The vision
I am currently having an idea about a platform for companies who offer warehouse storage and dropship capabilities to smaller companies. I believe this kind of platform could be a big success for the warehouse company who is shipping all the goods.
The idea is to have a centralized (yes, I believe this is needed) platform where the warehouse store all data from their customers (the dropship companies). The data base is, of course, connected to a database.. this is where the data is actually stored.
Features
The warehouse company can connect to the dropshipper via API.
This connection lets the dropshipper create a product on the platform and select whether the product is allowed to be sold by others or just by themselves. If they choose to let others sell it, the product will be visible in a marketplace.
The marketplace
This will be available for dropshippers (who are already customers at the warehouse) and will display products from other dropshippers. They can then select a given product and push this to their own webshop. It will then be visible on their webshop and there will be a royalty for the creator when this product is sold from another site - or if it sold through the platform-marketplace.
Sales directly from the marketplace
This will be possible by bigger customers such as retail. Retailsers will also be given the oppertunity to add products to their webshop, but mainly they will order to their physical stores.
The marketplace will for these customers work like a webshop/order-system where they place their order and select which of their retail stores it should be delivered at.
Shipping methods for dropshippers
Shipping by sea takes a while, but looks really peaceful
If the dropshipper does not want to set up the shipping or if they wish to charge the actual shipping cost (or add a percentage/fixed fee), it will be possible to show the shipping available for the warehouse. They usually have a better shipping price than a smaller company can get, leading to more sales for the dropshipper.
Before this goes to far...
I'll let the rest of the idea be a surprise.
What are your thoughts of a platform/system like this? Am I missing any basic features in your opinions?