A boutique is a storefront where they do not make their own products (usually), they buy from China and artists and curate a selection. An online store that does not hold inventory in a warehouse is a middleman, they sell it but the manufacturer sends it. It feels sleazy, but stores that do not produce product are all essentially the same thing. However, in some industries, wholesale is only available to retailers. Meaning, you can buy and sell at a profit, only because the shopper can’t get it at the wholesale price. With Aliexpress, that opens everyone to a semi wholesale to completely wholesale price. It IS sleazy to find a product, that is available for $1.99 to anyone, and sell it for $25.99 on what is just a different website, and do nothing but place an order on the first website, and the customer has to wait for it to come from China. If you import it, and you have it available to ship on amazon prime, that would be worth paying more for.

But if your customers still have to wait 3 months to get it, because you’re working with dropshipping, your business is a jerk.

Example would be a site like www.cupshe.com - look at their Facebook comments on the most recent post here lol 100 some complaints in each post.

IMAGINE a world where you do nothing but push product and deal with terrible customer service issues because you aren’t in control of anything that the dropshippers are doing. No thanks.

Then these life coaches come along and want to teach you how to do this. They make 1 million a year doing it. So can you. Wrong. So wrong. It takes warehouses (or space of some sort - after all, sometimes YOU are dealing with importing, returns and management of product) and a whole lot of good relationships with suppliers.

It’s possible to do well. It’s not possible to do well super easily.