Dropshipzone: Connecting suppliers, retailers and customers

Powered by New Aim, Australia’s largest private ecommerce company, Dropshipzone is New Aim’s business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) marketplace.

Dropshipping allows a seller to sell products without keeping inventory or handling shipping, freeing up capital to invest in other areas of their business.

Welcome to another edition of Fast Five – our series where we ask some of the most influential and exceptional leaders five questions to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of Australia’s most dynamic organisations.

In this edition we speak to John Barkle, General Manager of Dropshipzone.

John was appointed GM in 2022, having previously served as Head of Brand at New Aim. John has more than a decade’s experience in brand, marketing and advertising, including six years in senior marketing and brand roles at Woolworths subsidiary MyDeal.

1. How does Dropshipzone work and how does it fit within the broader New Aim business?

Dropshipzone is a subsidiary of New Aim and Australia’s B2B2C marketplace. It was founded in 2009 when the founders of New Aim discovered a gap in the market where small-to-medium businesses had barriers of entry when it came to getting good products at good prices. Thus, Dropshipzone was established as a platform whereby SME retailers could dropship products from New Aim’s extensive product range that had, already by that stage, as premier products that offered value to consumers. It evolved into the marketplace model in 2022 when it enabled third-party suppliers to offer their products for dropship from its more than 2,000 strong retailer community and today boasts more than 120,000 products.

Dropshipzone works like any B2C marketplace – it connects buyers with sellers. Our buyers are retailers, who only make an order on behalf of their customers when they receive an order, and our sellers are our suppliers who fulfil their orders and deliver those orders directly to the end-customer.

2. How does the business stand out from the competition?

This is a really interesting question that we receive all the time. I guess the question I would ask back is: which area of the business are you talking about? Because if you’re talking about the channels in which we trade, then that is any seller on any marketplace or dropshipper that we compete with.

Otherwise, if you’re talking about Dropshipzone as a platform, there is no one doing what we do in Australia. And if you’re talking about our up-and-coming e-commerce data solutions for e-commerce companies, it’s a grey area. But if you’re talking about New Aim as a whole, no one does what we do. There is no direct competitor. That’s why I call it an interesting question.

3. How do you ensure the satisfaction of your clients?

As a B2B business, we must ensure that we meet and exceed our channel partners’ service level agreements and be competitive on price and quality, essentially providing their customers with value. New Aim achieves this through a well-optimised supply chain and its proprietary technology to service every operation from quality-control, logistics and customer service. For Dropshipzone, we use the NPS methodology to respond to feedback from our retailers and develop the platform to cater to their needs and desires. We have enjoyed a 26 per cent improvement of our NPS over the last 12 months. 

4. What are the latest eCommerce trends and how is AI disrupting or enabling the industry?

I think the latest eCommerce trends are being influenced by the state of the economy in which consumers find themselves. Cost-of-living, inflation and interest rates have significantly eaten into the average Aussie household’s discretionary spending. We are seeing consumers prioritising value over brand. They are also holding off and waiting for big sale events such as Black Friday, Click Frenzy and End of Financial Year before making purchases in order to take advantage of the larger discounts these events attract.

Prior to 2022, we began seeing peak season starting earlier and earlier, creeping into mid-October, but now the pendulum has swung firmly towards Black Friday. I suspect consumers have realised that it’s the Black Friday sale that has the biggest discounts. One thing I have noticed is that retailers are starting their Black Friday sales two weeks earlier than the actual day this year, time will tell whether that has been effective.

I would describe AI has hitherto been an enabler for the industry. We are seeing tasks that would take hours being completed in mere minutes. I think it’s as much a game-changer as the arrival of the Internet itself. The challenge for businesses will be to build an AI-literate workforce; AI won’t replace humans, but AI-literate humans will replace humans who do not know how to use AI. That will ultimately be the disruptor in my view.

5. At a time of Christmas and even Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, what have been some of your personal favourite items on the market?

Certainly anything tech-related for me personally. Black Friday is usually the best time to get savings on big-branded tech so I reserve most of my tech purchases for Black Friday.