento 2, you can send all the relevant info to your wholesalers who will proceed with the shipping. Order export is applied to advanced filtering functionality and can generate files in one of the most popular data formats so that a vendor or multiple vendors will receive all the info without fail.

Cron updates

Both improved import and export can be performed manually and automatically. Automatic database updates or extraction are powered by cron and can fully reduce your involvement in the process. Suffice to schedule the functionality once to get the results in a specified period of time. With cron, you can retrieve data from your provider without actual participation from your side and send all the new orders back for further processing.

Shipment and invoice generation

The Improved Import and Export extension introduces the ‘Auto-generate shipment/invoice/credit memo by track info’ and ‘Send email from new tracks’ features. You can benefit from them greatly when you get track info about shipped orders from your suppliers. Shipment, invoice, and credit generation drastically cut the steps performed during the standard order management routine. The ability to send emails about shipped orders automatically helps you to keep in touch with your customers and avoid overload with communication tasks.

MSI support

As we’ve said above, with Improved Import and Export, it’s possible to connect to an unlimited number of vendors within a single Magento instance. Transferring vendor and inventory data via the ‘Stock Source’ and ‘Stock QTY’ entities, you can arrange data inside the store database based on the supplier info and have your dropshipping options organized neatly. 

Attribute and category mapping

You can apply any changes to data according to a selected attribute, modify attribute values, and assign products to new categories in your store. The mapping tool can also replace data within the whole file or fill in empty rows within the necessary values.

Price modifications

Managing price margins is now extremely easy as Improved Import and Export allows you to modify prices massively and individually, or round them, if needed.

To try out unlimited dropshipping possibilities follow the Magento 2 and dropshipping services integrations enabled by the Improved Import and Export functionality. Find extra ways of actualizing your business ideas thanks to the software rich feature-set. 

Get/Buy Magento 2 Improved Import and Export

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