Drop Ship

Every business has its jargon, and in on-line retailing the phrase of the day is "drop ship."  Meaning I just learned about it.  Basically, a person decides to open a shop but doesn't provide any of the merchandise; rather, s/he lines up a bunch of vendors who list their items on the site and ship the product to the buyer when it sells.  The site owner collects the money from the buyer and pays the seller, keeping a little something something for him/herself.  Either I discount to the seller (ecopartytime), or the seller adds something on (murraywines).

I've been contacted recently by two such sites and I'm going to give them a try.  Ecopartytime.com offers ecologically-friendly gifts for holidays and other celebrations (e.g., graduation) throughout the year.  They're interested in my laptop and ipad bags and my card wallets.  And www.murraywines.com (under construction, I'm told, but honestly it doesn't look as though the domain name has been purchased yet) likes my wine bag bottles.

I think this is a pretty safe bet and actually a fairly classic middleman retailer situation.  Murraywines isn't planned to open until April 1 but I've got my items picked out for Ecopartytime, however, they're targeted for Father's Day and Graduation so may not be posted for awhile.  Anyway, I'll update later when they're up and running.