Drop Shipping shenanigans

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fozziedabear

Registered User
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I am looking to sell prints of my artwork and photography online. Don't think I will have a huge turnover in fairness.
To ease the process and save on storing packaging and manually fulfilling orders I am looking at working with a UK based drop shipping vendor.
I guess that most purchases will be locally in Ireland, the UK and the USA.

In terms of working out costing in my online cart, I need to set a pricing list that covers:
  • the product ( which is fine as I have worked this all out with the vat and tax)
  • the cost of the vendor to produce - again I have been given their price list matrix
  • Cost of shipping to the UK, Ireland and beyond
Has anyone any insight into how to cover the taxes/vat/customs from the vendor when they ship in the UK and also then in Ireland?
Do I add onto the total price for each area as I'm guessing these are different?

Any help or insights would be great
Cheers
 
So what is the process you envisage?

I go to your website.
I see a print I like.
I purchase it on your website.
You send the order to "Drop Shipping Ltd" in the UK
They print it.
they post it to Ireland or the UK or America.

I doubt that they would be interested for a small level of business as the costs of setting up would outweigh the potential profits.

If you are shipping to Ireland (or the EU) where I presume your base is, there is no VAT if you are not registered for VAT. Postage would be cheaper. So I reckon you should ship Irish orders yourself.

If a large UK company ships to Ireland, the Irish customer will have to pay 13.5% VAT and higher postage. I presume that they can look after the VAT themselves so that the customer in Ireland won't have to go to the hassle of paying An Post or Fedex for it. They will pay the VAT at the point of purchase. But it just seems an additional expense to the customer and you will have to pay Drop Shipping Ltd for the service. And what if it doesn't arrive? They will contact you via your website.

There are photo agencies you could use for non EU customers e.g. Getty Images. Ah, but they probably just license the use of the photo which is probably not what you want.

Have you a link to a drop shipping company which does what you want it to do?

You should speak to fellow art photographers who can tell you how they cracked this problem.
 
fozziedabear said:
To ease the process and save on storing packaging and manually fulfilling orders
Click to expand...

Purchasers of artworks like to have a personal contact with the maker. The few times I have bought such stuff over the likes of Etsy, I often I got a handwritten note from the maker which makes the work more personal.

So I think you should probably do the printing and packaging and posting yourself.

That way, you can also make sure of the quality standard and handle any follow up queries.

Brendan
 
If going dropshipping route, look at companies in northern Ireland. They can ship to all EU and UK locations without customs issues. There are several small family operators up there and prices are not too bad.

But another option is to set aside a particular day each week to pack and dispatch orders and state that on whatever platform you use. - possibly get someone in to assist for a couple of hours.

If you can keep the size to 40cm x 30cm, you can use anpost large envelope rates.
 
Amazing advice - much appreciated - looking at printing locally and tallying up the postal rates from an post - looks like you can prepay for parcels online.

Much of my prints will be well over that size, so need to figure out tubes and the cost to ship then..

I'm in excel wonderland at the moment.. :)
 
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