History of DropShipping

The concept of dropshipping in international retail trade has evolved as an alternative to large scale exports over several years and since it was always omnipresent, it is difficult to trace it to an exact date or credit it to someone. In this light, it can be thought of as a marriage of convenience between manufacturing and distribution. Although, there are examples available historically, the trade form gained significance only after the large scale retail and manufacturing organizations jumped into the bandwagon. You need to give the Just-In-Time (JIT) movement in manufacturing its due credit as it helped large companies manage inventories easily with pretty less cost involvement. Recently, dropshipping has automated a lot with supply chain technologies evolving much more robustly into real-time tracking and real-time distribution with the advent of Internet. 

The concept of dropshipping has been there even though exact dates or instances are hard to cite. Large manufacturing companies have devised this idea when working on streamlining retail distribution. During the Just-In-Time (JIT) movement in manufacturing the concept of dropshipping was shaping up as a means of reducing inventory and associated costs. You can cite 'on-demand' production planning as an extension of JIT. Retail world was quick to embrace this successful supply chain management which later came to be known as dropshipping. Of late, dropshipping has reinvented itself as a highly automated supply chain methodology enabling real-time tracking via the Internet.