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Selling Food Online: A Rewarding Business Opportunity
Why Should You Sell Natural Products Online?
Natural products have become increasingly popular and profitable. There are two simple reasons why you should start selling food online products online. First, ever-growing focus on healthy diet and nature-friendly lifestyle come with an increasing demand for natural, organic products. Second, a higher number of consumers are choosing the convenience of shopping online rather than picking your own food products at the grocery store. These two facts come together to create the ideal conditions to open your online natural food store. Success seems to be very likely if you are doing everything right.
Organic Trade Association`s research reports: “sales of organic food in the U.S. totaled around $47 billion in 2016, reflecting new sales of almost $3.7 billion from the previous year. Organic food now accounts for more than five percent of total food sales in the U.S. Moreover, organic food sales increased by 8.4 percent from last year, blowing past the stagnant 0.6 percent growth rate in the overall food market. Sales of organic non-food products were up 8.8% in 2016. ”
Overall, increasing demand for organic food and convenience of online shopping come together to create perfect conditions for selling natural food products online.
Drop shipping is Perfect Especially if You Are a Small Business
Selling food online can be very rewarding. It’s a great way to make extra income. However, it goes without saying that it may come with certain difficulties. Managing a large inventory of perishable food items, and shipping them in a timely fashion requires a serious investment of your time, money, staff, and professional skills. If you are an individual seller, who wants to sell the food you love either in one of the e-commerce platforms or your own online store, it might be a terrible idea to store the food products yourself. There is a much better way: drop shipping.
Drop shipping suppliers will take care of the problems that come with selling food online. Finding a drop ship supplier is especially smart in the food category because the inventory risk is higher with food compared to other categories. A good drop ship supplier will store the food products in excellent condition, offer fast, affordable, and reliable blind shipment.
Fast and Reliable Shipping is Crucial
You might want to double-check if the supplier has the type of food products you want to sell. If you are interested in selling frozen food, make sure to ask your drop shipping supplier about what techniques they use to sell frozen items. While some drop shippers have groundbreaking solutions to shipping frozen, others might be off their game. For example, dry ice shipping makes the package much heavier and it is considered to be hazardous for air travel. On the other hand, certain innovative shipment methods allow the products to stay frozen for up to three days. At the same time, it does not make the package as heavy as dry ice shipping method.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Spoilage and Love Selling Food Online
Storing your own food products and shipping them yourself is a nonviable option for small online stores. Taking the infamous inventory risk may not be something you would want to deal with. This is especially true if you are selling in grocery category. On the other hand, drop shipping suppliers save you from worrying about expiration dates, selling out, value loss, and supply shortfall.
This is how drop shipping works in a nutshell: retailers list the products they want to sell on an online marketplace or their own online store. They make sure that their supplier has those products in stock. Then, they load the latest inventory data, which the supplier should provide for the retailers’ business. When the retailers receive an order in their online store, they will simply need to redirect the order to their drop shipper. Then, the dropship supplier will blind ship it directly to the end customer, who will then only see retailers store`s name on the package. The end customer will never know the package came from the dropship supplier. Problem solved!
Selling in Natural Food Category is Great Because of Low Return Rates
Unlike other categories such as clothing, selling in the food category, has much lower return rates. For instance, if you sell organic, natural products, you are likely to pick your favorite products. Perhaps, you will choose the food products, which you enjoy to consume. Similarly, your online customers will be familiar with the brand products that they love and adore. As long as they are content with prices, shipment and product`s condition, they will not need to return them. If your supplier is reliable, there is nothing else to worry about. Your customers will not return purchased products. They will also keep coming back to you on a regular basis.
Buying Food is a Necessity Rather than a Luxury
We all need food to survive. This simple fact only makes grocery category a more attractive one. Unlike other categories such as jewelry, grocery is not a luxury. Instead, it is a universal necessity. As long as your customer is content, they will re-order from you on a regular basis. Having a repeat business will lower your marketing cost. This is because you do not have to spend too much trying to acquire new customers.
Ready to make money selling online?