VATACTICAL Posted June 9, 2011 Report Share Posted June 9, 2011 Hey Everyone, I hope that I am posting this in the right place and here is my question.......I am a avid tournament angler in the Virginia area and want to open a Online Tackle supply store. After countless hours of searching the web, I can only find one dropshipper (who i can find limited info about), and several that are overseas which I dont trust. Does anyone have any advice or help that could point me in the right direction and help get this up and going? Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redg8r Posted June 9, 2011 Report Share Posted June 9, 2011 Hi, what do you mean by "dropshipper"? Are you looking not to carry any inventory and have someone else handle fulfillment? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VATACTICAL Posted June 10, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 10, 2011 Hi, what do you mean by "dropshipper"? Are you looking not to carry any inventory and have someone else handle fulfillment? Hey Redg8r, Yes...im trying to go with limited inventory, and use someone who has bulk inventory, popular baits and colors and most importantly..... someone who delivers reliable quality service Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VATACTICAL Posted June 10, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 10, 2011 I don't think you are going to be very happy with that except maybe by making agreements with some of the individual smaller tackle makers. Even then most would prefer to do their own thing. AWR, Bass Pro, Maurice, etc all have stock come and go. I know a couple tackle store owners who constantly battle with all of the distributors about filling orders and just keeping what their customers want on the shelf. Guys like Tacklewarehouse order in and ship out constantly, but if you serveil their website you will see lots of things listed as out of stock with an estimated instock date too. They keep an inventory. If you want to do on-line tackle sales you might as well plan on starting a small warehouse operation. You can probably start in your garage as long as you do not do retail, but in my opinion if you want to be successful you are going to have to invest every dime you make (except enough to pay taxes) on increasing your inventory of popular items for the first several years. Good luck and keep us posted. Some of us might become customers. Thanks for the input Bob, I know what it is I want to do, Im just trying to find out the most fruitfull way to make it all happen....... right now Im sorting through all the gray areas!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dicknite Posted June 15, 2011 Report Share Posted June 15, 2011 Hey Everyone, I hope that I am posting this in the right place and here is my question.......I am a avid tournament angler in the Virginia area and want to open a Online Tackle supply store. After countless hours of searching the web, I can only find one dropshipper (who i can find limited info about), and several that are overseas which I dont trust. Does anyone have any advice or help that could point me in the right direction and help get this up and going? Thanks in advance! I get calls weekly (okay, sometimes monthly) from people who want us to "dropship" for them. I believe there are some late-night infomercials, get-rich-quick books, or something like that out there that tell people that it is "easy to make money! Just find manufacturers who will send the items to the customers you find, and you can collect the difference between what the manufacturer actually charges and what you want to charge!" Only about a hundred problems with that scenerio - here are a few: Manufacturers of fishing tackle don't usually ship in onesey-twosey quantities - retailers do that. Shipping costs on a few lures are, percentage wise, quite expensive. Finding a manufacturer who will do this will be EXTREMELY difficult (I even charge my wholesalers, who buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth a year, a drop-shipping fee of $25 per order!). Some (not all) manufacturers, if they ARE set up to ship small quantities, would rather have the full profit and sell direct to the end-customer - you get bypassed. There is really no economic reason for a manufacturer to do a drop-ship program on low-dollar items like fishing tackle. Finding customers these days is pretty easy - get a wholesaler to carry your product and they do it for you! That's simply how it is. Most manufacturers won't sell off of their own websites, unless it is for full suggested retail PLUS shipping and taxes - they don't want to make their wholesalers and retailer customers mad - something about the manufacturer undercutting the wholesaler and retailer makes the wholesaler and retailer not buy any more product! I am an EXTREMELY small manufacturer - under a million pieces a year - and even I can't justify grinding the wheels of industry to a stop to package up a couple of lures to then take to the post office and mail off. It stops production and shipping of the 20,000 lure orders. Not really cost-effective... I do sell our paints to you TackleUnderground folks, at a discount, but that is simply because I have been coming here for years and you are a pretty good group of folks - and (let's be honest!) it promotes my paint line! I consider the heavy discount and time spent invoicing, packing, shipping, and accounting for the sales a good investment. (Heck, you all even helped me formulate a new top-coat!) Drop ship programs might work for higher priced items, I don't know, but I would wager that 99.999999% of all the tackle sold on retailer websites is shipped from a warehouse that the website owns and keeps full of product. Just my two cents - I hate to see someone get all excited about something that there is little chance of happening. Heck, I even buy used lottery tickets - they are WAY less expensive, and there is only a 1:7,000,000 less chance of winning! Dick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VATACTICAL Posted June 15, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 15, 2011 I get calls weekly (okay, sometimes monthly) from people who want us to "dropship" for them. I believe there are some late-night infomercials, get-rich-quick books, or something like that out there that tell people that it is "easy to make money! Just find manufacturers who will send the items to the customers you find, and you can collect the difference between what the manufacturer actually charges and what you want to charge!" Only about a hundred problems with that scenerio - here are a few: Manufacturers of fishing tackle don't usually ship in onesey-twosey quantities - retailers do that. Shipping costs on a few lures are, percentage wise, quite expensive. Finding a manufacturer who will do this will be EXTREMELY difficult (I even charge my wholesalers, who buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth a year, a drop-shipping fee of $25 per order!). Some (not all) manufacturers, if they ARE set up to ship small quantities, would rather have the full profit and sell direct to the end-customer - you get bypassed. There is really no economic reason for a manufacturer to do a drop-ship program on low-dollar items like fishing tackle. Finding customers these days is pretty easy - get a wholesaler to carry your product and they do it for you! That's simply how it is. Most manufacturers won't sell off of their own websites, unless it is for full suggested retail PLUS shipping and taxes - they don't want to make their wholesalers and retailer customers mad - something about the manufacturer undercutting the wholesaler and retailer makes the wholesaler and retailer not buy any more product! I am an EXTREMELY small manufacturer - under a million pieces a year - and even I can't justify grinding the wheels of industry to a stop to package up a couple of lures to then take to the post office and mail off. It stops production and shipping of the 20,000 lure orders. Not really cost-effective... I do sell our paints to you TackleUnderground folks, at a discount, but that is simply because I have been coming here for years and you are a pretty good group of folks - and (let's be honest!) it promotes my paint line! I consider the heavy discount and time spent invoicing, packing, shipping, and accounting for the sales a good investment. (Heck, you all even helped me formulate a new top-coat!) Drop ship programs might work for higher priced items, I don't know, but I would wager that 99.999999% of all the tackle sold on retailer websites is shipped from a warehouse that the website owns and keeps full of product. Just my two cents - I hate to see someone get all excited about something that there is little chance of happening. Heck, I even buy used lottery tickets - they are WAY less expensive, and there is only a 1:7,000,000 less chance of winning! Dick Again, thanks so much for everyones words of wisdom, and all the insight into this. After dwelling deeper into this, I too have come to conclusion that in order to do all this..... I would have to stock pile product and having to rely on someone else would ultimately in the end affect the clients I am trying to supply. Everyone wants their share of the pie, and I am by no means looking for a "quick, get rich scheme." I know that the retail industry commonly marks up products up to 100%. I was hoping to find someone that I could buy close to wholesale from, and pass the savings on to the consumer. I really dont have the capital to make the initial investment of opening and stocking a warehouse..... my focus was selling near wholesale, make a dollar off of whatever it is instead of 3 or 4, build a client base and let hopefully quantity and quality make it all work out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.J. Posted June 16, 2011 Report Share Posted June 16, 2011 Again, thanks so much for everyones words of wisdom, and all the insight into this. After dwelling deeper into this, I too have come to conclusion that in order to do all this..... I would have to stock pile product and having to rely on someone else would ultimately in the end affect the clients I am trying to supply. Everyone wants their share of the pie, and I am by no means looking for a "quick, get rich scheme." I know that the retail industry commonly marks up products up to 100%. I was hoping to find someone that I could buy close to wholesale from, and pass the savings on to the consumer. I really dont have the capital to make the initial investment of opening and stocking a warehouse..... my focus was selling near wholesale, make a dollar off of whatever it is instead of 3 or 4, build a client base and let hopefully quantity and quality make it all work out! Have you looked into www.FishClick.com . They have a tackle drop shipping program. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VATACTICAL Posted June 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2011 Have you looked into www.FishClick.com . They have a tackle drop shipping program. Will do so now and let you know. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
