Working From Home - Dropshipping & Girls Who Network

I was really enjoying Chicago, the sights, the people and the buzz that seemed to almost propel the population to a higher level of business expectation. This was not only a windy city but a vibrant cosmopolitan arena with its’ own heartbeat, which apparently only ran at cardiac arrest speed and the adrenalin never seemed to stop.

I was attending another function in a glorious building that made you feel somebody just by being there. Fantastic atmosphere and not the dull, monotone and bored feeling that overwhelmed many a patron at other such gatherings around the world. Although it was supposed to be a quite relaxing networking evening after a hard day at the office it turned out anything but that.

There were so many executives there that I soon became separated from my small group and as the adrenalin pumped up I felt more and more that I was here again for another reason.

That became apparent as I wandered into a lounge area decorated with soft leather furniture. I took a glass of red wine and began to mingle. Sitting down in a group of maybe nine or ten people were the “ladies who do lunch”. They all looked as if they were the center of attention and the onlookers hung on every word throughout. It was almost a mentoring session and highly charged.

The topic was again dropshipping and this time had focused on the quality of the products available to home working groups. The ladies spoke at length about how difficult it was to find top quality products and top suppliers who really were genuine dropship suppliers. The ladies confirmed that a great list was being put together by all their associated home working community which apparently was booming due to the simple approach the ladies had taken and shared amongst the small business community and startup groups. This was how the dropship list had evolved

The dropship list apparently had a few hundred suppliers which accounted for thousands of products and the list was growing rapidly. As I listened many other very pertinent points were covered again with passion and with business acumen. These ladies were highly motivating and more people were being sucked into the conversation.

It was made clear that with techno advancements it was relatively easy to set up a dropship account with large wholesale suppliers. Although this had the advantage of fast and easy access into the markets the downside was margins and unique products. Set up fees, monthly charges per dropship, upgrade costs and stock-outs were all common problems. A quick question from the now alarmingly large audience was, “why should a top quality dropship list make any difference”?

A gentle silence fell on the group and one of the ladies turned and in a soft and measured voice replied, “Young man it makes all the difference in the world”. Although he blushed she did not extend his discomfort and explained further to the delight of the audience the benefits as perceived through their experience on the subject. I grabbed another small wine and listened with due courtesy and respect as given by a student to a respected teacher.

She spoke at length but the general thread was very clear, she was passionate about quality and integrity. There are in my opinion two major qualities that would always give a small business startup an edge on the competition. Total quality management philosophy in business can be applied to even the smallest of companies and can have significant results on the bottom line. Quality products, quality service and fair prices should be one of the ways of obtaining customer loyalty. Most new start-ups failed in the first year through poor planning and preparation, poor funding and poor management skills.

However quality was not going to be compromised. The list includes companies from both USA and the UK and covered thousands of items and many categories. A home worker could choose to market just one product or however many they felt they could cope with as their businesses began to grow.

The evening was coming to an end and one of the ladies stood and thanked everyone and hoped they had found what had been discussed of interest. Hopefully it had also made them think of new and innovative ways that small businesses could be helped to be started, then grow and flourish in the Windy City and help to increase the wealth and lifestyle of the whole community. They had hoped to have a brief discussion on how to take small businesses to market both quickly and with low cost. That topic, she said would be for another time.

So what happened next? As you can see dropshipping is a methodology but add the TCM ethos and the business can be very different beast. Again I knew I should be doing some more research visit their website How To Drop Ship and pass on this to new small business groups and forums in the UK. My own busy schedule had began to go off the rails, but this was definitely the way forward and I now sincerely hoped that I would have another chance to listen to those ladies again at another superb location in the City of Chicago. Check out the next article “Girls who party”.