Wholesale is where a person purchases or sells an item in bulk at a discounted price—the bigger the order, the better the discount. Dropshipping is an order fulfillment sales method, meaning companies purchase stock as they receive orders. After a product is sold, they transfer the order to a third-party supplier to complete. The third-party supplier often ships the products directly to the customer, so companies never come in contact with their products. This way, companies don’t need warehouses or to buy large quantities of products at a time. Dropshipping is cheaper than manufacturing and producing unique products, but it also isn’t as cost-effective as wholesale distribution and brands cannot perform quality control when they never see their products in person.