Dropshipping is a supply chain management method in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock but instead transfers the customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer, another retailer, or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer.
What does that mean in regular English? In short, it means that dropshipping is a method of fulfilling store orders without having the inventory on-hand. This new method of ecommerce has emerged with the rise of suppliers like Alibaba, Amazon, etc., who can fulfill orders for a smaller, well-branded store.
A common way to set up a dropshipping store is to set up a Shopify store, but Shopify is inflexible, difficult to customize and integrate, and not open-source – definitely not the WordPress way!
So, I set out to find out whether we could open-source a dropshipping store. What I learned is: yes, maybe, sort of. I had a lot of frustrations, but I also eventually succeeded in setting up the store. In the process, I learned about the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce, where WordPress shines, and where it could do better – and how to talk about those differences with potential WooCommerce clients.
Learn from my adventure in this talk.