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The issue is that running a dropshipping store is often short-lived and people find themselves jumping from idea to idea, but never settling on a single store. It doesn’t have to be this way though. With the right approach, you can run the same dropshipping store long-term and in this post, I’m going to explain why branded dropshipping is the way to go.
Why You Should Build a Brand Store
When it comes to running a typical dropshipping store or running a dropshipping brand store, there are several reasons why we favour the latter.
First, you’re going to be building a brand which you can grow into a sustainable business and which will be around in the long run. Generic dropshipping stores can last as little as a few months before their store owners abandon them and move onto the next product idea – you don’t want to be one of those people!
Second, with this approach, you won’t be sticking to typical distributors like AliExpress, but you’ll be reaching out to lesser-known distributors. Not only does this help you build business connections as a dropshipper, but it also makes your product lines more exclusive and there will be less competition.
Common Problems with Dropshipping Stores
The biggest problem with dropshipping stores is that a lot of the success can be put down to chance, rather than skill. Maybe you were one of the first people to find an untapped product, or perhaps you just ran better Facebook Ads than your competitor.
Another problem comes after your success. As soon as your store starts picking up sales, there are people out there scraping data from dropshipping stores who will find you, copy your store, and will have just as much success as you did. To add to this, because so many beginners use AliExpress for their stores, copying their product lines couldn’t be any easier.
As a Shopify brand store, it’s much harder for those people to copy your store and compete with you. So much so that they’ll move on and choose an easier dropshipping store to copy instead.
Building a Shopify Brand Store
There are two types of people who do dropshipping. We’ve got the people who flash their cash on social media and try to sell courses on how to make money, and there are the dedicated people who quietly build their Shopify dropshipping brand store and make 7 or 8 figures.
To be like those dedicated dropshippers, you need to be passionate and strive towards providing your customers with the best products, a great customer experience, and you need to focus on building a brand alongside getting sales.
By building up this massive brand equity, your ad budget is going to be spent more efficiently – conversion rates will be much higher and because you’ve grown into a trusted brand, more people will be willing to buy from you.
You won’t spend every other month researching the next fad and finding new suppliers. You’ll be building a real business, with a brand, that isn’t going to shut down after two months.
Advantages of Building a Strong Dropshipping Brand
Although you’ll have to work on developing a strong brand when you’re running a branded dropshipping store, there are plenty of advantages that make this extra work worthwhile.
Long-term, not short-term
This isn’t about setting up a store, gambling on whether your product will get sales, and moving onto the next idea. Branded stores are about creating a sustainable store that generates profit and has a very long lifespan.
Less competition
Since you’re not just grabbing products from an extremely popular distributor, significantly fewer stores will have the same products you do and there won’t be as many competitors standing in your way.
You’re more secure
One reason people give up on dropshipping is that when they find a good product, they quickly get copied. With a dropshipping brand store, the chances of someone copying you are slim to none.
How to Protect Your Dropshipping Business
Like we said before, there are groups of people out there who are constantly on the hunt to steal other people’s ideas and copy their stores. So, what can you do to protect your dropshipping business? Legally, there are a few options. You could copyright certain aspects of your store, trademark products, or if you’re truly unique you could even get a patent.
In terms of dropshipping, specifically, protecting your store isn’t quick and effortless, but there are definitely some routes you can take.
- The first thing to do is to avoid Alibaba and AliExpress. Spy tools are constantly crawling Shopify stores and checking these distributors to see what’s selling the most. Before long, 20 more competitors pop up. If you sell products that aren’t exclusive to those sites, you won’t have this problem.
- Following on from that, get products that nobody else can sell. Basically, the supplier will give you distribution rights. This means you exclusively get to sell the product in a certain area (country, state, etc.). Contrary to what you might think, this is very easy to do and is something that suppliers are more than willing to offer. This isn’t always an option though.
- Don’t copy someone else’s store. Some beginners feel like it’s a good idea to quickly launch a store and make some quick cash, but if you steal ideas from other stores which happen to be protected by trademarks and such, this could put your store at risk of being taken down.
In addition, there are also practical ways of protecting your store, such as website security (incredibly important since your site will be handling sensitive payment information).
Build Your Ecommerce Empire
I see so many non-dropshippers interested in getting into the game and the best piece of advice I can offer is to do branded dropshipping. You’re going to encounter fewer roadblocks along the way and instead of focusing on fending off the competition, you can stick to running your Google Ads/Facebook Ads campaigns.
As appealing as it is to jump in and start just another generic store, if you’re aiming to have a thriving Ecommerce empire, it’s definitely worth putting in the legwork to set up a Shopify brand store.
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