Blind shipping, the customers receive a package with the seller’s contact information, and the company details of the suppliers are left hidden when preparing the shipment. So, the identity of the supplier is never known by the customer.
Let’s say your supplier is from China. When packaging your orders for delivery, they usually label the packages with their information for identity purposes.
If you are doing dropshipping using Shopify, you might consider blind drop shipping. Blind dropshipping is a method where the supplier or third-party fulfillment partner dropships an item to a customer without identifying themselves or adding an advertising material like discounts in the packages.
Table of Contents
- Drop Shipping vs. Blind Shipping
- The advantages of Blind Dropshipping
- How does blind shipping work for eCommerce orders?
- Outsourcing shipping and fulfillment to NextSmartShip
Drop Shipping vs. Blind Shipping
You operate an online store, but your inventory is with the wholesaler or supplier. When you receive an order, you notify the supplier who packages the item and ships it directly to the customer. You don’t get to see or touch the thing at all. This is dropshipping.
As for blind shipping (a type of drop shipping), the process goes a little further. Your supplier hides any information linking to them. Instead, they add your details like the contact address and logo on the packaged item before they ship it to the customer directly. Also, considered a private label shipping.
The advantages of Blind Dropshipping
Dropshipping a product saves you a lot on stocking inventory that might not sell well as you had anticipated but deciding to use blind dropshipping come with added advantages. Here are some of them;
1. Maintain an upper hand on the competition
After building a stable relationship with your supplier, you will keep it going, but the competition might be eyeing on them as well. They can quickly contact them by obtaining the details from the packagings of your item. All they need is to purchase in your store, and they have the contact information.
Blind shipping eliminates this risk by making your supplier information anonymous. And your eCommerce store as an advantage over the competition on quality, delivery periods, and even pricing.
2. It is easy to scale
Let’s say you start getting ten times more orders in a day. Fulfilling this kind of demand from your warehouse will need you to hire more people fast.
It might not be possible, but with blind drop shipping, the people for packaging and private labeling will not be needed since your supplier or 3PL fulfillment does it all for you. Again, the room to scale your business now gets more comfortable because the fulfillment part is handled.
3. It secures your supply management.
When a customer receives a package with the supplier’s information, what will make them not buy directly from the supplier next time?
Your business will not grow because there will be no repeat customers buying from you directly. With blind dropshipping, you safeguard your store from customers opting for direct purchase from your supplier.
Also, it secures your supply chain and gives you control over the quality of the product you ship to your customers.
4. Building a consistent brand
Blind drop shipping allows you to build your business as a brand without any worry about consistency. From packaging design, logo to delivery time, you can negotiate with the supplier to ship them for you cheaply.
It gives your buyers a consistent customer experience making them loyal customers in the long run.
5. Saves time and money
Having eliminated processes like warehousing and shipping of your inventory, the profit margins for each product will get higher, and you can spend some in generating new sales through advertising.
With more profits from your sales, you can expand your product categories by coming up with a new product, asking your supplier to manufacture it for you. You also can let the supplier give you a new product they have launched and test the market demand for it.
Time is probably an essential aspect of your business. You will need more. With blind shipping, you save time on tasks like the packaging process. You can spend this time focusing on how best to optimize your marketing. Also, spend the remaining time on customer service, responding to questions, and solving complaints.
How does blind shipping work for eCommerce orders?
Blind shipping is the process of fulfilling orders from the manufacturer directly to the customer’s delivery address. This process will require three bills of lading (BOLs)
What is BOL? Bills of lading are the three documents of invoices included in the shipment.
- A Bill of Lading is used as the shipper when the freight is picked up.
- A BOL is given to the consignee at the time of product delivery.
- A final BOL with all shipment and delivery information given to the carrier when the shipment is booked.
Besides, a bill of lading is used for shipment tracking, can be used as a document to submit the Letter of the Credit process, and in case of any loss or damage of cargo, it’s submitted when filing for a claim.
However, each carrier you decide to work with has different and specific ways of handling blind shipping. Others have additional requirements like the paperwork for blind shipment. And dealing with this complicated process can be discouraging. Many online store owners have opted to use third-party logistics providers (3PL) to do the order fulfillment for them.
Outsourcing shipping and fulfillment to NextSmartShip
As a drop shipper, maybe you have gotten used to the way you deliver orders. But is the process you set with your supplier efficient? Or you have been thinking of doing private labeling to build a sustainable brand around your product.
It will be the best time to outsource your fulfillment to a 3PL provider with all the packaging requirements and a global network for quick deliveries.
At NextSmartShip, we got you covered with a simple step-by-step process. After you have chosen a manufacturer to produce a product for you, they ship the inventory to the nearest NextSmartShip warehouse, and our dedicated team takes the rest of the process from thereon.
