Dropshipping
Etymology
The practice descends from mail-order and wholesale “drop shipment” arrangements, but the word exploded in the 2010s with e-commerce platforms and cheap overseas suppliers. It let anyone run a store without warehouses or upfront stock. The model’s low barrier also filled social feeds with identical ads for the same unbranded products.
noun · /DROP-ship-ing/
Selling goods you never stock, forwarding each order to a third-party supplier who ships it directly to the buyer.
What it names
A retail model where the seller owns a storefront and marketing, not inventory.
Example
His “boutique” was dropshipping: every order was really a warehouse overseas shipping the same generic gadget.
Related idea
Dropshipping separates the storefront from the goods, much as an influencer separates the audience from the product; in both, the value lives in attention and interface, not inventory.