Okay guys, I see that I could give you all some valuable information.
Background: I'm from Slovakia and I've had 1 shopify - Aliexpress dropshop in April this year. I created beautiful web, found some really good looking products on Aliexpress, added about 25 to my shop, it was mostly socks and baseball hats as those are products that I really like. I managed to only create FB page and IG account. Most of my customers came from Instagram, I was doing basic follow4follow and like4like with safe limits per day with NinjaGram bot. In 2 weeks it was running, I got 6 orders, all from Slovakia. When I did my research, why most people don't buy, it was mostly because of long delivery period (3-6 weeks from Asia to Slovakia) and I've also got some abandoned carts, it was because only I could provide was PayPal Express payment - which I already told before, isn't being much used here. After 2 weeks I abandoned this Shopify-Ali dropshipping and found a Czech drophsipping platform, created 3 eshops already and planning on having about 10 eshops until the end of this month.
Why I lost my interest into dropshipping to Europe with Shopify-Ali:
Of course! Delivery time. Somebody already talked about it, people in Slovakia and Czech Republic are used to deliveries next day or at least 1-3 days. If the delivery is longer, the number of customers is quickly dropping. There was the Payment problem, because back then I hasn't any company to create some Credit Card/Bank Transfer payment gateway. I had only PayPal Express, where customer needed to have PayPal account, which here, except Slovak and Czech gamer communities isn't really used much.
There was also problem of legality of this business strategy. When I watch American dropshipping tutorials where they normally use things and tactics that are literally illegal in EU. The biggest fear I had was Finance Bureau, because without company organization with all the documents I was only person, and unregistered person in Slovakia cannot legally do business without further registration, which constitutes of paying taxes, providing Customer Security laws and most importantly, managing all the invoices from Ali and from customers.
(If you are asking why I haven't company or why I was unable to register my self as a business, I wasn't and am still not 18 years old, and when I'm not adult in Slovakia, I LITERALLY CANNOT MAKE MONEY LEGALLY only low paying part-time easy and safe jobs in companies.)
I've contacted my friend who had a company about my Shopify-Ali dropshipping business and wanted him as my legal partner with his cuts of profits. We started to managing administration, contacted lawyers and read every law regarding online business, import from outside of EU, taxes, legality and everything.
We found and announcement of law, now I don't know if it's only affecting Slovakia or the whole EU, that from 2021, EVERY imported product from China/Ali etc. will be due to Taxes or Import fees, today it only affects products over 25€ for import fees and Taxes on products over 150€, and from 2021, it would affect every singe delivery, including "gifts". Now okay, Aliexpress sellers can sell your products with "gift" or price under 1$ invoices, but when accidentally Tax Bureau find out, you can end up in prison and paying thousands of € in fines.
So even with company, there are a lot of inconveniences with Shopify-Ali dropshipping to EU.
My and my partner with company searched for other solutions. We found Czech dropshipping platform dropshipping.cz . For me it's even better then Shopify-Ali. I import hudreds or thousands of products in 5 minutes. Every order is automatically send to the platform and supplier, the profits stays in platform's account, and when the time comes, the platform will send all money at once to me with only 1 service invoice. This means, that everything is legal, I don't have to do nothing except marketing and maintenance, and from taxes to laws is everything legal and very easy. I can literally die and the shops would be functional until domain and hosting expires, still making profits automatically.
You make the e-shop, import products with descriptions, prices, images. You just send traffic and generate orders. Orders are immediately sent to suppliers. Suppliers prepare, pack and send the products with your marketing, invoice, business cards or promotions and customers get their products in 1-3 days.
Now, there is still a little issue for me. I wanted to dropship to Slovakia, but the provider is Czech with warehouses in Czech Rep. So my main market is now Czech Republic. I still have options to sell to Slovakia, but it is less conventional.
So my dropshipping provider is Czech dropshipping.cz, it might be problem for you, because the whole platform, products and suppliers are pure Czech companies and language. But it has many countries deliveries.
List of possible deliveries from dropshipping.cz : France, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, Spain, GB and of course, Czech Republic.
But the whole system and product descriptions all are in Czech, which is not good for most of you. I would suggest to find other dropshipping providers in other countries. Look for modern platforms with various implementation methods, for instance I use Wordpress Woocommerce and it's all automatic. My margins are 5-60% but to sell products you need to lower the price.
Fees for 1 order on this platforms are only 15Kč=0,50€ per order, including shipping, payment methods, product warranty and everything else. I don't have to do anything, because even when there is something wrong with the products, I don't care, everything will handle the supplier, refund/ replacement .
Cost for project like this is also low, I can set up e-shop with automatic dropshipping system for only 15€ (10€ for .cz domain, 5€ one year hosting). I got premium themes and plugins here on BHW from download section. I can do websites, graphics,marketing and content my self.
My conclusion from my experience is. Im not law expert or anything and I might be wrong, I just studied this some days. Only legal and manageable dropshipping in EU is by EU providers and suppliers. I wish you all good luck with your projects, ask me anything.
