Does The Coronavirus Impact Dropshipping? | What You Need To Know!

hey what's up everyone in this video I wanted to give everyone a little bit of an update on how the corona virus is impacting us ecommerce sellers specifically dropshippers now this not only applies to people who drop ship items from China so even if you drop ship from us-based suppliers you'll want to watch this video to learn how it could impact your sales in your business now I need to start out by saying that it's a huge tragedy what has happened obviously there's been a huge loss of life nearly 500 people so far I think there's close to 25 thousand people who have been infected and it's really sad what is happening and we do hope of course that a cure can be found so that we can save more lives from being infected and dying from the corona virus now with that said is also true that this virus has a worldwide impact not only because it's spreading around the world but also because of the economic impact that is causing so as many of you might know a lot of cities in China have completely shut down they're under quarantine people are required to stay indoors they've closed all public transportation airports even factories have closed as well so what that means is that these factories aren't open they're not producing items they're not shipping items out which is a problem for the global economy where so many people source items from China so many companies do that including a lot of drop shippers as well and as of right now they said those factories are going to close a remain closed until at least February 13th so that is still a while to go and it could be even longer than that what's more even some factories get up and running even if they were producing items a lot of the carriers can't even enter certain areas to pick up the items because there are certain areas that you're just not allowed to travel in or through in China so what should you be doing if you are drop shipping from China well this virus outbreak happened during Chinese New Year's and if you are familiar with drop shipping if you've been doing it for a few years you know that during Chinese New Year's a huge part of the country shuts down completely so it's usually recommended for drop shippers to extend their handling time during this period of time to account for the fact that the factories are going to be closed down for weeks so your handling time should already be pretty long and I would keep it that long if anything extended if you're like a wholesaler if you wholesale products from China then expect that you might not be able to get your products hopefully maybe you bought a bunch before the New Year's in anticipation of this but just be aware that it will be harder for you to source those items from China for the time being now one thing that you can do is actually contact your suppliers and I've done this with a few suppliers that we use and some of them responded and said they are still open for the time being and others have not responded at all which gives me an impression that they're not open at all so you do want to at least reach out and just see you know what is going on with them and you should also reach out to your customers and tell them what's going on people should be understanding of this situation obviously completely outside of your control and I wouldn't be surprised if eBay and Amazon account for this and kind of that you know what usually when there's a natural disaster like a huge forest fires or hurricanes they'll usually give you a cellar protection based on that so hopefully they should do that for this as well we'll have to wait and see I haven't heard anything from eBay or Amazon about that but otherwise just let your customers know you need to inform them what's going on and they should be understanding and you know maybe you have to cancel some orders but that's better than you know getting some negative feedback about it now one thing I could suggest for now is to only use US suppliers because obviously Home Depot and Walmart they're still shipping out items but keep in mind that a lot of their products come from China so even though they have warehouses of items here in the United States they will eventually run out if they're not being replenished because all the factories are shut down in China even if the products are made here in the United States a lot of them are only assembled here in the United States so Apple products it often says that they are assembled in California or that they are designed in California but really the parts come from China so a lot of the items they're gonna run out of those ones as well it's all about supply chain and a lot of things go back to China so that's more long-term we're not at that point yet things are still continuing here in the United States we are still

making sales here from us-based warehouses or us-based suppliers so things are still moving along with that so this is one good reason it's good to diversify things and the last thing that I was concerned about is whether there's any risk to my customers if they receive a package from China and I looked on the CDC website and they said that there shouldn't be any risk that they know of there's no indication that shipping an item from China to someone anywhere in the world and then opening up there's no indication that they will then get the virus just from that so at least that's some good news right there so guys that's all I have I'll keep you guys updated if anything new comes to light hopefully they get this under control soon so that we can prevent further loss of life and further spread of the virus and so that business can resume as normal all right guys thanks for watching if you guys have any updates that I didn't mention please let me know in the comments section and subscribe to the channel for more updates like this bye for now