11 months and $750k later, I closed my drop shipping business. Here’s why

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A few weeks ago, I split up with my partner. We had different visions, ambitions, and motivations that weren’t compatible with how we should run our business.

And a few days ago, my store manager resigned. I realized that he was taking care of basically everything, and I had no time to train someone else to replace him.

But here’s the truth: The numbers were also going down, more interesting opportunities were showing up, and my motivation was decreasing. I thought I totally lost interest in my own company.

I wrote this post as an introspection to understand what happened.

What is drop shipping?

Let’s make this one simple. Here’s the definition from Shopify (the most commonly used CMS for this type of business):

Drop shipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the merchant never sees or handles the product.

The most common method (the one I used) entails going to AliExpress, finding suppliers there, integrating the products to your store, and promoting the product pages directly on social media (mostly Facebook and Instagram).

You can start a drop shipping business with just Shopify, AliExpress, Facebook ads, and a bunch of other apps. If you think it’s awesome and crazy—launching your own business online without any technical skill in this day and age—well, you’re right.

(If you want to go deeper about what drop shipping is and how to get started, read this and this. Please do not pay for any courses. And if you’re just about to do it, ask me why you shouldn’t in the comments below.)

Why I started my business

I was broke and in debt, trying to survive in Bali. When I really needed to find a way out, I heard about ecommerce and drop shipping.

I decided to quit the job I had for only a month and focus on building my own online store with my friend, Nick, who was then living in Paris. What I loved the most about this type of business was:

The 3 most valuable things I’ve learned

So, why did I stop?

All part of the adventure