Virtuemart Drop Shipping–Integration May be on the Way
by admin
Filed under Sourcing Tips
A Virtuemart drop shipping solution that allows supplier integration with your Joomla ecommerce set up may be on the way care of Inventory Source. In my post, Dropshipping and Virtuemart , I stated that such integration was not possible with Virtuemart. Today, (6/7/2010), a representative from Inventory Source left an extremely informative comment for anyone interested in an insider glimpse into dropshipping and shopping care-supplier integration. I reproducing the comment here; however, you can find my post and all comments can do so by clicking the link above. Here is what Inventory Source has to say,
Thank you for the post about Inventory Source. Our services are fully integrated with VM, Joomla, and many other carts like Open Cart, Zen, etc. We can help turn most platforms into a more turn-key cart by integrating with an existing site and providing easy to use GUI’s to manage the data updates.
Regarding suppliers with fees….I think we have only about 3 suppliers in our network who have any kinds of fees, like SMC. We have looked at removing them but some users still like their catalogs so they have remained since they are still a legit product source who directly ships the items. I would say 90% of the suppliers with some monthly fee are middleman…the remaining are simply try to reduce the number of resellers or non-performing resellers. If you ever did go with a supplier who had a monthly cost I would advise against it unless if you sell over X/month they wave that cost. If they charge you a fee regardless you would have to wonder if they doubt the ability for anyone to be able to sell the products in large amounts…which is why even they are trying to get revenue from some source other then just product sales. In short…there are just too many good supplier options to really feel the need to go with any source that has a monthly account fee just to sell products.
To respond to the order integration with VM. There are carts or modules for carts which say they are a supplier integration. This means you can flag and item by supplier and have the order details sent to that supplier. However, most of these integrations simply send an email. This might be fine for some people using a very small specialty supplier. However, suppliers like Wynit, DH, TechData, IngramMicro, USSCO, etc…do not accept orders from an email or fax. Many of the larger suppliers only allow you to log into your web account or integrate with their FTP directories or order API directly for bulk automated orders. This is the real reason why there is not a standard order integration plug in for a cart and even why systems like Stoneedge dont offer a true order integration option. This is why we have always focused on the inventory automation services. However, while we have not publicly announced it before. I would say we are about 1-2 months away from allowing order automation options for users on all of our integrated platforms, including Virtuemart/Joomla
For integration options and information of real dropshippers and wholesalers, check out Inventory Source.
