How to Start an Online Store Without Inventory

Launching a business online doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make huge up-front capital investments on inventories. Gone are the days when entrepreneurs had to worry about manufacturing or buying their products in bulk, let alone figuring out warehousing and logistics.

So, what’s the catch?

With time, the rules of retail have changed. From online dropshipping stores to affiliate marketing, a lot of e-commerce models have emerged that don't necessitate inventory management. You just have to find a good model that fits perfectly per the scope of your business goals.

In this article, we will guide you about how to start an online store without exhausting your resources on inventory. Read on to get a better understanding of an inventory-free online store before taking the plunge into it!

Top Models To Get Your Online Store Running Without Inventory

Once you have picked your niche and have a clear understanding of the technicalities of your industry, the next important step is to decide upon a business model that aligns best with the pursuit.

Let's explore our list of top business models to help you figure out how to start an online store without an inventory.

Print-On-Demand

If you don’t want to worry about stocking your inventory up, the print-on-demand model can be great for you. As the name suggests, you sell printable products that are curated only when a customer places an order for them.

All you need to get started is a direction with designing and the type of product you want to sell. Once that's in your store, a customer makes a purchase and your printing supplier prints that design on a white label item. That is then shipped to the customer.

The best part is that you need no significant start up costs and zero inventory space for this method. However, keep in mind that the profit margin relies on the quality of your product and design. You don’t want to mess that up at any point!

Dropshipping

By setting up an online dropshipping store, you create a marketplace for products that will be later sourced from a third party. To put it simply, when a customer purchases something from your store, the order will be directed to your dropshipping partner for that particular product (either the manufacturer or the supplier). They will then directly send it to the customer.

This way you wouldn’t have to maintain your own stock. Instead, your online store would serve as an anchor between the two parties - the customer and the supplier. This will give you the flexibility to source products from multiple niches and expand your market reach.

To make your dropshipping business stand out, you need to partner with reliable suppliers. That means you can sell just about anything on your website as long as you offer a good variety of products.

While it gets heavily easy to manage orders through suppliers, you will have to spend time on sourcing products yet have little control over product quality. If you want a loyal customer base and repeat business for your USA dropshipping store, keep in mind that the top-notch quality of your product mix is simply non-negotiable!

Affiliate Marketing

Another option on the table is finding other sellers who are willing to pay you a commission from every purchase of their product made through you. This is affiliate marketing in its essence. Instead of directly making sales, you promote their product on your website and link it up for purchase. Now if the customer buys the product through your affiliate link, you get your share.

This model also saves you from inventory and fulfillment while giving you ample time to focus on the promotion itself. The only need is to strategize your marketing efforts in a way that drives good traffic to your store. Once established, it can generate good passive income for you.

One caveat about this is the low percentage of profit over products for the affiliates. You need to make a huge number of sales before you can see significant profits.

As the affiliate market is getting saturated with more and more entrepreneurs every day, you need to be clever with picking your niche. The key to making consistent money in this model is to stay ahead of the competition in your particular industry at all times.

Third-Party Logistics

Before we get into it, note that this only works for entrepreneurs who still have a budget that’s good enough to outsource their business operations. By using a Third-Party Logistics company or 3PL for short, you simply source all the logistical operations to another company saving you from the hassles of inventory management.

Keep in mind that while your business might still have an inventory regardless, it is just that you wouldn't be handling it - as you would be hiring another company to do it for you. This will give you all the time you need to solely focus on expanding your online store.

As we mentioned before, this model might not work for all businesses. In fact, we recommend only such businesses that have scaled into bulk operations to approach a 3PL company.

On the contrary, if you are a start-up or a small-scale business with a limited budget that wants to maximize quick sales, other models particularly an online dropshipping store might work better for you.

Wrapping Up

If starting a dropshipping business is what interests you the most, what’s better than finding a single platform that can cater to all your dropshipping operations in one place? The biggest struggle within this model is to find reliable suppliers. At Doba, we got it all covered.

With our centralized system, we provide a variety of methods for discovering products and profitable niches. You can also speed up the product listing process by integrating the suppliers and their platforms. Build your USA dropshipping store today and have global access to millions of users to drive maximum sales!