The Guild has had a trickle of attention lately from would-be dropshippers, ecommerce “experts,” and self-described dropshipping “gurus.” One or two comments even came in for our Tumblr asking if we had information for indie sellers who were just getting started with their dropshipping business. We found this… startling. Why would dropshippers of all people think that we were here to represent them? Is dropshipping so intertwined with the concept of online indie selling?
It occurred to me, contemplating these blogs that advertised or sought out an easy escape from working life (“earn passive income!” “no inventory needed!”) that online shopping, to a lot of people, may indeed be inextricably linked to the presence of a middleman raking in all the bucks. Amazon, Temu, Shein — all websites full of archetypes of whatever product you’re looking for, nevermind the people who create and ship those things under poor conditions for wages well below their worth (sources: Amazon, Temu, Shein).
Even Etsy has become a faceless conglomerate in some people’s eyes; my own mother-in-law found a beautiful crocheted beanie on Etsy last year, and she was only able to name the platform as her source. I don’t blame her, but it does exemplify the consumer side of labor alienation that may contribute to the normalization of dropshipping as a valid form of income.
What Is Dropshipping?
When you purchase goods from supermarkets and clothing store giants, there’s an understanding that the retailer didn’t create the items in-house. Most of it is bought at wholesale price from a supplier. Store-brand items were created for the retailer, but you understand that the people bringing it to you are at the tail end of the process. Their job is to make the products available to you, because the factories where they were produced are simply not there for you to browse. Their service is convenient and often needed.
When you shop online, the middleman that is a retailer becomes significantly less necessary, and their presence less obvious. Brands can make their own websites to take the place of a third party shop and ship their products directly to customers. Why would they spend that extra cash on having their products hosted in someone else’s store when they’re already accessible to anywhere with an internet connection?
This convenience inherent to the internet also means that independent sellers can present an inventory who may have never been able to afford a physical storefront. If you can create your own website or set up shop with ecommerce sites like Etsy and Amazon, you can accept money in exchange for the promise of shipment. You can safely store inventory in your house, make that promise, and then take that product to the post office.
To a consumer, the process of buying from big name versus indie online storefronts is the same: see the pictures, read the description, click “purchase,” and wait for a package. That standard makes it pretty easy for another kind of online seller to present you with a product on an original-looking webpage, accept your money in exchange for the promise of shipment — and then turn around and give (some of) that money to an actual supplier that sends you your purchase.
That is dropshipping. At its essence, it just means the person or people you’re giving your money to don’t make products, don’t keep an inventory, and don’t make shipments. Supplying companies don’t have to go through third parties when selling online, but it can unfortunately benefit them if hundreds of wanna-be entrepreneurs volunteer to advertise their product as if it were their own. One of these companies may be the only supplier of a particular item, but any number of dropshippers can essentially replicate listings for that same item over and over and over.
Have you ever found yourself annoyed at how many Google results show the exact same image for the exact same product with the exact same description from entirely different stores?
Yeah.
So, What Is Indie Selling?
Indie selling is admittedly a wide brush to paint with, but I won’t drag this out: dropshippers do not fall under the umbrella of workers that ISG seeks to represent. In order to become a verified seller with us, you have to prove that you personally create and/or physically handle your inventory — either because you are an artisan who crafted the product, or because you’re a curator who collected and prepared something old, rare, or otherwise unique.
An indie shop isn’t necessarily a one person operation, but we take it as a given that everyone involved adds value to the products being sold. Let’s say you work with a partner who galvanizes the leaves that you collect and prepare for shipment; you may not be the crafting artisan, but you did play a key role in the process. Reselling cheap, mass-produced goods adds no value whatsoever — but if you wish to restore and sell your old craft supplies rather than create waste, that makes all the difference.
Dropshipping, by definition, adds no value.
What If I Still Want To Dropship, Though?
We understand the desperation that can lead to trying to build a dropshipping business. It’s similar to what drives people into MLMs or content farms. Saying “no” when you’re offered easy money is tough, but…
Well, here’s some words from Kristi on that:
Please don’t fall for a dropshipping get-rich-quick scheme! As a thousands-strong organization of internet-savvy creative business owners, we have some inside knowledge on the subject. Which we are happy to share with you, for free!
To our knowledge, none of our members have ever done dropshipping, but one of our members does have a very loose acquaintance who is a successful dropshipper. The strategy for earning income at it seems to be:
- Be a web developer who can build websites very quickly and can buy domains (.com addresses) in bulk, so that you pay very little for each website you create.
- Wait until a few months before Christmas, then look at trends to figure out which things are most likely to be popular this year.
- Create dozens of stores with hundreds of dropshipped products in each.
- Infiltrate online communities with a bunch of throwaway accounts and spam links to your stores. (Create bots to do it if you can).
- Profit?…
I mentioned labor alienation near the start of this article. If you’re unfamiliar, the meaning is pretty much what it says on the tin: a sense of alienation from the labor that goes into the creation of our everyday items and the functioning of our everyday lives.
The theory goes much further than that (alienation from our labor and the labor of others can lead to profound alienation from the self) but I just want to hone in on what’s lost when you obscure the source of things with brand names that exist for the sake of a middleman’s profits. You lose the truth of the process.
Someone designed the shape of your bed frame. Someone procured the materials for it. Someone built it. Someone packed it into a box. Someone drove it to the store, or directly to your house, before you ever saw it.
Every item we own got into our hands because of human effort. If you place yourself between an object’s final destination and the last person in the supply chain, you’ve just added more distance and — again — no value. What’s the point?
Addendum: The Exception
There is one case in which dropshipping may not be dishonest, and where the seller may actually add value. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on whether or not it really falls under “dropshipping,” but I would like to be thorough as long as I’m here.
You may be familiar with platforms like Redbubble or Printify, where anyone can upload their own images and have them printed on various items, which are then fulfilled and shipped to customers without the shop owner needing to handle the physical product. We have yet to develop a statement on this ourselves, but if you’re interested, Valerie of Artisans Cooperative wrote up a thoughtful article about the topic of “print on demand” from a handmade perspective in 2023.
And So…
Part of why we’re here to begin with is Etsy allowing dropshipping to run rampant on their platform. As indie sellers, we don’t want to compete with copy-pasted listings of the same mass produced items over and over again. For that matter, as online shoppers, we would rather not be bombarded with the illusion of choice that comes with items from the same supplier being sold under so many different names. (This problem overlaps with the reselling issue that we’ve been addressing.)
Ultimately, the Indie Sellers Guild seeks to be an online extension of the labor movement. In capitalism, things are often divided into a working class and an owning class, and we’re here for the working class. With some possible exceptions (see the addendum above), dropshipping is a way to claw at the benefits of being part of the owning class: gaining profit for nothing more than inserting yourself into a transaction that doesn’t need you to operate fairly. We don’t condone that, and we don’t represent that.
As we publish this article, the holiday season is closing in. We know that a lot of you will be searching the web for gift ideas, and most of what comes up will be mass produced, possibly dropshipped, and maybe created using forced or coerced labor. Please consider putting that little bit more effort into finding something from an independent online and/or local shop. Give yourself the knowledge that your money is going to the people who worked to get you that sweater or board game or custom-made pillowcase.
Support indie sellers, not economic middlemen, as often as you can.