Shopify is a leading ecommerce platform and arguably the best platform to run a drop shipping enterprise.
To the question: What can I drop ship on Shopify? The answer is that there are many products and product types you can consider (see the comprehensive list below), the key is to go for products that align with your niche, market strategy, target customers and overall business strategy.
20 Well Performing Products for Shopify Drop shippers
Short answer to the question: What can I dropship on Shopify?
Fashion and Apparel: If you are into fashion, you can consider products like jewellery, clothing and accessories for your Shopify drop shipping business. If you want to niche down: eco-friendly clothing and specialised sportwear are well performing sub-niches you should consider.
Health and Beauty: In the health and beauty sector, makeup and skincare products are some of the performers. You can augment these with grooming tools and any trendy beauty items that resonate with the preferences of your target customers. Organic and natural products perform well any time.
Home and Decor: This niche features decorative items, home essentials and furniture, and home. You can also consider a flair of seasonal decorations such as holiday-themed décor. These are lucrative.
Electronics and Gadgets: This is an evergreen niche. Gadget and phone accessories will always be in high demand. In this niche you just need to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest tech trends and update your catalogue with trendy items.
Fitness and Sports: Health and fitness is a booming discipline and niche. Fitness equipment, sports gear and accessories are well sought after products by a growing pool of health and fitness conscious consumers.
The niche is broad so there is good room to zero in on laser focused sub niches such as marathon running, crossfit workouts, MMA training, Fitness for Pregnant Women, etc.
Toys and Hobbies: The child development niche is another booming sector. You can cash in on drop shipping toys, educational board games and hobby related items for certain seasons.
Kitchen and Dining: Kitchen appliances and gadgets are some of the most sought after products in ecommerce. You can augment your kitchen ware with cookware, kitchen tools as well as dining accessories, etc.
Pet Products: Consider selling pet toys, and pet foods as well as other supplies. These have a growing customer base. Be on the lookout for trending pet care products. Eco-friendly products are great for this niche.
Outdoor and Adventure: This is another flourishing niche. People need camping gear, adventure equipment, tents, outdoor clothing for their fun and games outdoors. This is another evergreen, although seasonal niche.
Crafts and DIY: Products like DIY kits, trendy DIY projects as well as crafting supplies and some of the most popular items in this niche.
Unique and Novelty Items: Do you have a knack and eye for the newest or novel innovations in the market? If that sounds like you then you might enjoy running a Shopify drop shipping enterprise selling quirky and unique products. This could be anything from some high tech drone to floor cleaning robots. Do your market research and find your angle.
Personalized and Customized Products: If you are into this space you should consider products such as engraved items, custom jewellery and gifts with a personalized touch. These are great for the relevant target market.
Beauty and Personal Care: Related to the health and beauty niche, skincare and haircare products sell like hot cakes if you get the formula right. You can add grooming products to expand your catalogue. You can never go wrong with a curated selection of natural or organic products.
Electronics Accessories: Electronic accessories like charging cables and charging heads, charging sets and screen guards are always in high demand. There are also many drop shipping suppliers you can connect with to start selling these on platforms like Shopify.
Home Office and Remote Work: With the rise of remote work, home office furniture, gadgets, and ergonomic accessories are hot items.
Baby and Parenting: This niche could be a great extension to the child development niche. You can drop ship maternity items, baby gear as well as a good repertoire of parenting accessories for new and existing parents.
Travel and Luggage: The world has become a global village and people are on the go. Items such as luggage bags and various travel essentials and accessories are always in high demand.
Fashion Accessories: As an extension to the fashion niche you can drop ship products such as watches, sunglasses, handbags and a coterie of convenience accessories. These perform well especially if you have a fashion-conscious consumer target market.
Party Supplies: This is another drop shippable niche especially if you focus on party décor equipment and accessories, costumes. You can also expand your offerings with event-specific items. Take note of the seasonality of the niche.
Wellness and Self-Care: Mental wellness awareness is taking center-stage and products related to general wellness, mental health, and self-care are increasingly becoming popular.
The key principles to keep in mind when choosing products for a drop shipping venture are:
- Consider the cost of products
- Shipping turn around
- Competition
- Target customers
In addition to the above, you will need to research trending products as well as do a thorough competition analysis. You should also explore platforms like AliExpress and other drop shipping platforms to identify drop shipping products from suppliers.
How Does Drop Shipping Work?
The best way to explain how dropshipping works is to contrast it with traditional retail businesses. In traditional retail, you buy inventory (stock) from suppliers and keep the inventory in your store and sell it off to your customers.
Drop shipping turns this around. With drops shipping you can sell products to your customers without owning any inventory. Yup. It’s doable.
This works by partnering with your prospective suppliers, such that you focus on marketing and handling the sales aspects of the business, your suppliers get notified in the background once a sale occurs, they get all the details of the purchase and deliver the product to the customer.
The total amount the customer pays also includes the shipment fees that goes to the supplier.
As you can see, drop shipping becomes a significantly low risk business model when contrasted to traditional retail or conventional ecommerce.
Traditional retail involves a higher financial risk upfront (procuring inventory) and drop shipping is a low risk approach to retail as there is no inventory to procure upfront.
How To Dropship On Shopify
To get started with a drop shipping business you need to sign up for a plan on Shopify. While there are many other ecommerce platforms (WooCommerce,BigCommerce,Wix,Magento,Volusion,3dcart,OpenCart,Ecwid, Sellfy, etc) with drop shipping capabilities, Shopify is a leading ecommerce website maker that makes creating professional and high end online stores a breeze.
The platform is renowned for its robust and user- friendly ecommerce creator interface. With Shopify you don’t need technical coding and design skills to get started.
There are many drop shipping platforms you can consider for your Shopify online store: AliExpress is one of them. Setting up a drop shipping integration on Shopify is a seamless and straight forward process.
The Set up may vary depending on the supplier you choose to partner with. However the standard procedure is to to install the supplier app from Shopify app marketplace. The next step is to create an account on your preferred drop shipping supplier (or sign in if you have an account already). You will then be given prompts to complete the integration between your supplier and Shopify.
What you then need to do is set up your online store by choosing a free of paid theme that suits the type of products you are going with. Add your logo and then customize the theme according to your branding and colors.
You can connect your custom domain to your Shopify store. To register a domain, you can either use Shopify’s domain registration service or external domain registration and domain hosting services like Bluehost. With Bluehost you can register and host a domain for as low as $2.95. make sure to check the Bluehost website for updates prices.
Shopify Dropshipping Suppliers
There are a number of Shopify Drop shipping suppliers that you can consider for your drop shipping business.
AliExpress: AliExpress is a widely popular drop shipping supplier platform that networks different suppliers from China. The range of products offered on AliExpress is quite EXPANSIVE. You will need to do your due diligence to identify good quality products that align with your business goals.
SaleHoo: SaleHoo is more of a drop shipping supplier and wholesaler directory. On this platform you can browse and search through various suppliers from various countries and get reviews and ratings to inform your decisions.
Worldwide Brands: This is another directory for searching and identifying certified wholesalers and dropshippers. Not only do they have a vast database of suppliers and wholesalers, they also offer tools for identifying profitable products.
Doba: Doba is another drop shipping platform that integrates seamlessly with Shopify. The platform pulls numerous suppliers who drop ship their products from their warehouses.
There are many other dropshipping suppliers that work with Shopify such as Spocket, Modalyst, Printful, Sunrise Wholesale, Wholesale2b, Megagoods, Wholesale Central, CJDropshipping and CROV.
Make sure to check Shopify’s website for the update list of drop shipping suppliers and partners.
In your due diligence, remember to consider drop shipping partners who offer quality products and have efficient shipping turnarounds.
Pay attention to customer service and watch for any fees that may be associated with using the supplier platform.
Keep your target niche and therefore your target customers in mind in your quest to identify the right products.
A good rule of thumb is to start with a few reliable suppliers and expand your supplier base as your business and customer base grow.
Dropshipping Products With High Profit Margin
Once your online store is set up and customized you need to choose products to sell. You can browse various products as informed by your market research. Focus on trending and profitable products.
Your market research must be focused on identifying drop shippable products with high profit margins. Make use of tools such as Google Trends, Social Media Trends and Amazon Best Sellers to identify high profit margin products.
This exercise must be coupled with competition analysis with a focus on analysing the pricing strategies of your competitors and then finding gaps you can exploit. Also crunch some numbers and run some profit margin calculations by considering product cost, shipping fees as well as selling price.
Also, It would be helpful to consider products with low shipping costs, products that have opportunities to upsell and cross sell or products that can be bundled up to boost sales and incentivise customers to spend more without leaving your store.
Keep an eye on products that have high value accessories. This is an easy avenue for expanding your sales base and your profit margins
Don’t hesitate to negotiate good prices with suppliers. Also use the profit margin calculator that most drop shipping platforms provide to identify suppliers and products that match your profit goals.
Configure Payment Gateways for Your Drop Shipping Store
To finalise your drop shipping online store set up on Shopify, you need to configure a payment gateway to your online store. The good part with Shopify is that the platform provides over 100 payment gateways that cater to credit card, debit card and digital wallet payments.
Also define the shipping workflow of your drop shipping brand. Keep shipping times and costs clear to the customers upfront. You also need to set a mechanism to communicate delivery tracking information with your customers.
Shopify has the Shop app which enables customers to keep tabs with their orders: On the Shop app customers can get:
- Real time order status updates
- Delivery notifications
- Live-map tracking
Marketing and Promoting Your Drop Shipping Store on Shopify
Shopify has powerful Search Engine Optimisation capabilities that you need to utilise to set the foundation for marketing your brand and enhancing its visibility online. Shopify enables you to customize product page titles and meta tags.
This enhances the visibility of your product pages on search engines like Google and thereby increasing your traffic and sales prospects.
Build an omni channel strategy to get our drop shipping brand out there. You can incorporate social media marketing, Pay Per click advertising, content marketing to give your brand maximum mileage. Also consider going into strategic influence collaborations.
Final Thoughts
Remember that growing a drop shipping brand (any business for that matter), requires being intentional about creating positive experiences for your customers. Increase trust and credibility by adding pages like About Us, Contacts, Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
Also articulate a clear returns and exchange policy. In all your dealings with your customers you need to be transparent and customer satisfaction oriented.
Drop shipping is in fact a doable business and low risk business model that you can start with a fraction of cost and within a very short space of time. You just need to be diligent and put in all the required effort not only to bring your business idea to life but also to make it a resounding success.
All the best in your ecommerce business experiment.
