Direct Shipping: Definition, Advantages, Disadvantages

Direct Shipping, as the name suggests, is a method of delivering the goods directly from the supplier to the customer. As said, whenever a product is shipped directly, the seller only passes the delivery information to the supplier, and the rest is then managed by the supplier.

Practically, the cargo & shipment will go right from the factory directly to the customer without any stopping in the supply chain that could be a warehouse or any seller facility.

Comparing it with dropshipping, direct shipping is only a shipping method whereas dropshipping is a business model. There are pros and cons, involved in shipping direct:

Pros and Cons of Direct Shipping

• When you are shipping directly, there is no quality guarantee for the products that are been sent to the customer from the supplier. Here, the seller’s reputation is always at stake.
• Direct shipping the products can help the seller to save a lot of logistics and warehouse costs
• Direct shipping can be a great asset to a lean manufacturer.

Example of Direct Shipping

There is a home-based cake boutique which is not financially strong enough to have its own online storefront. In such a case, the owner of the boutique collaborated with someone who can showcase the products on their website.

Now, as per the agreement, here if the order is received, the boutique owner is the one responsible to deliver the product to the customer and not the one who has listed. In this case, direct shipping is very clear. There is no involvement of the mediator except for alerting the boutique owner about the order.