The short answer
Buying wholesale means buying stock up front at a trade price, holding it, and sending it to your customers yourself. Dropshipping means listing products you do not hold: when a customer orders, you order the item from the supplier, who sends it straight to your customer.
Buying wholesale
Dropshipping
Cash up front
You pay for stock before you sell it.
You pay for each item after your customer has paid you.
Stock risk
Unsold stock is yours to clear.
None held — but you rely on the supplier's stock being there.
Delivery
You pack and ship, so you control speed and presentation.
The supplier ships, so their speed and packaging are your customer's experience.
Margin per item
Usually higher: you buy in quantity and ship in bulk.
Usually lower: every order is a single delivery.
Best for
Proven sellers you are confident will move.
Testing products and carrying a wide range.
Most shops end up doing both: dropshipping to test and widen the range, then buying the proven sellers in quantity.
Buying wholesale
You agree a trade price with a supplier, order in quantity, and hold the stock yourself — in a stockroom, a warehouse or with a fulfilment company.
- What you gain: the best unit cost, control over delivery speed and packaging, and no dependence on a supplier at the moment a customer orders.
- What it costs you: cash tied up in stock before it sells, somewhere to keep it, and the risk that some of it does not sell at all.
Dropshipping
You list the supplier's products in your own shop at your own price. When a customer orders, you place an order with the supplier using the customer's delivery address, and keep the difference between the two prices.
- What you gain: no stock to buy or store, and the freedom to list a wide range and see what sells.
- What it costs you: a thinner margin per item, and dependence on the supplier. If their stock count is wrong you sell something that is not there; if their parcel carries their own branding or an invoice, your customer sees it.
How to choose
Whichever you choose, the same questions decide whether a supplier is safe to build on:
- Is the stock count live? Selling against a number that was right last week is how orders get cancelled on your customers.
- Where does it ship from, and how fast? A UK supplier shipping to UK customers keeps delivery times and returns simple.
- Does the parcel stay anonymous? For dropshipping it must: no supplier branding, and no paperwork showing what you paid.
- What happens to your money if the order goes wrong? Know whether you are paying the supplier directly or paying into something that holds it until delivery.
- Can you automate it? Past a handful of orders a day, keying orders in by hand stops working. An API or an integration lets your shop place them.
Doing either on Feed API
Feed API is a UK B2B wholesale marketplace, and an order on it carries its own delivery address — so the same account can send stock to you or straight to your customer.
- Your customer never sees the supplier. Parcels carry no supplier branding, marketing inserts or business cards, and no invoices, receipts or delivery notes showing what you paid. It is the strictest of the supplier standards.
- Stock you can sell against. Orders are placed against live stock, which is reserved the moment the order is created rather than when it is paid.
- Your margin, your call. Set a markup per product, per supplier or as an account-wide default. Feed API takes no share of it and never sees the price you charge.
- The money is held until delivery. Payment is held by the platform, not the supplier, until the order has been delivered and the 14-day return window has closed — see how escrow works.
- Automate the dropship flow.Your shop can place each order over the REST API with the customer's address, and hear back through webhooks when it ships — see connecting a shop to a wholesale API.
Minimum orders
Create a reseller account — registration takes two fields — or read how it works for resellers first.