Rub you threw in the term "middleman" but that is not the case. An Internet business that drop-ships is a retailer, the same model as a brick and mortar store or Amazon which warehouses goods. They buy from a wholesaler and sell to consumers.
don't you have to jack the price then to turn a profit? Why wouldn't people just shop direct?
To reiterate the above, there really is no direct, or very little of it due to the legal separation of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. Even when we "buy direct from the mfr!!" we are buying from a manufacturer's retail outlet which has to comply with the same vendor rules that other retailers do, otherwise they would have an illegal, unfair advantage in selling their goods..
A retailer with no store and which drop ships has few costs and a much greater margin to play with, and can discount much more as a result.
Are Busa parts not cheaper from Suzuki than they are from Amazon?
Clear your mind of OEM vehicle parts. Amazon cannot sell Suzuki parts and neither can someone setup an e-commerce business to do that. The short answer to this one is that there are significant vendor requirements to sell OEM vehicles and OEM parts. For example, one likely has to sell every part in the catalog. Thus there are only huge businesses like Partzilla and Babbitt's Online. One cannot drop-ship say just Suzuki tanks. Suzuki will not sell them to you.
You are already familiar with similar vendor requirements between OEMS and dealerships. You know that a dealership must buy the 2020 linuep - a 300, a 600, an adventure bike, etc. even if the dealer knows they might never sell some of those. The OEM requires it.
The vehicle business is so screwed up. Dealerships are mandated by our congress (I suspect your country copied the same model.) What if members here could
drop-ship a busa direct from the manufacturer's warehouse? What is the dealership bike markup, 40%? Holy cow! Who here needs a dealership for anything anyway? But I digress. My point is that vehicle sales are a different space-time reality with some of the most insane vendor requirements.
The vendor above is selling a non OEM sprocket. You might be able to sell just sprockets from a wholesaler that buys sprockets and drop-ship them to customers. Of course any individual manufacturer can have rules. "You must buy 10,000." Okay, no drop-ship model there, try another product for your new e-commerce drop-ship business.
