In the last few years, online shopping in the UK has grown by 17% to 18% each year, bringing in billions of pounds in sales each year.
Consider starting a dropshipping business if you want to get a piece of this money. With this type of business, you don’t keep any products on hand. You just market and advertise the products you want to sell, and the supplier or manufacturer ships the products for you.
The problem is that most cheap goods come from Asia. If you buy products there, it will take weeks or months for them to get to the United Kingdom, which will be bad for your customers.
To fix this, you need to get your products from the UK and make sure they are already there so the shipping doesn’t take too long.
We’re going to look at a tool called Spocket today. It’s a platform where you can find dropshipping suppliers in the UK. If you want to sell products in the UK, this is a good place to find them.
In the end, you’ll make more money, sell better products, and keep your customers happy.
A lot of online markets try to look like they have suppliers in the UK. But the big problem is that online sites like AliExpress and Chinabrands don’t have a way to sort sellers or suppliers by where their warehouses are.
How do you use Spocket?
Spocket is an online platform with a list of suppliers and manufacturers from all over the world. It can’t be used by people who buy things in stores. People can’t look at and buy things here the way they can on Amazon or eBay.
This is something good!
It means that you have access to products and suppliers that no one else does.
Spocket is a way for wholesale suppliers, dropship companies, and manufacturers to connect with sellers. The sellers can choose the items they want to sell and put them on their online stores.
As customers buy from the seller, the seller just needs to go back to his Spocket account, place the order, and the manufacturer will ship the item to the customer.
Spocket can only be used with the Shopify and WooCommerce platforms right now.
One of the best things about Spocket and a reason you should use it to find products for your UK market is that you can find things here that are actually in the UK. This means that the manufacturers are also in the UK, and they will use UK shipping couriers to get the product to the customer who ordered it.
This is important so that your customer won’t have to wait weeks to get the things he ordered from you.
What’s the point of using Spocket?
Spocket is a great tool that is available for free. There are three main reasons why you should use it:
- The plan is free.
- You can get products from companies in the countries you want.
- It makes it easy to keep track of stock and orders.
The tool is great for both experienced and new dropshippers.
If you want your online business to grow, you should be ready to spend a little money. The free plan has limits, which will be talked about in more detail later.
Spocket can help you get your online business much more organized if you are new to selling things online. It’s great if all you want to do is sell things in the UK and ship them quickly. It also saves you a lot of time when you are looking into products.
When you go to a big marketplace like AliExpress, you can’t make it show only products made by companies in a certain country.
On AliExpress, you have to open each product to see where it comes from, but you can’t tell from the product’s name. But a lot of posts and marketing materials will tell you that the Chinese suppliers have warehouses in the UK.
From the picture below, you can see that this item will ship to the UK in 40 days. That should be a sign that the physical location of this product is not in the UK but in Asia.
Spocket is also great for people who want to sell high-quality goods. There are a lot of fakes on AliExpress. Many say that they are Original Equipment Manufacturers, which is another clear sign that they are not.
OEMs can’t sell the products they make because no brand will let them. Their job is to make things, not to sell them.
With Spocket, you can find unique, high-quality products that will keep your customers coming back and make them happy with what you sell.
Spotlight: Suppliers from all over the world
You want to find things that are sold in the UK. Spocket lets you do this. But that’s not all you can do. You can choose products from any country that have been stored there.
But if you only want to sell UK products, all you have to do is log in to your dashboard. When you sign in, you’ll see the page below.
The next step is to click the “Search Products” link on the left side of the page. You can also just type the keyword for the product into the search box.
As you can see, there are a number of filters next to the search box. Click the SELECT BY LOCATION button to only see products from the UK.
If you do this, a drop-down menu will appear with two options:
- From Ships
- to Ships
You want to put the country United Kingdom in both spots so that the site will only show products from makers whose products are in the UK and who also ship to the UK.
This way, you can be sure that the only products you see are ones that are already in the UK and ready to be sold there.
This is important because some manufacturers keep their stock in the UK, but they don’t ship to the UK.
If you find out about this after you have already chosen and added products to your store, you will be very upset.
Import List: A Spocket Feature
Click the IMPORT LIST link on the left side of your control panel. When you click this, you’ll see a list of all the items you’ve chosen.
The items on the import list are not the same as the ones in your online store right now. These are the products you chose, and they are ready to be changed.
In this case, the product chosen is called a “Graphic Print Ringer Tee.” The maker gave it this name, but you can change it.
Changing the name is a key part of search engine optimization, so it’s important to do. By making your site SEO-friendly, you can get more people to visit your product.
The name will now be T-Shirt with Yellow, Pink, and Blue Hem.
You can choose to put product tags there, which will make it easier for you to sort your products later or add them to a certain collection.
A collection is a group of products that are similar in some way. You can make a collection called Pants, for example. All of the items you add to this collection have to be pants.
If a customer clicks on “Pants” in your online store, he will only see pants and not t-shirts. It makes it easy for customers to look at only the products they are interested in.
You can now also change the product’s description if you want to. If you don’t like how the manufacturer wrote the product description, you need to do this.
From the picture above, you can see that the description is pretty clear. You can turn this into something:
You can also change the different options and add more pictures if you want. If you click on “Variations,” you’ll see the shirt’s standard sizes. You can check the boxes or not. Here, we unchecked the XL size box to show that we could choose not to sell that size.
You can also change the price of the item in this area. You can sell the different kinds of a product at different prices or the same prices.
If you haven’t finished editing but are too tired to keep going, just click “Save,” and all your work will be saved. But you won’t be able to sell it on your store.
You must click PUSH TO STORE if you want the precut to be browseable and for sale.
Spocket Feature: My Orders
This is where your orders will show up. This won’t have any information until your chosen products have been added to the store and someone has bought them.
Here, you have to click on the CHECKOUT button. After you do that, you’ll be able to see the details of your order, such as how much it costs and how much it costs to ship.
If you want, you can write a note to the supplier. Then click the PLACE ORDER button.
Once this is done, the supplier will be told, and he will send the item to the customer.
You have to click on VIEW CUSTOMER INFO at the top of the page to see the customer’s information, such as his name and shipping address. You can contact the customer to make sure the information is correct before you order the product.
Once you’ve done all of this, you don’t have to worry about shipping. That will be taken care of by the provider.
Price Sockets
As we’ve already said, Spocket has a free plan. But you can only sell or choose up to 25 products with this. This is a great way to get started. But if you want to sell more, you’ll have to sign up for one of the paid plans.
PRO and EMPIRE are the other two options. Each month, the PRO costs $49 and the EMPIRE costs $99. If you pay for the subscription all at once, you can save a lot.
Summary
It’s easy to find things in the UK if you know where to look. But there aren’t as many choices as there are in the U.S. or China.
Dropshipping to the UK works best if you are willing to put in the time and effort to find products that are actually in the UK, but Spocket makes this easier.
