What Are Drop-Shipped Watches? (And How to Avoid Them)
When scrolling through Instagram, have you ever wondered why so many watches look so similar? There are a ton of fashion watch brands, who’s ‘unique’ designs look identical. What exactly is going on here?
In a lot of cases, those brands are dropshipping. In this article, I’m going to explain dropshipping, how you can spot drop shipped products and how you can ensure you avoid them.
Dropshipping Explained
Here’s how drop-shipping essentially works. Let’s pretend you are the business owner, who wants to set up a watch brand using this method. First, you head online to a supplier, which most likely means a Chinese wholesaler. There a ton of these out there, like DHGate and Alibaba. You then select the watches you would like to ‘sell’ and list them on your webstore. For this example, we’ll pretend your product is a watch that Alibaba sells to you for £2 per piece. On your webstore, you’ll list that watch for a price of £50 per watch.
When a customer visits your webstore and buys a watch for £50, you forward their order to the supplier (in this case Alibaba). The dropshipping supplier then ships the product directly to your customer. Unlike other retail methods, when drop-shipping, the product doesn’t go through you, the business owner. As a result, you have no inventory. The drop shipping business essentially takes care of everything. Your webstore is basically a front – that’s all the customer sees.
You’ll then use Facebook or Instagram ads or YouTube influencers to drive traffic to your site, so people buy these watches for £50, or however much you’re charging.
I’m sure there’s more technicalities to it, but that’s the general gist of how drop-shipping works.
Types of dropshipping
There are also other, similar variants to the dropshipping business model. For instance, if you want logos on your watches, companies like Alibaba do offer a private label service for an additional charge, where they will add a logo to your products and then ship them to your home, for you to dispatch to customers. However, it seems drop-shipping requires the least amount of effort. As I’ve researched this before, I’m now being bombarded by adverts which market drop-shipping as the latest lucrative get rich quick scheme and I am now seeing videos titled ‘dropshipping for beginners’ and ‘dropshipping step by step’.
Now inherently, drop-shipping isn’t a particularly bad thing. Most companies these days source their products from China anyway and must add a mark-up so they can make profit.
On this channel/website, I try and give you the best advice possible when it comes to buying watches. From a customer’s perspective, in many cases, drop-shipped watches prove to be terrible value for money. It seems drop shipping watches, in particular, have some of the most utterly extortionate mark-ups out of any dropship profit margiins; I imagine because the audience buying them have no clue what makes a high-quality watch, and they unfortunately fall for the ‘affordable luxury’ marketing tagged onto these products.
I know a guy, my age, who operates a business like this. He uses the private label watches method I mentioned and exclusively sells his watches to women. He buys the watches for just under £3 per piece from Alibaba and sells them for over £60 each on his webstore, with almost no overhead costs. That’s a 2000% mark-up.
I understand businesses need to make profit, all products are going to have mark-ups, but when it’s getting into the thousands of percent, personally I can’t justify or recommend it to my viewers. Many of these drop-shipped watches are such poor quality, that you’re paying for nothing more than just ‘hype’. The only perceivable thing I can imagine benefits the consumer, is the easy experience using the website. It may be easier than trying to buy from a Chinese online retailer.
For the price, you can easily get hold of far better, higher quality watches from more established brands. It’s not one of those niche’s where there are no alternatives.
Nevertheless, you can do with your money as you wish. If you really want to buy from a drop-shipping brand, you can; it’s your decision. Maybe you want to support that brand for whatever reason, it’s up to you, I wouldn’t recommend it.
How to Avoid Drop-shipped Watches
So, how do you identify these watches so you can avoid them? Maybe you’ve seen a watch that you suspect might be drop-shipped, but you’re not sure.
Here’s some signs to look for.
Firstly, cost is a big factor. Even with the price hike, drop-shipped watches are generally in the lower price brackets. Most of these brands use the ‘affordable luxury’ slogan as their main form of advertising, as such the watches tend to retail for less than £200.
The next thing to look for is the logo, or lack of one. Most dropship watches sold using this method are incredibly generic, with no visible logo on them. This is because the supplier usually ships straight to the consumer – there’s no step for adding the logo, unless the seller spends more money; which many don’t want to do. There are brands who do sell equally poor watches with a logo, but the lack of a logo is sometimes an easy thing to spot.
Another thing you can do is a quick check on websites like Alibaba. Do a quick search for the type of watch you’re considering buying. If you’re met with a plethora of identical looking watches, chances are that brand is probably drop-shipping. There is a chance that the supplier website may be selling fake copies of the watch in question, but realistically, if it seems like quite a new brand, it’s likely just a drop-shipped timepiece.
These days it might even be worth quickly searching on sites like Instagram too. If you’re met with a load of brands selling watches that look like the want you want, chances are they’re all drop-shippers.
Next is their website. There are a couple of things these brands have in common. Firstly, they almost exclusively use the Shopify platform for their online stores. If webpages have a ‘powered by Shopify’ watermark, there’s a fair chance they might be dropshipping on Shopify. Even if the watermark isn’t visible, these websites tend to have the same layout as one another; so, after a while you’ll still be able to recognise them,
Also, many of these websites will have either no product reviews or fake reviews. When customers are advertised ‘affordable luxury’ yet receive a terrible quality watch; reviews aren’t always going to be favourable. I’ve seen a few brands either not allow reviews, completely hide them or outright fake them. Faking them is admittedly hard to spot, but I have seen clearly negative reviews marked as 5 stars on websites before. If you’re feeling particularly creative, you can do a simple reverse image search, to see if their product images have been taken straight from their supplier’s website – something lazy sellers may be inclined to do.
Another sign that can be indicative is the specifications. While not always the case and not necessarily bad quality, you’ll find many of these cheap watches have near identical specifications to one another.
Keep an eye out for:
316L stainless steel case
Mineral crystal glass
Japanese Miyota quartz movement
Genuine leather strap
3ATM (aka 30m) water resistance
Most of these brands also use the same cheesy marketing slogans.
My personal favourites include:
‘Affordable luxury’
‘Handcrafted’
‘Original design’
‘Shaking up the industry’
‘Revolutionary distribution system’
‘Cutting out the middleman’
All of which are straight lies.
A drop shipping business isn’t limited to just microbrands either. Massive brands like MVMT and Daniel Wellington likely use a similar method; typically charging over £100 for unoriginal, low-quality watches. Their effective, albeit misleading marketing means they can command such prices. Soon, I’ll be releasing my Daniel Wellington review video on my YouTube channel, so make sure you’re subscribed.
What do you think of this? Personally, I prefer to buy from companies who either offer original designs, or manufacture their watches themselves, like Timex and Seiko. My idea of value involves build quality and price. If I was going to buy a Chinese watch, I’d rather do it from a Chinese retailer directly, than through a drop-shipper; so, I could get it for a much lower price.