What Is Agency - DSers eCommerce Basics

Dropshipping Agency (Supplier)

You will learn about what is an agency in dropshipping, its pros and cons and a complete process to dropship with agencies in this article.

What Is an Agency (Supplier)

In dropshipping business, an agency represents a supplier that manufactures products or purchases them from manufacturers and directly ships them to your customer for you. It allows you to fulfill orders off a third-party marketplace such as AliExpress.

Pros and Cons of Dropshipping with Agencies

Pros:

  • Have More Control over Product Supply

You can directly get in touch with agencies. This helps you easily make requests about products or orders and build long-term partnerships with agencies.  

  • Need Zero Platform Fees

As you dropship with agencies, you skip off the online supply platform. Therefore, there are no fees between your agency and the platform. That means less purchase cost when you source goods from agencies.

Cons:

  • Require More Resource Investment

If you rely on agencies but not an eCommerce platform to purchase products, you may need to manage dozens of CSV files and it is likely to lead to a mess if you have a lot of orders to be processed at the same time.

  • Take Potential and Unexpected Risks

Due to a lack of the platform guarantee, if disputes arise in the process of transaction payment and order fulfillment, both you and your customers need to secure rights and interests on your own.

How to Dropship with Agencies

Now that you understand the pros and cons of agency dropshipping, you may wonder how to dropship with agencies. Here walks you through the whole process:

Step 1 - Buyer: Submit and pay for an order

Step 2 - Shopify: Generate the order

Step 3 - You: Send the order info in a CSV file to your agencies

Step 4 - Your agency: Calculate the money and ask you to pay

Step 5 - You: Make the payment and notify your agency

Step 6 - Your agency: Ship products to the buyer and send tracking numbers to you

Step 7 - You: Upload tracking numbers to Shopify

Step 8 - Shopify: Fulfill the order and send an email to the buyer

As you can see above, there are several interactions between you and your agencies. And they’re often made through CSV files, which require a lot of effort and good organization skills. 

To reduce your workload on CSV files, you can take advantage of the DSers Agency Solution

By using the tool of DSers Agency Solution, DSers can directly connect your agency's ERP, which can help you sync order information automatically between you and your suppliers. This can help to reduce the amount of manual effort required and minimize the risk of errors or delays.

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