Sourdough baking, home workouts and Zoom meetings: these are familiar trends reminiscent of the lockdowns of the last two years. Did you know there was another surprising industry that boomed over the global pandemic?
The growth of the dropshipping market has caused a big boost in the need for warehouses. Warehousing space is limited and it’s not an easy to feat to build more. A simple solution is to expand existing warehouses with the addition of mezzanines.
These experts mention that a mezzanine can be installed in high-ceiling buildings like warehouses, creating another level of storage that can be ideal for storing seasonal stock or products that are in high demand. Companies that supply commercial mezzanine flooring, like Western Industrial, have commented that there has been a significant increase in storage facilities struggling to store the larger volumes of stock now required by dropshipping businesses.
Why are so many people turning to dropshipping solutions? There are many advantages to the modern concept of a dropshipping based business.
- Significantly less start-up costs.
You don’t have to invest in acquiring inventory and finding a location to store it. You don’t need to hire staff to fulfil orders or spend precious time organising the inventory. If your funds are limited, a dropshipping business is a great option.
- Lower inventory management.
As you don’t need to manage a physical inventory, the overheads of managing this are removed entirely. You don’t need to spend time tracking inventory, managing infrastructure, or dealing with shipping.
- Unlimited potential of scalability.
If sales fluctuate due to seasonal products, you can adjust the scale of the business to fit the changing circumstances for your business.
- Fantastic flexibility and freedom.
Everybody wants a job that allows them flexibility. Especially since the pandemic reminded us of what’s really important, the ability to work anywhere, anytime is a great bonus.
- Broad range of products to be offered.
Dropshipping opens up a whole new world of potential product options, which expands the opportunities of smaller businesses that otherwise wouldn’t have the means to sell such a wide and varied selection.
So why was dropshipping the business to be in during the pandemic?
With much more time and much less to do, we all became guilty of browsing and ordering many more things online than we usually would do. As people spent more time at home, they turned their hands to all the DIY tasks on their to-do lists and needed to buy the items to attend to them. Similarly, as children spent their days at home rather than at school, they needed more toys, games, and stationery to keep them entertained and occupied. At the same time, working from the office became a thing of the past and more and more people needed to purchase the furniture and equipment to establish their comfortable offices at home, so they didn’t have to work alongside the kids at the kitchen table. With the increase in pet purchases, came an increase in pet supply purchases. As holiday and birthdays were spent apart, there was a greater need to send gifts and treats directly and therefore ordering them online became the norm. Technology took over the lives of those restricted by the pandemic, and ultimately became a lifeline to many. In order to remain safe, many chose to continue purchasing online even after restrictions were lifted. Even now, two years from the start of the chaos, the trend of shopping online as become a habit to many due to the ease of browsing, the variety available to online shoppers, the convenience of delivery and the safety of staying at home. Dropshipping businesses are here to stay!
